Things I Will Keep #12: TANGERINE DREAM, Thief (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Tangerine Dream
THIEF
1981, Elektra/Asylum

When director Michael Mann decided that his first feature would be the story of a burned-out career criminal on the mean streets of Chicago, he somehow figured that German progressive instrumental group Tangerine Dream were the perfect ones to score it.

Thief is a story that we’ve seen before. Chicago is a setting that we’ve seen before. But this time, it was going to be a bleak, but day-glo, dream in a luminous night world and a new take on noir for the 1980s.  It would be gritty and grimy, but also oddly beautiful. Its style wouldn’t be outlandish; rather, it would be a kind of hyper-reality. Every last light bulb and every shadow would be as vital as the pages of the script.

And it would all move to the zero-gravity swirl of Edgar Froese and company’s synthesizers.

It’s been a controversial decision ever since.

The Golden Raspberry Awards (the informal, smarmy anti-Oscars) nominated it as the Worst Music Score of 1981.

Even Michael Mann himself has said in recent years that he’s still not sure if he made the right choice when it came to the music (see the supplements on the Criterion Collection disc of the film).

Meanwhile, here I am still taking this album’s ride in 2019 to places far out where none of that matters.

Now I’m going to stop talking very much about the film from this point on. I’ve already reviewed it. It’s great. I love it. It’s a favorite. Blah blah blah and blah.

I’ll also add that I know next to fuck-all about Tangerine Dream. As a former record bin hound and ex-freak for thrift stores, the odd album from the band has passed through my hands here and there. The ones that I’ve played were nice, I guess, but they didn’t blow my socks off. I never sought out more. I’m a total toe-dipper for Tangerine Dream. I’ve taken only a few bites of their sauerkraut.

So, if their Thief score is somehow watered-down Tangerine Dream, a sell-out to the Hollywood scumbags, a grounding of their spaceship–or, by contrast, if it’s an awesome leap forward and their best work yet, at the time… I have no goddamn clue about any of that. (Tangerine Dream experts, please don’t hesitate to pour us a glass of your thoughts in the comment box below. I approve all comments that aren’t from spambots. You can even call me a dumb dickhead fartface if you want. It’s all good in this hood.)

All I know is that I love to soak up to my eyeballs in this record’s blend of noir moods with frosty cold synthesizers. It conjures up nighttime in the city and a vision of the future ahead of us if we all survive the Cold War. I see the stark text display on an old IBM computer monitor. I see the dancing graphic equalizer lights on an 80s-era stereo. I see miles and miles of neon shooting out every which way.

In 1981, technology was a strange world. Electronic music was another strange world. The film’s Chicago criminal underbelly was yet another strange world. Here, it all comes together. It’s chilled, but also menacing. Any time this music sounds like it’s blissing out, something jarring comes in like a dark cloud or like Death breathing down your neck.

The order of the tracks is a jumble that doesn’t always reflect their place in the movie. (I should also note that I have the US version of the album; the European release is a little different for reasons that I’ll talk about later.)

Opening piece “Beach Theme” comes up in the middle of the movie (and in a different mix), but it’s easy to see why it’s the first thing on the album. Its main synth riff is memorable and triumphant. Still, Rocky couldn’t train to it. It’s oddly slow and in its languid pace is a burning pessimism. There are question marks at the end of this victory. What did it cost? Can we trust it? Will it last?

In “Dr. Destructo”, a brittle electric guitar (or some synth magic that sounds like a guitar) moans like distant urban noises over a motorik-style beat. It’s a night drive through places where you probably shouldn’t stop and get out of your car.

The film’s actual main titles music is the third track, “Diamond Diary”, an eleven-minute tension-builder that begins with some of the more ethereal colors that lurk in the group’s keyboards until the jittery rhythm kicks in and then everything gets nervous. That’s life, though. One minute, you’re calm. The next minute, you’re on alert. And it’s not always because a bomb went off or someone kicked in the door. Something happened that changed the air. It could be a big thing or a small thing. It could be something that only you notice.

With “Burning Bar”, side one closes wide awake in the night. It feels like starry skies, blazing street lamps and hot pursuit. It would also be killer theme music for a late night call-in radio show if it hasn’t been used already.

Flip over to side two and the chase continues with “Scrap Yard”, one slick nocturnal emission of sex and danger.

On “Trap Feeling”, we’ve found a place to hide for the moment, but we feel anything but safe. The music’s quietly cosmic lilt is strangely unsettling. Maybe it’s a reminder of how small we are. We are only a dust mite in a vast and unfriendly universe. If we don’t live through this night, what’s it matter?

We’re still being chased on the skeletal throb of “Igneous”. Maybe we’re always going to be chased. And maybe we’re getting used to that.

The final track, “Confrontation”, is my least favorite even though it kicks ass in the movie. About half of the people who like it know the story behind it and the other half don’t, so I’ll tell it.

For the film’s climax, Michael Mann wanted a piece of music that sounded like Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. Whatever Tangerine Dream gave him didn’t nail it so Mann asked up-and-coming film score composer Craig Safan to take a shot at it and that’s what Mann used. Tangerine Dream have nothing to do with it.

It’s not a bad track. Safan delivered exactly what Mann wanted. It sounds like a dead ringer for Pink Floyd, complete with a David Gilmour-like guitar solo that feels like it’s going to go on all night.

Also, again, it works in the movie and I understand why it’s on the album, but, on my turntable, it still feels like an unwelcome sore thumb in this electronic world that I was getting all gassed up on.

And I guess that Tangerine Dream had a better record deal in Europe than in the US because most original European pressings leave out “Confrontation” entirely. Instead the Euro version has “Beach Scene”, which is not to be confused with opening track “Beach Theme“, though it amounts to a differently mixed reprise slotted at the start of side two.

I’m happy with my US copy though, flawed as it is. I’m okay with flaws. Some people think this whole score is a flaw. I’m okay with that, too. I love the weird little island that the records that mean the most to me have formed.

Even better, my copy of this LP has a sleeve with a clipped top-right corner. Yep, this is a refugee from the cut-out bin, where you find all the best records that only you love.