Composer Bear McCreary talks Blood & Chrome

BSG part of an interview with Bear McCreary:

It’s been announced this week that SyFy has given the go-ahead for a new Battlestar Galactica series, Blood & Chrome. SyFy’s Mark Stern said no deal had been struck, but he ‘couldn’t imagine’ the project without a Bear McCreary score. What can you tell us about the show and have you been approached about it?

I know as much as you guys! I’m not withholding any information - I just heard the show’s been picked up. No one’s reached out for me yet, so I can’t say I’m doing the show with any authority. However, I certainly hope that when the time comes to hire a composer, that they’ll come around and ask me, because it would be a lot of fun to go back to that Battlestar universe, especially considering the other announcement this week that Caprica is no more.

With regard to Caprica, do you regret the show has come to an end so soon?

I’ll regret that we don’t get to go forward with these characters and learn more about them, but at the same time I have no regrets about the work we did. I think the work we did was exceptional, so a little bit of regret that we don’t get to do more of it. I think everybody involved made the absolute best show they could, but for whatever reason, whatever factors there were, that caused people not to tune in the same way they did for Battlestar, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I think everybody on the show did a great job, and I’m very proud of the soundtrack album of the pilot I had out.

I’m hoping we get to put out another album of the music I did for the series. It’s certainly a world that has a lot of life left in it. Whether or not they ask me to do Blood & Chrome, I really hope the series exists and continues to move the Battlestar Galactica story forward.

Regarding Battlestar itself, one of the most memorable pieces of music from the series was your take on All Along the Watchtower. How did that come about, and how do you tackle covering one of the most iconic songs ever written?

Those are good questions. Those are the questions I had for Ron Moore when I heard we were doing this. Personally, I thought it was a disastrous idea - I had no idea what they wanted. All I knew was that at some point at the end of season three, they needed me to do a version of All Along the Watchtower.

After having heard rumblings about this from editorial, I finally caught Ron Moore in the hallway one day. I said, ‘Ron, what’s the deal with Watchtower? What do you want it to sound like?’ And we talked about it for a minute, and basically what he said was, ‘I don’t know, just make it sound like Battlestar’. And then he walked away, giving me almost no creative guidance at all.

Which was actually incredibly liberating, because I knew he didn’t want it to sound like Bob Dylan, and he didn’t want it to sound like Jimi Hendrix, and so I was able to do whatever I wanted, and I had this idea of doing something pretty hardcore. I was imagining a collaboration between George Harrison and Rage Against the Machine, with some Indian music going on in there. I threw together a demo in a couple of days, and I had my brother come in. He had just gotten off the plane, came right to the studio and he sang it. Then I sent it to Ron and the studio, and I was certain it would be torn apart. I mean what were we doing putting a heavy metal song in Battlestar Galactica? But they loved it. In fact, the demo I produced is almost indistinguishable from the final version. We went back and cleaned up some of the drums and some of the guitars, but what you hear on that soundtrack album - that was my first attempt. Which was exciting, but it was one of the few times where I had no guidance or input – Ron let me take a stab at it and that’s what I did.

You’ve also done a lot of live work, particularly with the Battlestar score. Will fans be seeing more of that, and if so what can they expect?

There’s nothing on the books yet, but I’m very hopeful that we’re going to able to do more shows next year. I’m also hoping to put out a live album and a live DVD from some of the concerts we’ve done in the past. We put out one live recording of the soundtracks to The Plan and Razor. And fans in Europe were treated to a hi-def concert of six songs that are on the season four release in Europe, so there’s stuff getting out there, and the reaction across the board is just wonderfully positive. People love this music, they love these concerts, they want more, and we absolutely want to bring them more of that music.

Source: Shadow Locked

dsgtdave, on 23 February 2012 - 07:10 PM, said:

I don't believe it has been picked up yet. I haven't read anywhere where the exec's over at skiffy picked it up for a series.

Aha!

OT Holmes, on the case...

It seems the article was dated October, of 2010. When rumors of B&C being picked up (as I recall) were rampant.
From what I've heard since? I think SyFy got cold feet. The pilot's been on ice for almost a year.

But, at any rate, however bad (or hopefully good) the movie is? It'll still be that much better than it would've been without the Bear's music. He also does the music for "Walking Dead". Appropriate, since IMO, WD is BSG's darker, earthbound cousin (thematically, if not literally).

He also did the music for the short-lived (and IMO underappreciated) "Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles" (that one really could've been BSG's cousin; just imagine Skynet and the terminators as "earth Cylons" and it could be in the same universe, really).