Goblin: 'Deep Red' and 'Suspiria' Revisited

In 1974, Cherry Five, an Italian prog band, went into the studio to collaborate with composer and jazz pianist Giorgio Gaslini. Their mission: to liven up a film score, already underway, for director Dario Argento’s horror-psychodrama Deep Red (much more satisfying to call by it’s Italian title: Profondo Rosso). Cherry Five (Massimo Morante, Fabio Pignatelli and Claudio Simonetti) had recently struck out in an attempt to connect with Yes’s producer Eddy Offord in England (staking their success on a trip over there while Offord was touring with the band in the United States). So, they returned to their homeland and signed with Cinevox - a record label which had made a modest name for itself working in film scores - in fact, they produced a number of Ennio Morricone’s classic works. The band commenced work on their debut, while occasionally contributing to soundtracks for Cinevox. Dissatisfied with Gaslini’s output for Deep Red, Dario Argento expressed a desire to move in a new direction with the music. Gaslini, a jazz musician who had worked with Steve Lacy and Max Roach in the 1950’s and scored Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte 14 years prior, was not writing the kind of “horror music” the director was looking for (though they had worked together previously on The Five Days). Apparently, Argento wanted Pink Floyd to complete the music for Deep Red - which is half believable, given the fact that the Floyd were Beatles-level successful by 1974 and Argento was, at most, half of a big deal nowhere outside of Italy. But, shoot for the Dark Side Of The Moon, and you shall land amongst - the Goblins. Cinevox put Cherry Five on the project. Gaslini left and Argento gave Simonetti, Morante and Pignatelli one single night to compose new music for Deep Red, followed by one day in-studio to record - a 48 hour period which would change the band’s career. Staying within their genre, Cherry Five wrote the film’s main theme: “Profondo Rosso”, a straight ahead slow burner in A Minor with a prog rock structure. The verse fades up on a Moog synthesizer and accompanying acoustic guitar, ping-ponging repeatedly between measures in 7 and 8 and priming the canvas for Pignatelli’s Rickenbacker bass. Simonetti’s high pitched Minimoog climbs the minor scale before ascending, through a 3/4 transition, into a wrathful chorus. Trading the synth for Mellotron church organ and adding Walter Martino on drums, “Profondo Rosso” breaks down and rebuilds sequentially, revisiting the lead line in ferocious form and playing with instrumental variations until, finally, a medieval organ solo emerges from the hellish cathedral depths to bring the piece to its fiery conclusion. The effect is devilish and supernatural - it’s the birth of Goblin. To avoid a marketing conflict with the release of their eponymous first album, Cherry Five (there were indeed four of them, including the drummer) leapt at the opportunity to change their name, assigned by Cinevox, to the more appropriately malicious “Goblin” (or “The Goblins” as they’d be credited on earlier efforts). They did so just prior to the release of Deep Red’s soundtrack: a manic, seven song jazz-synth odyssey that feels like Giorgio Moroder and Lalo Schifrin pairing up to create music for The French Connection In Space! The result of the two-day writing/recording session is a work of intricate terror, with shifting themes and vibrant textures. In no uncertain terms, it broke boundaries in film scoring. Even some ideas central to heavy metal are birthed within; in other areas Simonetti’s synthesizer work breaks new ground, creating a hypnotic air of apprehension, where previously a piano or stringed instrument might have sufficed. It was, at the time, new and distinctive - but no one, neither Argento nor the band, expected it would sell one million copies within the first year. In its quieter scenes, Deep Red plays like an Antonioni film (maybe thanks to the aged presence of Blow-Up’s David Hemmings). The characters are framed against scenic backdrops, their motives examined through tangential bouts of dialogue, overall coloring in a reflective, but sporadically paced mystery until, finally, Argento’s trademark murder scenes disrupt the flow in all their cringe-inducing glory. You can imagine the director, after finishing Deep Red, re-examining the film for its examples of “what not to do” while gearing up to make his succinctly shot horror-masterwork, Suspiria, two years later. But for all the “don’ts” on display in Deep Red, one thing is undeniably on point - Goblin’s music. Now, with time on their side and the implicit support of their director, the band would have three months to experiment with new sounds and write music for Argento’s next project: a nightmarish fairy tale based on Thomas De Quincy’s collection of dark prose poetry, Suspiria de Profundis, or “Sighs From The Depths”. I’ll put forth this very uncontroversial opinion: Suspiria is the scariest film score of all time. Because it’s so aggressive. Like Wendy Carlos’s A Clockwork Orange theme (an electronic reworking of Henry Purcell’s “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary”) or Bernard Herrmann’s iconic Psycho theme (music synonymous with the universal “stabbing” motion) Goblin’s soundscape is a sensory assault. An appropriate pairing as the violence in Suspiria is equally brutal. For a film correctly labeled “fantasy-horror” which mostly dwells in Argento’s dreamlike theater of expressionistic dread, the murders, though sparse, are startlingly real and presented in unflinching detail. The wiring through which these pure electric shocks are conducted is the soundscape of Goblin. In Suspiria’s most notorious death scene, the character of Pat Hingle (played with lurid trepidation by Eva Axén) is stabbed seven times across an excruciating 60 seconds, the final blow directly to her exposed heart, before being sucked through a stained glass skylight and falling to her doom at the end of a white telephone wire. Her roommate gets off light (as does the viewer, really) perishing at the end of some fallen debris, a large piece of glass to the cranium included. We are mercifully spared the moment of impact. Put simply - one is quite relieved for everyone’s sake by the time it’s all over. But the pounding drum of Goblin’s “Witch” that seamlessly underscores this long moment of terror, lingers on in memory. We only notice its menacing presence after its gone, by way of contrast, in the most jarring of transitions: a guide dog quietly leads Daniel (Flavio Bucci) through the film’s first moment of daylight (and silence for that matter) in 14 minutes; with sun shining and birds chirping. “Witch” is a beautiful and terrifying track. For three minutes, a floor tom is rhythmically beaten while being tightened and detuned at random. It rides the stuttered groove of its own echo as a bass drum throbs unpredictably beneath. Ultimately, a wind machine and vocal howl (that could either be a victim or its possessed tormentor) ascend to unmarked heights of terror and chaos before a synth bass blares out, bringing all but the echoed rhythm to a halt. Midway through, the track comes to rest, but only long enough to disarm the listener before re-entering in full flux, now with bells and catastrophic synthesizers in tow. The track is also used well in it’s placement several minutes prior to Pat Hingle’s murder. Imagine, for a moment, if Psycho’s famous shower theme blared at full volume as Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane pulled into the parking lot of the Bates Motel. The effect would instill more than subtle apprehension. It would feel as though the process of her undoing was inexorably underway - as if she were already dead. In Suspiria, the evil doesn’t wait around the next corner; it surrounds its prey at all times. To Goblin, Argento said, “I need the audience to feel that the witches are still there, even if they’re not actually on the screen.” The music plays an integral role as the embodiment of the relationship between hunter and hunted; one that is inescapable. As Pat Hingle runs through the woods, terrified; as she enters the apartment building, her shadow darting across the wall in uncanny pursuit; as she crosses the tomb-like lobby to be enclosed in its red elevator doors; she is not escaping the evil at hand, but walking further into its jaws with each step. A fate we can only hope will be spared for Suzy Bannion, our protagonist, as actress Jessica Harper walks, with wide eyed malaise, deeper into the world of Suspiria. Most memorably, as she exits the airport, Goblin’s iconic “Suspiria” theme plays. Claudio Simonetti’s celesta lures her out into the torrential downpour of night and, with the sealing shut of an automatic door, the satanic strum of Morante’s bouzouki and Pignatelli’s plummeting tabla drum signal that a dark ritual has begun. The voices are the most powerful and unique device used throughout the score. The wheezing hisses and whispers on “Sighs”, that later transform into wild howls with the entrance of the harpsichord and hypnotic guitar riff, actually feel like restless spirits flying through the space. Their elongated moans and bellows, mixed in from all directions, are of legion. They evoke patterns of evil from any setting to which they’re applied. The track plays four times throughout the film, including prior to Pat Hingle’s murder and during some exchanges between Suzy and her sole comrade, Sara (Stefania Casini). It indicates the malevolent presence of witches, especially that of the mysterious Directress. In a film well remember for its striking use of color, “Sighs” is another example of how broad and carefully crafted the film’s emotional pallet is, thanks to the work of Goblin. More than a simple horror score, each composition summons a fine-tuned set of emotions, invisibly painting the film’s arc and coloring in the space between image and imagination. Various combinations of the Goblin outfit would continue scoring films through the mid-1980’s before disbanding as a group. They would occasionally reassemble in new incarnations to score a film or release new material. Its members collaborated with Dario Argento five more times, most notably on music for George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), released in Italy as Zombi. While their whole body of work is impressive, Goblin’s inceptive work on Deep Red and Suspiria remains unsurpassed in many ways and lives on as a landmark in film music. They changed the sound of the genre and, thereby, raised expectations from audiences forever after. It happens rarely when different artists pioneering a new vision, each carving out their own path, collaborate in a moment where one work is not only realized by the other, but elevated to a place of universality, making each individually more than the sum of its parts. The art transcends it's fantastic boundaries and reaches a real place within us. In the collaboration of Argento and Goblin, a new level of realism was brought to the horror genre and cinema as a whole.

Andy McCarthy

©2017