Interview

WAMG’s Conversation with Composer Junkie XL On His Spectacular MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Score

By Michelle McCue | May 13, 2015

Director George Miller has triumphantly brought to the screen MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and it’s awesome. With its rich dimension and exhilarating ride, this is the film that so many have been waiting for.

It’s 45 years after the fall of the world. There is no rule of law, no power grids, no water, and no mercy. In “Mad Max: Fury Road,” civilization is a memory, and only to a few. The world’s great economies have fallen into dust, the coastal cities have been erased, and in the wake of wars for water and oil, food is scarce and air is poison.

What’s left of humanity roams the Wasteland in wild tribes or clings to survival at the foot of the Citadel, a fortress spun into a cave system where water is pumped from the only aquifer for miles around. By controlling the essentials, the Citadel and its allies, Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, control the Wasteland.

Miller unleashes a world gone mad with the concussive force of a high octane Road War as only he can deliver it. The mastermind behind the seminal “Mad Max” trilogy has pushed the limits of contemporary cinema to re-imagine the beauty and chaos of the post-apocalyptic world he created and the mythic Road Warrior adrift within it.

To realize the clash and concussion of the Road War, the film’s musical sound could only be fully explored once Grammy-nominated producer and composer Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL entered the fray.

Miller had long been a fan of the experimental music of Junkie XL and it is there that the director chose the composer to take his post-apocalyptic universe to the next level.

Junkie XL has chartered the Wasteland with tempered moments of stillness and heightened levels of psychotic abandon, utilizing nearly 200 instruments to weave a blend of beating drums, sweeping strings and electric guitar-driven operatic themes.

In addition to MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, Holkenborg is also scoring a wide range of upcoming films, including the reimagining of the action thriller POINT BREAK, the crime comedy KILL YOUR FRIENDS, and Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated action adventure BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE.

Earlier this year I spoke with Junkie XL on his score for Jaume Collet-Serra’s RUN ALL NIGHT and recently we had a conversation on his latest music for the highly anticipated MAD MAX: FURY ROAD – a wild journey that stays with you long after the film ends.

WAMG: I’ve been listening to your score for the better part of the weekend.

There’s such scope and energy to the film and your music. For 15 years, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD existed as an idea. When were you invited by George Miller to collaborate on the score?

Junkie XL: Three years ago. It’s been really intense. I was wrapping up 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, really on the last day, and I get this phone call from Darren Higman, the vice president of the music department at Warner Bros. and he said, “What are you doing tonight?” I said, “I wrapping up this movie and I think I can go home and have dinner with my wife.” And he said, “No you’re not. I have a ticket for you to fly to Sydney Australia.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, “I’m sitting here with George Miller.” Boom! I wondered if he was going to ask me to score for FURY ROAD. He said, “I think you should come down here and we’ll talk.”

When he called me, I literally went home, grabbed my suitcase, and off I was. After 17 hours of flying, I arrived the next morning, was picked up at the airport and taken straight to the office. I go right into the screening room and I’m watching the first cut of the film with no beginning and no ending. It was just the car chase.

I’m completely jetlagged and I’m wondering what am I watching? What’s going on here? It was so overwhelming! I sit down with George and he asks if I liked the film. I told him it was fantastic and mind-boggling. I said I have to process this for a little bit. He said, “Go back to the hotel, go see and enjoy Sydney and come back tomorrow morning and tell me what you think we should do.”

I went back to the hotel and I couldn’t sleep. I’m so excited and I wind up staying up all night. I came up with this plan of what I thought the film’s score needed to be. The next day, 9 a.m., we just sit there over a cup of coffee and I explain to him in two hours that the score needs to be a big rock opera. That’s all we need.

At the end of that two hour conversation, George stands up and gives me a firm handshake and says, “I want you to be the composer on my film.” And that was that. I took the plane back, went home, my wife and I opened up a bottle of wine and I said, “What just happened to me?” (laughs)

WAMG: Did you go back and watch the 1979 film and listen to Brian May’s score?

Junkie XL: I didn’t. Plus I had very clear instructions from George not to do that. He wanted something different for this film and that was the reason I was talking to him in the first place. He’s worked with a string of fantastic composers in the past, Brian May being one of them. It’s a different film and Max is a different character. The whole setting is much more gruesome than the original.

The original two films had a lot of humor in them – this one, not so much.

WAMG: Certain tracks –We Are Not Things, Many Mothers, Coda, My Name is Max – contain such rich, emotional, sweeping orchestral themes. They’re lovely for the quieter, human moments of the film.

I wasn’t expecting the string motifs. Why go for these cues?

Junkie XL: There are moments in the film where the characters step out of this gruesome, dystopian world that has been created for them and they interact with one another as human beings. George and I were debating for a long time what color and tone the music needs to be. Even with emotional scenes, we didn’t want to go with music that didn’t say anything.

One of my favorite time periods in film scoring is the 1940’s and 1950’s and in the early 60’s during the golden days of Bernard Herrmann and the start of Ennio Morricone. So much amazing music was written then. Not only for film but classical pieces from the neoclassical composers. There was so much rich material written then and George and I wondered why more of that wasn’t being used in film scores today.

Film scores today – especially when its action movies – it’s become its own language and they all start sounding the same. We wanted to create something that had a really unique, counter-identifiability to it that needs to be strong – even in the emotional cues. These are strong characters and even where the music is emotional, they needed to be strong melodies brought with absolute performance execution.

That’s why we went for this style. I think it works remarkably well with the picture.

WAMG: A perfect example is the “Redemption” track.

Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and the Wives are in the War Rig for much of the film. It is like a ship of lost souls. They have this quiet dignity, while not lessening what they’ve gone through.

Junkie XL: Exactly

WAMG: Since they’re in there for such a long time, tell me about the ambient sound effects from inside and out that you hear in these scenes?

Junkie XL: I did a lot of music sound design. I worked closely with sound designer Mark Mangini and the people that work with him – amazing, talented people. The music was so far developed when the sound design people came on board, they used my music to balance off the sound design.

Sometimes the car noises were in sync with the music. The sounds of the cars they were using were in a related key of my music. It was wonderful to work together and to have that space to work on it.

WAMG: It adds to the claustrophobic feel of the film.

With the “Walhalla Awaits” track, did you utilize a choir? Do we hear vocals?

Junkie XL: None actually. These were all done with the sound design, but it sounds like a choir. That was part of the thinking on how to compile this score.

For instance, all the cars that you see, all the objects that you see in this film are all repurposed bits and pieces from other things because that’s what that role is. If I wanted to create a truck, or a car, I needed to create it from spare parts from other cars. That’s why each car looks so unique. It’s not like you can go to a dealer and say, “Get me a War Rig. I’d love one.” You have to make one. A lot of the smaller objects were made from something else.

If we apply that to the score, a lot of things you hear in the score function a certain way like a car, but it’s not a car you’re actually seeing or listening to – you’re listening to something else that was repurposed to become this thing. That’s where the choir comes in. That’s why I sampled a lot of metal objects and the sound design of them to create rhythm instruments, but they’re not drums.

Of course I did use drums, but the same goes for strings, same for brass and same for choir. What you think you’re listening to is actually something else. It’s been repurposed to become that instrument.

George Miller

WAMG: George Miller has said, “We see Max’s evolution into a nobler, more reliable man. We see what his better self could be. It’s where Furiosa already is. She’s fierce in her determination. Her heart gets pretty close to being crushed on this journey they take, but together, they find some way to stand against the chaos of the world and find some sort of redemption.”

The fight between Furiosa and Max is like a rugby match. She could have her own spinoff movie.

Junkie XL: The photography is pretty intense there.

WAMG: This is where the big percussion section comes in. What instruments were used for this scene?

Junkie XL: That is the section that is 100% compiled by me hitting on all kinds of metal objects, whether it’s a car or car doors or oil drums or paint cans. Even chains hitting against a metal plate – it’s all made from metal sounds. It actually took me a week to compile that whole sequence from those sounds. It was very over the top.