In a recent interview with The Daily Herald, Rob Zombie/ex-Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 discussed his scoring process for the upcoming Rob Zombie-directed film The Lords Of Salem. One of the things John 5 mentioned was that he wanted to create a very memorable cue, stating, “I wanted the theme of this movie to be very simple, like “Jaws” or “Halloween”“. He continues on to say, “I always say, it’s music that people don’t want to listen to, because you’re watching the movie. It’s tough. It’s gotta be good enough, but it can’t distract you.”

Speaking about the sounds of the film, John 5 explains, “Rob would give me direction, like, ‘I want it to sound like this, or I want it to sound like that.’ It’s very primitive, not your everyday-sounding instruments. I would use a violin bow across an acoustic guitar or clank on things or use other odd musical instruments. Then, of course, you have your bassoons and french horns and everything under the sun for other parts of the score. It’s very unorthodox, if you will, but it really was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work and it was a big challenge. It turned out amazing, though. I’m very proud of it; that’s for sure.”

I’m a little torn by what 5 is saying. Wanting to create music that is both memorable yet something the audience won’t listen to just doesn’t click in my mind. Using his examples of Jaws and Halloween, I can safely say that I paid just as much attention to the music of those films as I did to the visuals. Then again, I love horror movie scores, so I might be in the minority of people that pay attention to the scores while watching a movie.

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