Paul Jackson Music

Paul Jackson Music

Wednesday 7 August 2013

#15: Meeting Morricone

Since watching Clint Eastwood westerns from a very early age, the music of Ennio Morricone has continued to play an ever growing part of the soundtrack to my life. By the mid-nineties I was sharing a flat in Salford with Adam, a like-minded friend from university, and besides sharing interests in electronic dance and pop music, we also had a fondness for Morricone resulting in his movies and soundtrack albums steadily growing in our respective collections. I had many firm favourites at that time including Cinema Paradiso and the scores for the Dollars trilogy, notably The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. From that film, one of my favourite cues was, and still is, “The Ecstasy Of Gold” that scores the penultimate scene where Tuco finds the cemetery the protagonists have been looking for. A repeating piano motif accompanies an oboe melody and begins to build into an epic, galloping orchestral and choral masterpiece, as Tuco frantically runs around the gravestones searching for the one containing the buried gold. An absolute masterpiece of cinema music.
By 1998, Adam had moved to London to work for the BBC music library, with his room at Salford still on hold until he found a more fixed abode in the “big smoke”. In November of that year I happened to read a news item about Morricone that mentioned he was about to play four concerts in Rome to coincide with his 70th birthday.  About a week before these concerts were to be performed, I happened to mention it to Adam in passing during a phone conversation. What Adam said next totally caught me off guard. “Aren’t we going  then?”.
I hadn’t even considered the possibility,
Within a couple of days, we had each booked the necessary time off work. From London, Adam sorted out the concert tickets of which only Sunday evening was available, and from Manchester, I sorted out the flights and accommodation via an Italian tour operator I knew. We could only get this particular hotel for four nights from the Sunday but we could fly out Saturday if we wanted to sort out the first night ourselves.  Without any experience of where one could stay in Rome, I ended up signing up to the Youth Hostel Association to get a place to kip on that Saturday night, and any other night we needed.
On Saturday, we were flying out from Manchester landing in Rome and arriving  at the main train station late in the evening. We had heavy bags and a map showing where the Youth Hostel was located. We walked for ages along these dark deserted roads, unaware that there were cheap pensione hotels right next to the station we just left. After a bizarre first night in a shared dormitory of around ten people, we found our main hotel on the Sunday morning, checked in, had lunch and then ventured out to the venue taking in some sightseeing along the way.
We walked through St Peter’s Square and arrived at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia venue with tickets in hand only to see a crowd of people looking at a poster outside the entrance. It was all in Italian of course, and my Italian vocabulary was limited to a few memorised phrasebook entries, and the original track-listing to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Adam and I looked blankly at the printed text on the poster, until someone translated it for us. Eduardo was actually Spanish but living in Rome and fluent in Italian. He told us that the orchestra and choir of Santa Cecilia were actually going on strike for one of the days of the concert, which just so happened to be the Sunday we had tickets for. We couldn’t believe it. Eduardo was both impressed and disheartened to hear we had travelled from Manchester to be there. All we were advised to do was to go to the box office the next day to get a refund. All that was on our minds was to get into the concert.
We left there on a big downer clinging onto the hope that we could get in the next day,
At the box office on the Monday morning there was quite a scene with people shouting at the poor box office staff. After only been giving refunds for our tickets and being told that the remaining two concerts were sold out, we slumped onto a nearby bench feeling incredibly sorry for ourselves. One guy was shouting loudly at the ticket booth, and at one stage pointed towards Adam and I while mentioning the word ‘Manchester’.
We headed back to the hotel feeling well and truly hacked off. The only thing we could think of to do was to write a begging letter to Ennio Morricone himself,  pointing out how far we had travelled for the concert, and if there was any way we could get to see either the Monday or Tuesday concert. We knew Ennio didn’t really speak English, so we had to get it translated. With no luck at the British Embassy, we ended up persuading our hotel clerk to translate and type it out for us. We gave him a  ‘fistful of lira’ and headed back to the venue with our letter. We found the stage door, and handed the envelope to one of the crew who said he would pass it on.
We never heard anything of course, and our desperate efforts ended up being wasted. We met Eduardo again at the venue who already had tickets for the Monday show and urged us to try for returns at the box office. Unbelievably, we got them without a problem. The day’s work and stress had been unnecessary.We were in the venue, though seated separately, in the auditorium.
The huge orchestra, 200 strong double choir and Ennio Morricone took to the stage and delivered an outstanding performance of very familiar music from films such as Cinema Paradiso, The Mission, Once Upon A Time In America and many others. The arrangements and performances sounded fantastic with some of the familiar sound effects on the scores recreated by voices and instruments. At the interval, Eduardo spotted me and rushed over just before the second act was to start. “So glad you managed to get in to the concert, stick around with me at the end, I know someone who can introduce us to Ennio”. And then he was gone and the second half began. A highlight of the concert featured a suite of music from some of the Sergio Leone westerns Morricone had scored including The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful Of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time In The West. All the sounds were there, the chanting, the electric guitar twangs, the sound effects, and swirling strings and choir. It was amazing. Then as what sounded to be the final piece started to slow down, fade and end on a chord, I started to get ready to applaud only to be interrupted by the repeating piano motif from The Ecstasy Of Gold. I couldn’t believe it. The hairs on the back of my neck were at full attention as  this anthemic masterpiece whirled around the hall like Tuco round Sad Hill Cemetery. It was a momentous musical moment that blew me away.
At the end of the concert, Adam came over and we exchanged comments on how fantastic the concert had been. “Shall we go then?” he said. “Not yet. We’ve got to stick around” I replied with a grin. Eduardo then met us and introduced us to a guy named Claudio Fuiano who happened to be a record producer for a label that released many Morricone scores, as well as those of other Italian movies. Claudio shook our hands and was also impressed that we had travelled from Manchester. We were suddenly part of a group being escorted to the back stage area where Claudio introduced Adam and I to Ennio Morricone. Knocking out a few sentences on a blog post doesn’t do the occasion any justice. We could not believe where or how we were there. Claudio spoke to Ennio, and once again we heard the word ‘Manchester’ pop into the Italian conversation. Ennio smiled, signed our programmes, and shook our hands. Now whenever I’ve met someone I’m a fan of, it’s often quite awkward not knowing exactly what to say. However meeting Ennio was a little different as because he didn’t speak much English, and what smattering of Italian I knew had vanished from my memory at that point. “Grazie” was all I could summon up and that seemed appropriate and enough for the occasion.
We left there on a high, and totally oblivious to how we reached it. We high fived all the way to the Vatican, and said “right, the holiday begins”
And if that weren’t enough, we went to the Tuesday concert too, via box office returns, and joined in with the audience to sing Happy Birthday to Ennio. Later in the week, Claudio took us out for drinks and food, and gave us presents of Ennio CD’s and chatted more with us about film soundtracks.
A few years later, by which time I was living in London, Ennio performed at London’s Barbican Centre so I got to hear it all again including “The Ecstasy Of Gold” and many other favourites.
And since starting at the BBC music library myself in 1999, I’ve become acquainted with even more Morricone score albums and movies, further expanding and cementing my love for the ‘Maestro’ and his work.