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AUDIO: On The Score With Harold Faltermeyer

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There are few scores you can snap your fingers with, let alone disco dance to without feeling embarrassed. Yet this funky, thematic sound was one of the main delights of days when keyboard scores ruled the 1980’s, as composers like Giorgio Moroder (“American Gigolo,” “Scarface”) and Jan Hammer (“Miami Vice”) put their techno-groove into film soundtracks. But perhaps no musician to segue from the glitter-balled dance halls to Hollywood would receive the fan adulation, or success of the Munich-born composer Harold Faltermeyer.

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Coming from a musically-inclined family with a penchant for the piano, Faltermeyer worked as a sound engineer in his native Germany while exploring the burgeoning world of electronic music- talents which got him hired as a disco jack-of-all-trades by dance music and score impresario Giorgio Moroder. Faltermeyer’s breakout work on Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” album got the attention of Hollywood producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.

With their help, Faltermeyer was on his film scoring own, and finding similarly huge success with his percussive, and infinitely catchy themes for “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Top Gun.” The likes of “Axel F” and “Top Gun Anthem” established the rhythmic, hook-heavy synth sound that Faltermeyer would apply to the beat of “Beverly Hills Cop 2,” two “Fletch” movies, “Thief of Hearts,” “The Running Man,” “Kuffs,” “Fatal Beauty” and “Tango and Cash.” But despite his success, Faltermeyer’s desire to be a family man led him out of the Hollywood dance and back to Germany for nearly two decades. And though the beat he helped inspire has gone on in Hollywood, action scores have been a bit poorer for the sheer, groovy enjoyment that Faltermeyer brought to them.

Now that’s about to change in a big way with “Cop Out.” Credit uber geek director and 80’s film score fan Kevin Smith, who had the cojones to pull Faltermeyer back into the game with a score that sounds like he never left it. At once retro and vibrantly fresh, “Cop Out” has everything that a Faltermeyer fan has been craving, from its immediately catchy theme-bounce to rhythmic comedy and a Latin beat. All combine to make this Bruce Willis-Tracey Morgan blaster a deliriously fun throwback to the buddy copy films, and music that Smith and his generation of score fans grew up on, all while appealing to the next gen of rhythm-crazed audiences. It’s a Hollywood comedy-action dance that Harold Faltermeyer talks about getting back into groove for with a new episode of “On the Score.”

	Buy the Soundtrack: COP OUT
	Buy the Soundtrack: TANGO AND CASH
	Buy the Soundtrack: TOP GUN
	Buy the Soundtrack: THIEF OF HEARTS
	Buy the Soundtrack: HAROLD F.
	Visit Harold Faltermeyer’s Website

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• Awesome Interview With Harold Faltermeyer + Cop Out Soundtrack Information « Feature « Soundtrack Geek – Movie Scores and Soundtracks
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