Interview by Tim Greiving
Recorded August 14, 2018, at Laurie Johnson’s home in Middlesex, England
Laurie Johnson describes a Harrow childhood of playing his father’s records endlessly and hearing music in his head from about age two, the “noises” that gave his autobiography its title. He studied trumpet at the Royal College of Music, served in the Coldstream Guards, and then wrote for the Ted Heath band before leading his own band at 20.
He recalls writing the musical Lock Up Your Daughters with Lionel Bart while scoring Tiger Bay, turning down Charlie Chaplin because he “wasn’t a hum dictating machine,” and learning synchronization from Louis Levy on The Good Companions, his first film and the first of several with J. Lee Thompson. He describes his close friendships with Bernard Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa, and the Taxi Driver sessions he was to have conducted before Herrmann recorded them himself and died.
He tells of months of preparation on Lawrence of Arabia with Morris Stoloff before Maurice Jarre’s theme won over David Lean, and scoring Dr. Strangelove around “Johnny Comes Marching Home.” He discusses First Men in the Moon with Ray Harryhausen, Hot Millions with Peter Ustinov, and The Avengers, scoring each episode like “a mini film,” before forming a company with Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens to make The New Avengers and The Professionals.
Reflecting on the craft, he borrows Herrmann’s description of music as “the invisible link” between audience and screen, insists the film itself tells the composer what it needs, and explains why he never composes at the piano. A writer, he says, is a word juggler, “and I’m a note juggler.”