Bowie's rejected soundtrack for The Man Who Fell To Earth

soooo, five years later ... has anyone actually heard any of the Bowie/Buckmaster soundtrack for this?

No, but I'd love too!

From David Buckley's 2007 Mojo interview with Buckmaster:
"There were a couple of medium tempo rock intrumental pieces, with simple motifs and riffy kind of grooves, with a lin-up of David's rhythm section (Carlos Alomar et al) plus J Peter Robinson on Fender-Rhodes-Fender piano and me on cello and some synth overdubs, using ARP Odyssey and Solina.
There were some more slow and spacey cues with synth, Rhodes and cello; and a couple of wierder atonal cues using synths and percussion. There was a ballad instrumental by David that appears on Low (Subterraneans).
It was performed by David, me and J Peter on various keyboards. There was also a piece I wrote and performed using some beautifully made mbiras (African thumb pianos) I had purchased earlier that year, plus cello, all done by multiple overdubbing.
And a song David wrote, played and sang, called Wheels, which had a gentle sort of melancholy mood to it. The title referred to the alien train from his character Newton's home world."
Buckmaster believes the music wasn't used for three main reasons:
"Firstly it was just not up to the standard of composing and performance needed for a good movie; secondly, I don't think it fitted well to the picture; and lastly, it wasn't really what Nic Roeg was looking for."

From "Low" by Hugo Wicken:
"I considered the music to be demo-ish and not final, although we were supposed to be making it final," Buckmaster told Bowie biographer David Buckley. "All we produced was something substandard and Nic Roeg turned it down on those grounds…"
As for the quality of Bowie's work, those who did hear it were impressed. (John) Phillips found it "haunting and beautiful, with chimes, Japanese bells, and what sounded like electronic winds and waves". Bowie had the soundtrack with him during the 'Low' sessions for work on "Subterraneans", and at one point played it to the musicians: "It was quite excellent", recalled guitarist Ricky Gardiner, "quite unlike anything else he's done".
In the event "Papa" John Philips was assigned the job of putting together a soundtrack in London.

In November, Bowie was still under the impression that the music would be used.
During his appearance on Soul Train he is asked, "do you plan on doing any soundtracks for movies?"
Bowie replies, "I'm doing the soundtrack for The Man Who Fell To Earth with a friend of mine, Paul Buckmaster".
Bowie sent a copy of Low to Roeg in 1977 with a note, "This is what I wanted to do for the film."

Roeg then kicked himself for being a daft bastard.

Stomu Yamashta's 'Poker Dice' is sublime though...

yeah roeg put together a nice soundtrack nonetheless! kind of wish there was an official soundtrack for the movie, with the john phillips stuff, the yamashta, etc.

actually the reason i revived this is because i finally got jim o'rourke's The Visitor, the title of which is obviously a reference to the movie.

I ripped the audio from the movie once, to make my own incidental score. Work in progress that was lost in an external hd crash. Love the synth/piano stuff that sounds almost xylophone like (is that a chamberlin?). Don't think we'll ever hear the tracks/demos that were recorded for the soundtrack. Probably most of it has been used in mutated forms for later songs.

yeah probs. would've loved to hear your audio rip! that's kinda what i've been searching around for.

yeah, not being able to find anything was what prompted me to do it myself. if i'll pick it up again i'll let you know.

Watched this at the local indie theater last night. I really liked (what I am guessing is) Stomu's work on the soundtrack.
I saw the movie maybe fifteen years ago and didn't remember anything about it, least of all Bowie's dong. Guess that was part of the added twenty minutes.

lol, probably. rip torn's dong too! this movie has everything.
this is great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmkVLXqb3o4

yeah, there was some of that (re: rip)

...kind of wish there was an official soundtrack for the movie, with the john phillips stuff, the yamashta, etc.

― tylerw, Thursday, November 18, 2010 10:57 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's coming! 40th anniversary restoration of the movie:
http://thequietus.com/articles/20769-the-man-who-fell-to-earth-for-4k-restoration

Last bit of which has this:
In other The Man Who Fell To Earth news, it was announced this week that John Phillips and Stomu Yamash’ta's soundtrack for the film will be released for the first time after the master tapes were recently re-discovered. A CD edition will be available from September 9 with a vinyl edition following in November.

expensive deluxe version contains a booklet with photos and info such as:

The book also contains enlightening notes from the movie’s editor Graeme Clifford who reveals that he used Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon as a temp soundtrack while working on the film.

“On my original cut, I scored the entire movie to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. I think I used every single track on the album. The whole movie was Pink Floyd except for the one piece at the end, and it worked beautifully. The movie was made for that score! I don’t know if there was any serious attempt to get Dark Side Of The Moon cleared for our project but obviously, that never happened.”

buckmaster's CV: a talented journeyman's zigzag journey

Wasn't there something about David Bowie's rejected soundtrack coming out at some point, too?

too bad it wasn't in conjunction with this box set, seemed the obvious place to put it