Death Wish 2 soundtrack

[Sir Ruff]

Just watching this creme-de-la-creme of B-movies and digging the synth-heavy Jimmy Page soundtrack. Wikipedia has a pretty good page on the making of the soundtrack, but no gear specifics, other than a Roland guitar synth and another unnamed synth. Some of the sounds sound fairly American.. anyone know what he was using on this?

EDIT: looks like a system-100m on the album cover, so that's one...

[tim gueguen]

I'm pretty sure the guitar synth was a Roland GR300.

[Micke]

What album cover are you referring to Sir Ruff, do you have a picture?

Anyway, session musician/synthesist Dave Lawson played on a couple of tracks and I know for certain that he had
a Prophet 5 rev 2 which was his main polyphonic synth at the time. I've been in contact with Dave before so I'll drop
him an email and ask if he remembers what synths were used for that score.

[Sir Ruff]

What album cover are you referring to Sir Ruff, do you have a picture?

Anyway, session musician/synthesist Dave Lawson played on a couple of tracks and I know for certain that he had
a Prophet 5 rev 2 which was his main polyphonic synth at the time. I've been in contact with Dave before so I'll drop
him an email and ask if he remembers what synths were used for that score.

hmmm... I caught a picture of what I assumed was the inside sleeve of that album somewhere in my hunt. It clearly shows him playing guitar in front of a system-100m, tr-808 and possibly an SH-5? I assumed it must be for Deathwish, as how many synth albums could he have done? I'll see if I can dig it up.

Glad to hear a p-5 was involved - that was definitely my impression, especially with some of the filter-FM EFX type sounds.

[Micke]

@Sir Ruff: I just heard back from Dave Lawson and was told that he used the following synth-setup on "Death Wish II":

Prophet 5 rev 2 (modified by Dave Simmonds with an Oberheim OB-1 pitch bend lever)
Polymoog
Oberheim OB-X
Variophon
Roland space echo
and
Simmons custom FX rig

The recording sessions took place in sep-oct '81.

Dave did loads of improvisation on that score (tension cues) and as far as he can remember played on most of the tracks.

Here are a couple of vintage photos showing some of his gear at the time, circa early '80s.





As for Jimmy's synths; he never saw him play anything other than a Les Paul.
Brian Nunny was the director of Broeder Jorgenson, the importers of Roland
and he (Jimmy) was probably given it to mess around with.

Just before Dave worked on Death Wish II he did the synth-work on Bill Wyman's soundtrack to "Green Ice". On that
score he used the Prophet 5 rev 2 and a newly aquired OB-Xa (which he bought directly from the Oberheim factory in the states).

FYI: Dave played synths/keys on many movie and TV soundtracks during the 20 years he worked as a full-time studio musician, some of the more famous titles include the cult-movie The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978), The Fury (1978), Space 1999 (season 2: 1976) as well as numerous films scored by Trevor Jones such as The Dark Crystal (1983), Runaway Train (1985), Labyrinth (1986), Angel Heart (1987), Mississippi Burning (1988) etc.

[Sir Ruff]

Thanks Micke! Ultra-informative as always!

But I'm a little confused, as all the info I've found about the soundtrack indicates Jimmy wrote most of it (as does the album sleeve), if not actually performing it. Finally found some sleeve images - most songs with Jimmy put him down as playing guitar/guitar synth or "synthesizers". And in the image below he certainly has a fair bit of gear floating around (though nothing obviously polyphonic).

[Micke]

Well, I can only tell you what I know from my conversation with Dave.

Dave is pretty sure that he played on most of the tracks (sleeve notes are hardly ever 100% accurate) and clearly remembers he did loads of improvisation on that score (which does suggest he played on the tension cues - uncredited). Also, he checked his old diaries and it says he did sessions at Jimmy's studio from late september to late october '81. Dave used to demonstrate Roland gear at the British trade shows and it's likely Jimmy got the Roland stuff through him.

Here's an excerpt from Jimmy Page's liner notes:
"The musicians involved were....and the highly recommended keyboard and synth player Dave Lawson. Working with Dave gave me
an excellent opportunity to explore the latest incarnation of the guitar synthesizer..."

Whether or not Jimmy actually used the other Roland stuff (system 100 and SH-09 I think) on this score, I really don't know.