Giorgio Moroder
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Jon Aanensen presents another filmography, this time for Giorgio Moroder.
And if you still want more, you can also check out my audio interview with the man, from 2015.
AND…it gives us the opportunity to chat about his work. Moroder is my 6th favourite film composer of all time (at the moment). What’s your relationship to him? Favourites?
Nice one and so short 🙂
Didn’t know he wrote the theme to the TV series ZUGRIFF (not sure if “access” is the right term, maybye “grip” or so is better as “Zugriff” means when police forces takes action for example to arrest people by storming a house or similar).
Since I collect TV themes and I think I even saw that show back then I have it. It actually has lead guitar in it and would rathar have suspected it was by Stefan Melbinger. But it has no composer noted in my collection. Would love to hear if that is the same theme actually.
I have medium relation to Moroder. I like CAT PEOPLE (btw the song lyrics are by Bowie), MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, AMERICAN GIGOLO (“Night Drive” is a cool track) or DIE WELT, IN DER WIR LEBEN. The one OVER THE TOP instrumental and his songs are of course fun. While the scores are rather effective in their movies I find them a little to simple to be in my top league (if someone understand what I mean…).
Didn’t Moroder win an academy award for Flashdance? The soundtrack album didn’t contain any score if I remember correctly. Did the movie?
FLASHDANCE album features the Love Theme which I would call score, even though St John performs it. There is more score in the film, but not a lot.
Possible origin story:
My first exposure to Moroder was probably “Take My Breath Away” as a child in the 80s, without really knowing where it was from, or who composed it. Just hearing it on the radio, maybe a music video, maybe at school or among classmates. I’m too young to have seen TOP GUN when it was current. Could also have been “What a Feeling”, again without knowing its origin. Next step was probably THE NEVERENDING STORY. Didn’t see it in the cinema, but on VHS while at our summer house in Denmark (at a neighbour’s place). We’re probably talking 1988 or so. Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to the MIDNIGHT EXPRESS theme on those “Synthesizer’s Greatest Hits” albums I’ve talked about elsewhere (which also introduced me to Vangelis, for example). Then it was a steady increase from there, until I delved deep into his lesser known work in preparation for the 2015 interview.
THE NEVERENDING STORY stands heads and shoulders above anything else. Haven’t really done a ranking after that, and don’t know if I should mix scores and studio albums.
By the way, interesting bit about those two early German efforts, pre-MIDNIGHT EXPRESS. I think I sampled both of those and the SON OF MY FATHER album when I researched Moroder in 2015, but the album can’t have made much of an impact, because I didn’t seek it out to own.
The earliest Moroder album I own is EINZELGÄNGER from 1975 — a totally weird, experimental album. But then KNIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN the year after is more typical of the composer-producer-arranger. I do wonder if “I Wanna Funk With You Tonite” made some controversial waves at the time, due to the double entendre title.
I never owned a Giorgio Moroder album. But my sister had the Flashdance album and the Bowie single of Cat People, so I listened to both a lot.
Then his Metropolis soundtrack was a thing in the media. But that was not my thing.
Hey Jon, I might have found an addition to your filmography while doing research for my Doldinger filmography: Moroder seems to have written two new songs for THE NEVERENDING STORY II: THE NEXT CHAPTER (which otherwise had a score by Robert Folk): “Dreams We Dream” (also as an instrumental on the album) and “Heaven’s Just A Heartbeat” both co-written by Tom Whitlock
Aditionally there is a new version of “The Neverending Story” performed like the two above by Joe Milner. There is also “The Neverending Story (Reprise)” which is all orchestral+choir arrangement of the song. According to the album credits on Discogs produced by Moroder but probably rranged/orchestrated by Folk and/or his orchestrator Randy Miller.
There is also a house/techno whatever version of the song by someone named Real Im-Pact on THE NEVERENDING STORY III soundtrack which is a song compilation (only two score tracks by Peter Wolf). No credits found if Moroder was involved it it though.
You’re right, Malte. I have the NEVERENDING STORY II soundtrack on CD; how could I have forgotten the Moroder songs there? Jon, if you want to write an update, send it to me via mail and I’ll put them in.
As I wrote in the beginning of the article, I only included projects where Moroder wrote instrumental score. I was too lazy to go through tons of imdb song credits…
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