Wicker Man, Wicker Music

Gary Carpenter

 

Introduction

IN MY EARLIEST exchanges with the organisers of The Wicker Man conference, I expressed reservations about presenting a paper. This was largely due to a conflict I perceived between being both an ‘academic’ and a ‘prime source’. The way we agreed that this might be resolved was that I would participate in a ‘question and answer’ session on the last afternoon. Happily, I was able to attend the whole conference and to enjoy the hugely imaginative and informative panels which took place prior to my own session. The enormous number of issues teased out of this strange film, and the variety of disciplines represented within the conference, evoked a number of thoughts of my own which I included within the framework of the question and answer session, and which I take the liberty of expounding here.

Music

I have written previously at some length about Paul Giovanni’s score and my involvement with it and I hesitate to repeat myself here. Those interested may wish to refer to The Wicker Man CD liner notes, which, amongst other things, explain who the musicians were and how we all came to be involved in the film. They also feature key details about the filming of the notorious ‘Willow’s Song’ sequence and descriptions of various working methods.¹

In the conference’s question and answer session a number of questions arose about the authenticity of the songs and the song lyrics. Many of the lyrics were sourced from folk tradition and song texts written, or adapted from traditional sources, by Robert Burns. They inevitably deal with love, death and the life cycle. Peter Shaffer worked closely with Paul Giovanni and Anthony Shaffer on adapting texts into a more contemporary vernacular where this was deemed appropriate. The song melodies were original but the incidental music was often not. However, in the same way that Anthony Shaffer drew liberally on many folk and occult ideas not necessarily uniquely (or even remotely) Scottish, so too the music is of no fixed abode; it is intentionally ‘pan-ethnic’, as we were ever mindful not to pin down the locale. Summerisle is, after all, an Ossianic Scotland of the mind.

Sourcing the basic materials was not Giovanni’s preserve alone, and a lot of traditional English and Irish music used by a group that some of the musicians and I were involved with at the time found its way into the film, most notably ‘Mirie It Is’ (a song roughly contemporary and philosophically consonant with ‘Sumer is Icumen in’) arranged for brass (the library sequence underscore), ‘Drowsy Maggie’ (the Irish, not the Scottish version) and ‘Robertson’s Rant’ (one of the few unadorned traditional Scottish melodies) for the final search sequence. Other material appropriated from medieval or folk sources included ‘Sumer is Icumen in’ (the immolation scene), ‘Oranges and Lemons’ (counterpointed with a faux Scottish jig for the ‘Chop Chop’ sequence), the closing fanfare (Bulgarian traditional) and ‘The Procession’ which is a liberal re-working of a traditional Scottish tune.

Song Function

The film’s incidental music, on the face of it, fulfils a traditionally non-diegetic role, i.e. it underpins action but is not part of a sound world that is audible to the characters on screen. However, all the songs (except the title song and ‘Corn Rigs’) serve a diegetic function (i.e. the film’s characters can hear them) and it is interesting to speculate whether this film would ever have been described as ‘a musical’ had not the precedent for this type of song usage been set in Bob Fosse’s roughly contemporaneous Cabaret (1972). This is not to underplay the ingenuity with which the recurrent oscillation between diegetic and non-diegetic sound works or the subtle way in which the film slips from one mode to the other from time to time. Particularly noteworthy in this respect is the sequence in which Howie pursues the Hobby Horse. This scene is supported by a very tightly timed music cue which gives way to the on-screen violinist playing for the Courtyard gathering as Summerisle is about to address the assembled revellers. In fact, the player on screen (Ian Cutler) is the player on the soundtrack, but the solo ‘diegetic’ violin was, if my memory is correct, recorded on location. This is probably the most visible manifestation of the structural decision whereby the session musicians were also the ‘on-screen’ village musicians, ensuring that there is no discrepancy between those the film audience sees and hears. Additionally, because the instrumental timbre of the diegetic and nondiegetic musics remain broadly constant (disparities between the acoustical environment of the three recording studios used notwithstanding) the difference between the two is mitigated, so that even the non-diegetic (i.e. incidental) music feels quasi-diegetic. The unusual effect this creates is an important factor in creating the film’s embracing sense of unreality, not least from Howie’s point of view.

Perhaps an even more apposite example within the longer version of The Wicker Man illustrates how the unity of diegetic and non-diegetic music pervades the drama of the film. In the ‘Gently Johnny’ sequence, Ash Buchanan is ritually seduced by Willow MacGregor. This is enacted off-screen and out of view of the pubgoers but is accompanied on two layers. Layer one involves Summerisle reciting Walt Whitman’s poem ‘Animals’ as two snails engage in their own sexual ritual; layer two involves a character in the pub (played by Paul Giovanni) singing ‘Gently Johnny’ whilst the pub regulars provide backing vocals and the local musicians (and the session musicians) play. Everyone looks meaningfully heavenwards at a ceiling poster beyond which Willow and Ash are audibly having sex. The song is a foreground event for the cinema audience, but becomes ‘incidental music’ from Ash and Willow’s perspective (or perhaps the couple’s lovemaking provides the accompaniment to the song). The sequence is in any case a highly charged one: in many ways it is the heart of the film and it beggars belief that it was excised from the first release. Its impact, however, resides in the fact that we see absolutely nothing. The accumulative power of the song and the poem (not to downgrade the visuals) do much, much more than any Chereau-type erotica could ever achieve.

The Original Soundtrack

The Wicker Man original soundtrack (OST) was released in September 2002, some 30 years after the film. This has something of a history of its own that begins just after shooting finished.

As far as I am aware, British Lion, the film’s production company, had no intention of releasing an OST. Paul Giovanni, however, had other ideas and he and I returned to the De Lane Lea studios to put together an LP consisting of eight tracks from the film (four per side). I have never known whether Paul paid for this himself or whether he had persuaded Peter Snell (the film’s producer) to do so. As Paul was of the opinion that one or two of the film’s singers – though fine within the film context – would not bear repeated armchair listening, he substituted one or two artists. The most significant of these was the substitution of Lesley Mackay for Rachel Verney in ‘Willow’s Song’. Lesley played Daisy in the film and sang the opening credits. This particular replacement was a blessing in another way: during the shooting period of the film this song had been mooted as a vehicle for Britt Ekland’s nascent singing career and the intention was for her to record the vocal as a single, an endeavour that would have been problematic as she could not sing (this was a long time before pitch correction).

For ‘The Landlord’s Daughter’ the vocals were recorded ‘wild’ with the actual actors on set. The attentive viewer will notice that not only are their singing skills dubious, but they are also completely out of time. The editing does not help much in either version of the film. For the OST Paul therefore used the original tape prepared for the film playback (which features him singing at least one line in a Dick Van Dyke-style brogue). It has the additional benefit of being complete as Paul wrote it.

‘Gently Johnny’, which everyone who heard it regarded as the finest musical moment in the film, was included. We had no intimation of its removal from the final cut.

‘The Tinker of Rye’ had to be assembled. This song was written on location and presented to Christopher Lee and Diane Cilento to learn a couple of days before the scene was shot. I pre-recorded a (mono) piano track and this was played back through earpieces to Christopher and Diane, who were recorded as they were filmed. The piano was then mixed in during post-production and the mutilated version is what you see in the film. For the OST, we had only the voice tracks but they were the voice tracks of the complete song. Louis Austin, the music’s sound engineer, lined them up on the tape machine, inserted leader tape where we guessed the piano would be, counting as best we could (we did not have the benefit of computers or click tracks). When that was done, I overlaid a completely new (stereo) piano part and after some trial and error we had a new version of the song.

Like the negative of the film, the 15ips stereo master disappeared. Luckily, something had made me insist on having a copy; this was a 7.5ips tape which was recorded simultaneously on a parallel machine and was thus a master copy. I carried this all over Europe in the bottom of a cardboard box. Then Trunk Records put out an OST.² This seemed to have been sourced from soundtrack tapes minus the dialogue but with sound effects. It was awful; it even spelt my name wrong. So I let it be known, via the internet, that the original stereo masters of the OST, mixed and approved by Paul Giovanni, might turn up. Silva Screen Records expressed an interest. The esteemed composer and ethno-musicologist David Fanshawe put his excellent analogue restoration hardware at my disposal and oversaw the digitisation of the master tape. You can now buy the CD (or limited edition LP if you are lucky) at all good record shops. It has additional material salvaged from various sources (cassettes of indifferent quality from the bottom of the cardboard box, mainly); a couple of tracks have been re-recorded by Czech musicians where the original was worth keeping, but was unlistenable to in the Trunk Records version (the final trumpet fanfares in particular). Paul’s innovative and advanced production skills ensured that the sound quality of the CD is outstanding; it has a presence and atmosphere all of its own. Much of what he demonstrated about studio and production technique has been of incalculable value to me to this day.

And Now

It has been fascinating to follow this film’s progression from B-feature to Don’t Look Now (1973) to cult movie. Its first appearance on BBC rated one star in the Radio Times; it now rates five. It is the subject of conferences and TV roundtables.³ It is constantly referenced in other films such as Shallow Grave (1994) and TV programmes such as Coupling and The League of Gentlemen. A musical is on the cards, as is a remake of the film with Nicolas Cage. The CD sales now exceed 10,000, which is pretty good for a small film OST whose release was delayed thirty years. I am proud to have been a part of it all.

Bibliography

Cast and Crew, BBC4, 23 March 2005.

Discography

The Wicker Man: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Music and Effects (1998), Trunk Records, BARKED4CD.

The Wicker Man: The Original Soundtrack (2002), Silva Screen Records Ltd., FILMCD330.

 

¹ The Wicker Man: The Original Soundtrack.

² The Wicker Man: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Music and Effect.

³ Cast and Crew.