Music from Love and Mercy

Music from Love and Mercy is the soundtrack album to Bill Pohlad's film of the same name about the Beach Boys' songwriter-musician-producer and co-founder Brian Wilson. The album was released by Capitol Records on August 14, 2015. Selections from Atticus Ross's original film score were included in addition to song performances featured in the film. The closing track, "One Kind of Love", was written by Wilson specially for the film.[3]

Music from Love and Mercy
Film score / soundtrack album by
Atticus Ross and various artists
ReleasedAugust 14, 2015 (2015-08-14)
Recorded1960 (1960)s–2010 (2010)s
GenreAmbient,[1] mashup[2]
Length38:29
LabelCapitol
Atticus Ross chronology
Gone Girl
(2014)		 Music from Love and Mercy
(2015)

Pohlad has spoken that he envisioned the original score as a representation of Wilson's auditory hallucinations, which manifest to Wilson as complex sounds and disembodied voices. The resultant score was composed substantially from mashed up samples of Beach Boys songs, taking inspiration from the Beatles' "Revolution 9" (1968) and Danger Mouse's The Grey Album (2004).

Background
Main article: Love & Mercy (film)

Of Brian Wilson's music being incorporated in Love & Mercy, director Bill Pohlad initially clarified: "We're not thinking about this as the hit parade—that would be the biopic thing."[4] English composer Atticus Ross was commissioned for an original score.[5] Ross, who is selective about the films he works on, says he agreed to Love & Mercy because "I liked him [Pohlad] from the moment of meeting him. He’s a guy with vision and that’s what, as a musician, you need from the director. His company was built on making the kind of films that I would love to be working on."[6] He added that he considers music films to have reached "a level of utter [garbage]," he says, "So I put off reading [the script], assuming those things, but then I did read it and I thought it was a brilliant script."[2]

Pohlad confessed that while growing up, he was "kind of more of a Beatles guy", and only became interested in the Beach Boys much later in life.[7] When asked, Ross said he believed Wilson was a genius.[8] When questioned whether he was a fan of Wilson's music, Ross said no, but continues: "[I] was a fan in that [Wilson's] music is ingrained in you without you even knowing it. ... I feel like there is an element of cliche that has grown around it [Pet Sounds]."[2] Commenting on what he learned from working with Wilson's music: "It was an education in being a musician. Nowadays, not to sound like an old fart, but you're lucky if you get a chord change. There's plenty of songs that we all sing along to, pop songs of Brian's, that have several key changes in them. He was able to deliver them in a way that it doesn't feel like a complicated piece of music until you break it down, and then you realize that it's incredibly complicated."[2]

Development

Ross and Pohlad worked on the score for about half a year.[6] Pohlad explained: "Brian hears these amazing orchestrations and harmonies and arrangements in his head that are so complex, nobody else can understand them until he actually executes them. They're these amazingly, you know, layered things. The problem is he hears them all the time and he can't turn them off necessarily. That ocean of kind of being the genius as well as the madness really intrigued me. ... I really wanted to be able to try to get to that and to try to represent that in some way."[7] He did not want to incorporate a conventional score that was a fan's "tribute" to Wilson: "Atticus got that right away. You're not going to try to compete with Brian Wilson. So he had the idea — because we had access to all of Brian's original music and the original tapes and stems and tracks from these recordings. So we started talking about rearranging those. He would take them and combine them in different ways and we'd mix them and things to create new music that essentially was Brian's music."[7] Pohlad said that it was "Revolution 9" (1968) from the Beatles' White Album which inspired this approach.[7] Ross also took inspiration from the Beatles and Jay-Z mashup album The Grey Album (2004).[9]

The Beach Boys' original multitrack stems were then delivered to Ross in hard drives. This included all the master tapes to Pet Sounds and what Ross claimed to be "92 versions of 'Good Vibrations'".[2] Ross felt it was necessary that the real Wilson was present in some way musically throughout the movie. This was achieved by writing original pieces wherein samples of Wilson's voice and Beach Boys instrumentation could then be digitally retuned to create new melodies. Another way to keep Wilson present was through the method of sound collage; one composition uses elements from as many as eight of Wilson's Beach Boys songs simultaneously. Ross explained, "The funny thing is these moments flash by in the film in probably a minute, but it took, you know, 10 days or something to get right."[9] On a section that features voices from "God Only Knows", Ross retrieved a scrapped melody from an earlier version of the song that went unused on the final mix.[2]

Samples

Information sourced from the film's credits.[10]

Release

On September 19, 2014, Pohlad announced that the film's soundtrack would be released by Capitol Records sometime in the future,[11] later reported for release in 2015.[12] On June 2, 2015, Pohlad reported that there were complications but that the soundtrack should be released shortly after the film.[13] On August 13, the digital global release date was announced for the following day.[14]

Reception

Variety found that Ross's "haunting score" resembled the sound of Animal Collective.[15] HitFix wrote that within the film, the score is "both supportive and spare, never once overwhelming the movie or trying to ladle on cheap unearned sentiment."[16]

Track listing
Love & Mercy – The Life, Love and Genius of Brian Wilson (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
No.TitleWriter(s)Artist(s)Length
1."The Black Hole"Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross, Brian Wilson, Roger Christian, Mike Love, Carl Wilson & Dennis WilsonAtticus Ross1:19
2."Don't Worry Baby"B. Wilson & ChristianThe Beach Boys2:47
3."Silhouette"A. Ross, L. Ross, B. Wilson & Tony AsherAtticus Ross2:07
4."God Only Knows"B. Wilson, AsherPaul Dano1:33
5."God Only Knows"B. Wilson, AsherThe Beach Boys2:56
6."Believe"A. Ross, L. Ross, Nicholas Holmes, B. Wilson & AsherAtticus Ross4:39
7."Good Vibrations"B. Wilson, LoveThe Beach Boys3:37
8."Losing It"A. Ross, B. Wilson & Tony AsherAtticus Ross2:34
9."I'm Right Here"A. Ross, L. Ross, B. Wilson & AsherAtticus Ross4:06
10."The Bed Montage"A. Ross, L. Ross, B. Wilson, Christian, Love, Sammy Cahn, Axel Stordahl, Paul Weston & Gary UsherAtticus Ross, The Beach Boys, The Four Freshmen4:00
11."Intersection"A. Ross, L. Ross, B. Wilson & AsherAtticus Ross2:35
12."Love and Mercy" (Live at the Royal Festival Hall)B. WilsonBrian Wilson2:42
13."One Kind of Love"B. Wilson & Scott BennettBrian Wilson3:34
Total length:38:29

References
  1. Platt, Frances Marion (June 21, 2015). "Paul Dano & John Cusack channel Brian Wilson spectacularly in Love & Mercy". Almanac Weekly.
  2. Baker, Jeff (June 3, 2015). "Atticus Ross talks Brian Wilson, 'Pet Sounds,' 'Portlandia' and his Beach Boys mash-up". Oregon Live.
  3. Graff, Gary (June 2, 2015). ""Love & Mercy" gets inside Brian Wilson's troubled life and times". The Oakland Press.
  4. "Beach Boy Brian Wilson's story will come to the screen, courtesy of the screenwriter of 'I'm Not There'". Los Angeles Times. June 23, 2011.
  5. Kit, Borys (January 18, 2013). "Paul Dano to Play Young Brian Wilson in Upcoming Biopic". Billboard. Retrieved August 2, 2014.
  6. Covert, Colin (May 30, 2015). "With Brian Wilson bio-pic 'Love & Mercy,' Bill Pohlad returns to his 'first love' – directing". Star Tribune.
  7. Tapley, Kristopher (May 21, 2015). "Bill Pohlad wants 'Love & Mercy' to take you inside the genius of Beach Boy Brian Wilson". HitFix.
  8. Hasty, Katie (June 15, 2015). "Atticus Ross' success is a bad business model: On 'Love & Mercy,' Trent Reznor". HitFix.
  9. Abrams, Bryan (May 19, 2015). "COMPOSER ATTICUS ROSS ON BRIAN WILSON BIOPIC LOVE & MERCY & MORE". The Credits.
  10. "Love & Mercy". soundtrack.net.
  11. Bliss, Karen (September 19, 2014). "'Love & Mercy' Stars John Cusack & Paul Dano on How They Became Brian Wilson". Billboard.
  12. Prisco, Jaime (February 26, 2015). "Beach Boys' Brian Wilson Biographical Film 'Love & Mercy' Starring Paul Dano and John Cusack Due Out in June". Classicalite.
  13. Ruskin, Zack (June 2, 2015). "Inside Brian Wilson: An Interview with Bill Pohlad". Consequence of Sound.
  14. "Capitol Records to release "Music from "Love & Mercy," official soundtrack to Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions/River Road's acclaimed Brian Wilson biopic". brianwilson.com. August 13, 2015.
  15. Barker, Andrew (September 8, 2014). "Toronto Film Review: 'Love & Mercy'". Variety. Retrieved September 9, 2014.
  16. McWeeny, Drew (September 10, 2014). "Review: John Cusack and Paul Dano give voice to Brian Wilson's broken soul in 'Love & Mercy'". HitFix.
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