From the pages of Blue Harvest Episode Twenty
Summer, 2000

Interview: Meco
by James Addams


Since their inception, the Star Wars films have inspired countless individuals to develop their own creative works based on the saga.  Meco Monardo was among the first people to have success with his spin off rendition of John Williams’ Star Wars score.  As subsequent films have been released, Meco has done disco, rap, and techno pop renditions of each of the major themes from these legendary scores, and has inspired legions of other followers to try their own hands at interpretations that range from incredible to laughable.

 Meco’s new CD, Dance Your Asteroids Off - The Complete Star Wars Collection  contains three works based on The Phantom Menace (Duel of the Fates  and two Meco original compositions) plus new versions of all of the previously released Meco tracks from the Classic Trilogy.  I spoke with Meco in May of 2000 about the original 1977 recording sessions, why he felt a need to rework the older material, and many, many other subjects.

 How are you feeling?

 Well, I just got off the golf course, so I feel pretty good!  That’s what I do.  I’ve been golfing for 35 years, and it’s not that I’m so good at it - although I am better than 90% of the people that play - but I find that I am a great teacher.  I teach golf, and I love to do it!  But I could never teach music - I don’t know why.

 How did you get into music?

 I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, but my dad was from Italy, and he had a small Italian band.  He played the valve trombone.  He raised five kids, and tried to teach us all music.  He used the old methods of teaching - I had the sight reading and the theory down for two years before I got to pick up an instrument.  I attended the Eastman school of music in New York, and my teacher was the greatest teacher in the country at that time.  His students were in every orchestra in the country.  So I was a great trombone player.  Chuck Mangione and Ron Carter were in my class, and I decided I wanted to play jazz, not classical.  I was drafted after college, and was at Westpoint for three years in the military band.  This is when I decided I wanted to be a studio session player.

 When I was in New York as a studio trombone player, nobody could read music like I could.  We’d be in a session, and all the guys would be working their parts out, and I’d be bored because I had it down, because I read so fast.  I did that for ten years, but I became bored with it.  So I got into arranging.  The people who hired me to do the sessions as a trombonist found out I was an arranger, and hired me to help with the horns.  Eventually, I had my own horn players that I would bring in with me, and we became The Meco Horn Section.  These were all the guys from the Saturday Night Live  band, but led by me.  I couldn’t do SNL, because I was busy producing Gloria Gaynor.

Which Gloria Gaynor tunes did you do?

 Never Can Say Goodbye was my production.  We invented disco with that thing!

 So that brings us up to the mid-1970’s.  What attracted you to the idea of doing the Star Wars theme?

 I was a Science Fiction fan, and a film fan. I was a nut.

 What were your favorites?

 Frederick Pohl, HG Welles, Lester Del Rey, all the Tarzan books.  Forbidden Planet, 2001...

 I hear they’re remaking Forbidden Planet.

 Really?

 Yeah, but I’m not sure if I like the idea - it’s a classic, and unless they can really add some new dimension to it, they should leave it alone.  The same goes with music - I don’t think you should cover a song unless you can make it your own, which is exactly what you did with the Star Wars theme.

 Right.  It was very very different, very bold, very unusual.  I didn’t even notice the music the first time I saw the movie, I was too wrapped up in the film.  The visuals are so powerful, you don’t even notice the music.  I went back the next day, and I sat through three screenings.  I started to realize that John Williams had done these themes, and that they were very hummable.  So I bought the soundtrack, but they hadn’t put what I wanted to hear into it - the sound effects.  It wasn’t modern.  So that was my line: ‘You’ve seen the movie, now go dance to it”.  That’s how I sold it to Casablanca.

 What were the sessions like?

 I didn’t want to make a little rock n’ roll record with two guitars, drums, and bass.  I am a GOOD arranger.  I used Harold Wheeler to help with the arrangements, because he is a GREAT arranger.  He had worked with me on Gloria Gaynor.  Fox was nice enough to send the scores to me.  I told Harold I wanted it to be the biggest orchestra in the history of the world.  Four trumpets, four trombones, four woodwinds, four French horns, twenty-seven strings, viola, and bass.  For the rhythm section - this is the kicker - I said I wanted four guitars, two keyboards, two drummers, a bass, and a percussionist.

 The only thing took only three weeks, from conception to the final mix.  Star Wars is fifteen minutes long, and we had to record it in sections, with the musicians playing to a click (a metronome - Ed.).  We did the rhythm section first, and overdubbed the rest of the orchestra.  Harold didn’t even have all of the orchestra’s parts written yet while we were recording the rhythm section.  We were just getting the groove tracked, and had a vague idea of what was going to go on top of it.  As we finished each 3 or 4 minutes, we made sure it matched what came before or after it, and then we edited all of the sections together.

 I can tell that there are edits on the record, but I always figured you just edited the master after it was mixed - cutting the 24 track tape is unheard of!

 Tony Bongiovi, the engineer and co-producer is a genius.  A great mixer, and a great cutter of the tape.  So then the horns came in, the strings came in, and we had like 18 tracks filled up.  And it was a mess!  So I threw out all of the guitars, one of the keyboards, and I brought in Lance Quinn, who ended up producing Bon Jovi, the Ramones, and other great things.  He re-did all of the guitars.  He also played along with the trumpets, an octave below them.  Then we added all the sounds, R2-D2 and all that.  It was very difficult, we had to do it ourselves.

 These days you could just sample the sound effects from a copy of the movie!

 So it was all done, and Lance said: “where’s the melody?”.  Well, Lance had a lot to learn yet in those days, so we took it to Casablanca and they listened to all fifteen minutes of it, and the guy said “wow!  What else are you going to put on it?”.

 He didn’t think it was a hit, Lance, Harold, nobody thought it was a hit, except for me.  I just needed to edit it down to three minutes.  Tony in a genius at editing, but he couldn’t do a thing with it.  I sat down with this kid, an assistant engineer at the studio, and I put together the million-selling, platinum version that you know today.  I played it for Tony, and he looked at me and said “That’s a hit!”.  Nobody’s done it before, or since.  I am the only one who has had this success remaking film scores, I did it again with Close Encounters.


 
In the earlier records, the R2-D2 sounds, and the other effects are obviously not the original Ben Burtt sounds from the Star Wars soundtrack, but in all of the later records you did  get the original movie effects.  How did that happen?  Did Lucasfilm hear and like the original, or was it just a matter of paying a licensing fee...?

Star Wars was 1977, Empire was 1980, and in that whole time I never heard one word from Lucas, or how he felt about it.  John Williams was thrilled to death about what I had done.  We were both nominated for a Grammy, and I lost to him, so he gave me a plaque.  My version was #1 around the world.

 By 1980, I was with RSO records, not Casablanca, and I called the president to make arrangements to do Empire.  At that time, months and months before the movie came out, they had already hired Boris Midney to do a version, and Ron Carter to do a jazz version, and then they were going to release the orchestral movie score.  He didn’t let me do an LP, only a ten-incher and a single.  But he did get me the sound effects, and they came very quickly.

 Midney’s record is awful!

 I never heard it.

  Empire was, in my opinion, the best Star Wars music I ever did.  But I didn’t really have anything to do with getting the sound effects, the RSO people handled that.  I also got permission to use the official graphics and the fonts.  We were successful again, so I wrote an eight page letter to George Lucas about the Christmas Album.  This led to a phone conversation, which I taped, for posterity.

 That must be a cool thing to have!

 Well, in all my travels, somewhere over the years I lost it!

 That’s gotta hurt, no matter what universe you’re from.

 Did you ever talk to him?

 Lucas?

 Yeah

 (Despondent): no.

 Okay, here’s how he talks:

 (Does a hilarious impression of George speaking very slowly and softly)

 So it was a fifteen minute conversation but it took two hours!  But that’s how I found out I couldn’t use Han, Luke, Leia.  He also told me “don’t kiss the Wookiee, they hate to be kissed”!  I wanted to use Yoda too, but I couldn’t.  I spoke to Frank Oz, but he was in the middle of a Muppet movie.  So then we did Jedi, and it charted, they all charted, even the Christmas record.

 A year ago in February (that would be February of 1999 - Ed.), Don Ienner, the president of Sony Records called me and said he wanted to create history again and do a Meco record.   Don was the brother of Jimmy Ienner, who had been with Millennium Records, the distributor of the original Star Wars single in ‘77.  I quit my job as a commodities broker and got ready to do another Star Wars record.  Don wanted me on Sony not only because of my history with his brother, but because Sony had the (rights to produce and distribute the) TPM soundtrack.  John Williams has a contract with Sony that allows him to say ‘no’ to any other version of his work that appears on Sony...

 But he can’t say ‘no’ to new versions of his work on any other label, as long as the publishing fees are paid...

 Right.  Don told me that Williams had already said ‘no’ to a couple of other projects.  We went in, we did a demo, and Don was sure that we’d sell six million records.  We were recording right up to the last minute.  It was the middle of May, I was in the studio, and John said ‘no’.
 Now, I was negotiating with RCA and Universal, because I was getting nervous about the fact that we had no contract yet from Sony. But it was too late.  It was the end of May, the movie was out, and the record could never come out on time.  There is no animosity, I don’t feel like “oh Williams fucked me”, I mean he is the greatest composer of the 20th century.  His work is for films, but that music is unbelievable, so melodic, and he is so prolific.  He will go to his grave as one of the greatest composers ever.  But he messed me up real good (laughs).
 So that’s why the record came out on your own label instead of Sony.

We thought about doing a Best Of John Williams.  I’d redo some of the Star Wars music that wasn’t on The Best of Meco (Mercury Records, 1997), I’d do E.T, which I would have loved to have done, and Jurassic Park.  But they said ‘no’ to that, even at a smaller budget, and also to a new all-Star Wars record with all four films.

 So you decided to do a ‘Special Edition’ of your old records...

 As you know, with the computers, the new technology, there are amazing things you can do in the studio.  It’s so much easier to get things done.  And you see the results.  I’ve got a whole slew of new and wonderful things I’ve done to my old stuff.  So I decided to do the record myself, on my own label.

 What inspired the decision to do new versions of the old songs, rather than just compiling all of the old stuff, including what was missing from The Best of Meco, and then adding the new Phantom Menace tracks to that?

 This was very much what George Lucas had done, with the 20th anniversary of Star Wars.  I had a chance to go back and fix things.  If you look back at the original fifteen minute version of Star Wars, and compare it to the new eight and a half minute version, you’ll notice a couple of things.  First of all, the tempo is slower.  Also, you’ll notice that the original record had that mid-70’s brilliance, and no bottom end, like all the records then...

 Vinyl couldn’t reproduce bass as well as CD’s can, so they always rolled the bass off on those old records...

 ...you’ll notice the new version has more mid-low and low end.  That big bottom.

 Did you go all the way back to the original 24 track tapes and remix, or did you just re-edit the pre-master and overdub new sound effects?

 No, neither!  I certainly didn’t remix the 24 track!  We used a few secrets - we started with the pre-master of the original and went from there.  I tried remixing the 24 track with terrifying results in 1983 for my Ewok Celebration album.  I remixed the original Star Wars from 1977, without the drums and bass.  I added so-called ‘modern’ drum and bass - synthesizers and Linn Drum (a famous drum machine popular in the early 80’s - Ed.). It was terrible!  You can’t replace the feeling of Alan Schwartzberg playing the drums and Will Lee playing bass.  You’re a fool if you try it.  I heard it the other day and I wanted to vomit!  You should go back and listen to it, it’s terrible!

 I noticed that on the new Ewok Celebration you start with the rap, which used to be in the middle, and you eliminated the so-called ‘yub nub’ melody altogether.

 And I broke the rap into four verses, with music in between, rather than having it continue non-stop once he starts rapping.

 Did you just put that into Pro Tools (digital editing system - Ed.)  and chop it up?

 Essentially.  There were some other things I had to do.

 So when you decided to put all of these tracks out yourself, did your old labels try to get a lot of money out of you before they allowed use of the tracks?

 No, no, no.  My CD is available on my web site (www.mecoman.com), and at www.Amazon.com.  My new CD is outselling the other one (Best of Meco).

 Will it be available in regular stores?

 Well, that’s not a route I really want to take right now.  You can’t make any money unless you sell three or four million.  You can make more selling a thousand on your own web site that you can make selling ten thousand through normal routes.

 Definitely.  But you do miss out on the promotion you get with a big label.

 Yes, but they’ll develop something soon with the internet, there will be a way to get everybody promoted and let kids know these records are out there.

 I agree.  I am putting out my own record this summer too, and distributing it the same way you are - through my own web site and through Amazon.

Pretty soon, that’s the way ALL records will come out, and the big labels will be out of business.  But there has to be a way to get widespread promotion without record label support, and I think someone will get rich figuring out how to do that in the next year or two.

 Absolutely.

 (the discussion moves to Episode II...)

 I think this will be the first movie to have a world wide gross of over a billion dollars.  I think it will be the biggest thing ever.  Write that down.

 I’ll print it!

 First of all, George needs someone else to write it.

 I think he already wrote it, and got someone to tweak it, which he should have done with Phantom Menace.

 George is like me.  I’m a good arranger, but I need to sometimes hire a great  arranger.  That’s what George needs to do with his scripts.

 That’s what he did with Empire, he brought in Kershner, Kasdan, and Brackett...

 And with Phantom Menace, he kind of lost it...

 Well, I think he had a lot on his plate, and maybe he failed to deal with a few things that were important, a few plot details and some editing things.

 Well, he’ll redeem himself with the next one.  Just you wait and see!
 

©2000 Blue Harvest / Tydirium Multimedia


 & <>

Blue Harvest Home Page     Back Issue List and Sample Articles
Tydirium Multimedia Homepage

I have maintained this web site since 1995.
I write and create photos because I enjoy it.
People tell me they enjoy reading this site, so I keep it going.    
However...
This site has cost me a lot of hours, and a lot of money.
And, unlike my writing for magazines or books, there is no
publisher sending me checks for the work I do on this site.
So...
 If you find my writing to be entertaining, valuable, insightful,
or if you'd rather just attempt to bribe me to go away, 
please consider a donation, in any amount.
(perhaps the same amount as a magazine subscription or a book).
Just click the button below, and it'll take you to PayPal.
Search Now:
In Association with Amazon.com

"Tiki Bar Review Pages", "Tiki Road Trip", "Tydirium Multimedia",    
"Left Orbit Temple",  "Chester Century", "Big Stone Head",  "TiPSY
Factor", "Johnny Clash", "Tiki TV",  and  "Blue Harvest Magazine"
are trademarks of James A. Teitelbaum
All material on this website is © Copyright 1994-2007 by James A. Teitelbaum. All rights reserved.  Unauthorized use is a violation of applicable laws.