Interviews
Claudio Simonetti Hits the Road to Perform the ‘Demons’ Score Live Across the Country [Interview]
Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin — founding keyboardist Claudio Simonetti’s modern manifestation of prolific Italian prog-rock composers Goblin — hits the road today to perform a live score to Demons followed by a set of other classic Goblin tracks across North America.
“Normally I play the same films, like Deep Red and Suspiria,” Simonetti tells me. “I have seen Demons with the actors at conventions, and I think that people love this film. It’s a cult film. I said, ‘Why don’t we try to do Demons live?’ It’s the first time. I never did it before. We have had a lot of rehearsals this summer.”
Originally, Simonetti wanted to do a Dawn of the Dead tour in celebration of the film’s 45th anniversary. “It’s one of my favorites, of course, but we are having some troubles with the producer for the rights to play the score live. Instead, we decided we will start doing Demons. I think Demons is a similar kind of style.”
He remains hopeful a Dawn of the Dead tour will come to fruition in the future.
Demons is produced and co-written by master of horror Dario Argento, for whom Goblin had previously composed several scores. In it, attendees at a mysterious horror film screening find themselves trapped in a theater with ravenous demons.
Simonetti and his bandmates — guitarist Daniele Amador, bassist Cecilia Nappo, and drummer Federico Maragoni — remain faithful to the score he composed in 1985. “The music is quite the same, because I don’t like to change. I use more or less the same original instruments. Maybe sometimes we play a little more heavy, more rock. Demons was played with a drum machine. I played most of the instruments just with keyboards, so I have to adapt the original sound to the live band with drums and guitar.”
Fans will also get to hear the band perform songs featured in the film. “Demons has some heavy metal songs, and we will play these songs. We extract the original voices, so you will hear [Biff Byford of] Saxon a singing with us.”
Simonetti believes that the movie holds up as well as the music. “When I see these vintage kind of films, I think they’re good. They have their own style, this old-fashioned style. If the film was made right now, they could use digital effects, but Demons is all handmade. I was on the set, so I remember a lot of people in the makeup. Now it’s easy to do the digital effects, but sometimes it’s too much. It’s not the same.”
In addition to Argento, Simonetti counts John Carpenter among his admirers: “When I met John Carpenter for the first time, it was in 2013 in Los Angeles. I was introduced to him, and he told me, ‘Oh, I know you very well. I stole all your music!'” he laughs. “I said, ‘Thank you, but you did it very good!’ He said in an interview that when he composed Halloween he was inspired by Deep Red. I like John Carpenter a lot as a musician and a director, of course.”
Simonetti will pay tribute to Carpenter by performing his iconic Halloween theme, along with Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” from The Exorcist, during the second half of the show. “These two songs are very similar to my genre. The first time I recorded these covers was with my band Daemonia in the 2000s. We did a Dario Argento tribute and also put Halloween and The Exorcist. They’re two of my favorite films.”
Photo: Jeremy Saffer
There are no plans to re-record the Demons score as Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin previously did with Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead, and Deep Red. Instead, the band will head back to Italy after the tour wraps to begin working on a new album for release in 2024.
Simonetti credits the internet for his music continuing to find an audience after all these years. “The internet destroyed the record companies, but you have more visibility now. In the ’70s, when we formed the original Goblin, we sold many records in many countries, but they didn’t know who we were, because no internet, no information, nothing. Now people can see films, they can see concerts, they can see who we are. It’s wonderful.”
He continues, “I have many different ages at my concerts. There are 20-year-olds to 60-year-olds; father and son together, because it’s a tradition in families. They teach them to listen to the prog-rock bands. That’s why most of the famous bands of the ’70s are playing again now. There is nothing special in music now, so many people find something new in the past. Our sound is completely different from the modern sound.”
Simonetti is perfectly content with his legacy being intertwined with Argento, of whom he was a fan before becoming a collaborator. “I remember when I saw Dario’s first film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, in 1970 with my friend. I said, ‘Wow, this new director is great! This film is fantastic!’ I never could suppose that in five years I would compose music for him.
“Life is incredible.”
Get your tickets now to see Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin perform the Demons score live.
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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