In April of 2022, I attended the most euphoric moviegoing marathon of my life when curator Daniel Knox hosted “David Lynch: A Complete Retrospective—The Return” at Chicago’s own Club Silencio, the Music Box Theatre. Scott Ryan, the managing editor of The Blue Rose Magazine, moderated all of the Q&As, and I subsequently interviewed him twice for RogerEbert.com about two of his marvelous books, Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared and Lost Highway: The Fist of Love. Knox and Ryan had planned on returning to the venue this year with a series celebrating the 35th anniversary of Lynch’s groundbreaking series, “Twin Peaks.”
But after Lynch’s unexpected passing in January at age 78, the pair decided that another full career retrospective would be more appropriate. Thus, “David Lynch: Moving Through Time” played to packed houses for ten straight days this past April, and it was as exhilarating and soul-cleansing as its predecessor, though certainly more bittersweet. For me, one thing that these retrospectives have illustrated so profoundly is how Lynch was a master synthesizer of ideas, some of which he’d be developing and ruminating on for decades until he found a place for them in a greater narrative.
What I love about Ryan’s new book, Always Music in the Air: The Sounds of Twin Peaks, is how it meticulously details the ways in which this approach extended to the music in the first two seasons of “Twin Peaks”, its 1992 prequel film, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,” and its third season released in 2017 that has been dubbed “Twin Peaks: The Return.” Though Angelo Badalamenti wrote the show’s original score, his compositions were ingeniously experimented with by David’s team of music editors, who were given the freedom to manipulate the tracks so that their tone and meaning would continuously evolve. Ryan’s book manages to fit in analyses for every “Twin Peaks” track made publicly available thus far, over 200 of which remain unreleased, aside from when Lynch’s frequent collaborator, sound mixer and editor Dean Hurley, briefly made them downloadable as part of the Twin Peaks Archive in 2011 and 2012.
Among the great discoveries Ryan made in writing his book were the astonishing, largely unsung contributions of Lori Eschler, who served as the music editor for the show’s first two seasons—excluding the pilot—and “Fire Walk With Me.” Considering the personal meaning that the show has for my wife, Cinema Femme founder Rebecca Martin Fagerholm, and I—our first date was spawned from me asking her, “Want to talk more about ‘Twin Peaks’?”—it was an especially great thrill to interview both Eschler and Ryan for this site about the latter’s invaluable book and the compelling case it makes for why every music cue from the series deserves to be released. Eschler also shares some priceless stories about her collaborations with Lynch, as well as her exciting return to making music on her upcoming album.
How unique was the experience of working with David Lynch on “Twin Peaks” for you, Lori, in a career that has included everything from “SeaQuest” to “The Matrix”?
Lori Eschler (LE): It was absolutely unique and a complete shift for me. He influenced how I work, how I see things and how I try to stay open to possibilities and happenstances. I remember that David liked one of my editing rooms so much that he would kick me out every day at 4pm, so that he could meditate. So I’d go hang with somebody for half an hour. But he was so consistent, and it was really weird to work on conventional projects after that. It sort of ruined them for me, in a way, because even though I worked really hard and learned things on those projects, they would never be as satisfying as my experience of working with David and the other “Twin Peaks” directors like Tim Hunter, Lesli Linka Glatter and Caleb Deschanel. Everybody from that group approached things in a much more creative way.
My everyday life has been influenced by David. I think of him often and I hear his voice all the time because he was so influential. He hired me at a point in my life where I was ready. I was a sponge and I just absorbed everything. I feel so lucky about the timing of it all. Not very many people got to work with David and for that long—it was about three years. I did want to work on “Wild at Heart,” but was needed for “Beverly Hills 90210.” Tim was directing, so it was fun, but I was bummed that I didn’t work on “Wild at Heart.” David’s ideas would always evolve, and he’d carry things into other projects. When I saw “Mulholland Dr.”, I realized he had been developing a cinematic language, and he just hit the nail on the head with that one. It made perfect sense to me and I was able to explain it to people. I had been to David Lynch film school, so I understand the language, and that extended into the music, which sort of developed as a language as well.
I had a hard time going back to straight film jobs that were by the book and factory-made. It was a different kind of job that involved a lot of timing and technical work. Films like “The Matrix” were incredibly technical, and they were rewarding because they were so challenging. I was editing 24 tracks of orchestra, from bar ten through twenty in take one. It was insane, but the composer Don Davis knew that I could do it. I had worked with Don on “SeaQuest,” and he wanted me to work on “Bound,” but I wasn’t available. He told me, “You have to do ‘The Matrix,’ but before that, you have to work on a big picture so that you have experience dealing with the mentality of big studios.” That turned out to be “A Bug’s Life,” which was scored by Randy Newman.
Scott Ryan (SR): He’s my freaking hero!
LE: Oh really? I used to see him without pants on every day. [laughs] I hung out with him when he was pounding out ideas. Listening to him composing and working out a musical idea at his studio was so beautiful. He is such a songwriter, and is also great at notating the music very simply. You had to learn how to figure out what he was writing, but he would give me the sketch, and then the orchestrator and I were able to time everything out for him. I actually timed things out before he started writing and then he would work with my timings. It’s a great illustration of how different everything was on “Twin Peaks.” On most jobs, I was sort of a facilitator for the composer, and it was much more arduous. On “Twin Peaks,” it was like I was given a big box of oils and got to paint with them. It was really such a joy, it was such play.
How did you first learn about Lori, Scott?
SR: When I spoke with Dean Hurley, he told me that this was a stupid idea for a book. He was really up front about it and said, “Nobody wants to read about 290 music cues,” and I didn’t even consider that. I said, “No, I know how to write it in a way that will be entertaining” People say a lot of things about my writing, but never that it’s boring. First of all, I don’t really care if anyone is interested in what I write. It’s not important to me. The second thing is, if people give the book a chance, they’re going to learn so much, but they also won’t be bored. I know how to entertain “Twin Peaks” fans, and there are a ton of jokes in there. The book is about more than the music, anyway. It’s really about the series and how it is to work with David Lynch. That’s what I like to cover in these books because he was a singular artist and it’s worth capturing these memories before you can’t.
What motivates me to write these books is the fact that I want to learn as much as I can about the work itself. And Dean said, “This book will be nothing without Lori Eschler,” so I just started hunting for her. I had never heard of Lori Eschler before, and I’m a big “Twin Peaks” fan. My favorite part of “Twin Peaks” is the music, and the most important person in terms of its creation is Lori. The fact I didn’t know about her says a lot about how her work has been hidden all of these years. Once I realized that she was the one who did many of the things that I thought Angelo was doing, that really opened me up to figuring these things out.
On YouTube, I stumbled upon a “Twin Peaks” panel that Lori was on in 2013 at USC with people like Catherine Coulson, Peggy Lipton and Lesli Linka Glatter.
LE: I felt like an imposter. I just thought, ‘What am I doing on this panel with all of these heavy hitters?’ One of the panelists was writer Harley Peyton, whom I had worked with on another project, “Keys to Tulsa,” so we were pretty close. But meeting Catherine that day changed my life. They had been talking about me on a panel held the prior week, which is where Tim Hunter said, “Lori Eschler has not gotten the attention that she deserved because she did so much,” and he went into detail on it. So before our panel started, Catherine was introduced to me and said, “Oh, you’re a genius!” And I was amazed to hear the Log Lady say that about me. That was the first panel I did for the Danish professor Andreas Halskov, and it was really strange and surreal because I had never before been exposed to fans of “Twin Peaks.” They came up afterwards and wanted me to sign things, which was really foreign to me.
I was fascinated by Lori’s recollection in the book that the backward talking during the first Red Room scene inspired her to play certain music tracks backwards.
LE: The similarities between the cinematic language and then the language that the music was speaking worked really well for the mood of a given scene. Every time something sort of shifts in “Twin Peaks,” it’s so great to just subtly have the music shifting, and finding the point at which that should happen is always really fun. When I first started manipulating things, I was working on 35mm magnetic film, which was very time consuming. That’s kind of where I learned to finesse and optimize what I was doing. Later, when I started working electronically, I was able to digitally change the character of the backward sound. I could smooth out the backwards/forwards movement so it would be more of a swell than a slap.
I had friends who worked at LA Weekly and had a copy of the pilot. I got to watch it right around the time that I was called to work on the show, so I knew what the music would be like. I had seen all of David’s films, and got “Eraserhead” to screen for the MSU film department in Montana. I grew up in Montana, which was David and my initial connection. He had grown up in Missoula and we think that our grandfathers knew each other because they were both politicians. In the first interview, we got into a discussion about how deep Swan Lake is. There was a train that went across the ice in the winter and fell into the water. Nobody had ever found it, and David and I were both really into how scary it was that the lake didn’t seem to have a bottom.
Did you get to spend much time with Angelo Badalamenti?
LE: Angelo and I were working via telephone, so I hadn’t met him in person until he came out to LA and sat in on the first few spotting sessions. He was like, “Ah, you guys got this, just let me know what you need.” Eventually, I did get to work in the same town with him when I went to New York, and we had so much fun. Then you put him and David together, and forget about it. The musicians were all constantly joking and laughing. That guy, Angelo, had so much joy. But he also had a side of him that was sort of mafioso and really scary. He never got angry with me, but boy was it scary when he got angry.
I wonder if that’s why David wanted him for that particular role in “Mulholland Dr.”
LE: For sure!
Why do you feel he and David were so well-matched?
LE: I think because they were both super-open and not rigid, which was obviously how David approached creativity. They were connected somehow. Angelo would just be open, he’d listen and then he’d start creating this stuff that was so beautiful, moving and exactly what David wanted. But David didn’t know what he wanted. He wasn’t really a musician and didn’t use musical terms, so he would describe a mood or a scene, and Angelo was so good at interpreting that and coming up with this music. Also, the style of music that Angelo does…or did—it’s so weird to talk about them in the past tense—was something that resonated with David.
How would you describe David as a collaborator in the editing room?
LE: Everything changed so much on the second season because I was able to have a digital audio workstation. On the first season, things took a very long time. I would have these loops of 35mm, and I’d have this big flatbed. One of the reels had to be the picture, and I’d tell David what I was going to play and how I’d blend it with something else. He’d say, “Okay, do what you’re going to do, and then we’ll see it and make adjustments when we’re mixing.” That worked really well in collaboration with the sound department because nothing was finalized until all of the elements were brought together. David would just sort them out and find what needed to be added or taken out. It was very experimental.
While we were on film, it took a long time and people got frustrated, but the end result was fantastic. On the second season, the sound was still analog, but the music was digital and the process of editing it was much faster. “Fire Walk With Me” was shot on 35mm, and the film was transferred to video, so we were working from a videotape that had time code, and then we locked sync with the audio. The sound was digital on the film, so the sound editors had a lot more freedom to be creative on the spot, and that made David so happy. Doug Murray was the sound guy on “Fire Walk With Me,” and he was just super-flexible and creative, as were the mixers. So much magic happened on the final dub stage.
Do you recall how “Audrey’s Dance” became connected to the character of Audrey?
SR: David directed the episode where she first dances to the music. In an earlier scene, Audrey hears the song with her dad on the radio, so it’s connected with her there as well.
LE: That cue wasn’t planned beforehand, but the dance may have been planned, so it was chosen that the song would be used for the cue in the scene with her dad. That’s sort of how things worked. We knew that it was going to be used later on, so we decided to give it a little bit of foreshadowing. I think that they were playing some music in the second season on the set, or David would play it on cassette just to get a mood going. I don’t recall if Sherilyn had playback in that first dance scene, but she had obviously heard the music.
How would you contrast David with the other directors you worked with on the show, particularly the women: Tina Rathbone, Lesli Linka Glatter and Diane Keaton?
LE: Everybody worked differently. Some of the directors had done television and didn’t normally participate in postproduction, so they’d leave after they finished shooting. But those three women were so involved, and I don’t think it had anything to do with their gender. Perhaps the thing that did have something to do with their gender was the fact that they were super-inclusive and super-visionary in regard to the big picture. They were always thinking ten steps ahead and it was just a joy working with all of them. I learned so much.
Tina was out there, and I didn’t get her at all. When we finished her episode, I was like, “Wow, okay.” [laughs] I worked with Lesli on a few other things, and she was always inclusive with everyone in the room. She’d say, “Okay, let’s stop and talk about this. What do you think?” And she’d get everyone’s input before she’d make her decision. Lesli was also great on other projects about hiring a lot of women, and that was a huge change for me because I would usually be the only woman in the room, aside from when one of the women directors was there. Diane was hilarious, super-enthusiastic, really visionary and a trip. She is from outer space, and I just love her.
Her episode looks like nothing else on the show.
LE: We worked Saturdays, and I remember there was a big political rally downtown, so she was late. She came up to my editing suite with a bag of tacos, and was debriefing me about the rally. She said, “I can’t believe that Jane Fonda wasn’t even there!” [laughs] When we were spotting the music for her episode, I brought up some dark music, and she got up on the couch and started jumping up and down, while screaming, “Yes! Death! All death!” It was so funny. She was always teasing us and joking around and playing. They were all such great auteur-style directors, and I think part of that is the ability to release their filters so that they are open to things happening and seeing possibilities that might not have been seen by a conventional television director.
Lori mentions in the book how even some crew members on the show thought that David was misogynistic because of the fact that he portrayed abuse onscreen. What do you feel have been the evolving views of David and his attitudes toward women, both on and off screen, in recent years?
LE: I think we are evolving in our definition of what is considered true misogyny versus something that is portrayed in art. A lot of people that I knew were like, “How can you work with him? He’s such a misogynist,” and I’d say, “That’s not my experience. He’s giving me, a really inexperienced editor, a whole lot of power and trust.” We had a ton of women working in postproduction by comparison to everything else I had worked on up until then. It was refreshing, and I think it made the collaboration and communication between departments, and the environment, really enjoyable. There were some patriarchal folks, but it was balanced, and I think, way ahead of its time, when I reflect on the trajectory of my career and how many women were involved in projects, or weren’t involved at all. I think David’s actions speak to how he felt about women. The story he was telling was about people who were suffering and what they were going through, not just Laura but other characters like Norma and Shelly. I think he had a lot of compassion for all of the female characters.
What was your initial response to seeing how David wanted to explore the last days of Laura’s life in “Fire Walk With Me”?
LE: It was difficult dealing with that subject matter every day, but I’d had my own traumas in the past, some of which happened right before “Twin Peaks.” I had never dealt with them until years later, and so in a way, it was super-therapeutic to watch the process that Sheryl Lee created for her character. I think the way that it was written and the way the story was told was brilliant because it wove in a sort of ethereal aspect that was a little bit vague, but reflected how someone would psychologically deal with trauma. There are all of these existential questions like, “Where did that come from? Is Bob real?” Trying to describe what happened is the bargaining stage of trauma, where one attempts to grapple with that kind of information.
We definitely took breaks while working on “Fire Walk With Me.” There was a ping pong table out in the hallway, and sometimes we would find somebody to hit the ball with in order to forget about what we were doing. But most of the days were super-stressful because the technology was still really young. There would be times where I would back something up and when I’d come back to restore it, it wouldn’t be there, so I’d have to recreate it. That was a nightmare. And I would lose files. I remember one guy inviting me to go out to lunch with him and a few other people. I was like, “I can’t! I need to find this file,” and he said, “You just need to go have lunch, and when you come back, it will be there.”
In what ways did it benefit you to have the instruments separated out—such as for Scott’s favorite track, the main theme from “Fire Walk With Me”—so you could mix them however you wanted?
LE: I think it really defines what editing is. You bring the kitchen sink, and then you carve away what is not integral to the story while keeping what is. Sometimes you just pick one thing, and that works by itself, or you’re able to add or subtract an instrument when appropriate, or you manipulate the track in a way that transforms it. To have that many options is an editor’s dream.
SR: Do you remember hearing the “Fire Walk With Me” music for the first time? I say in the book that I feel the “Twin Peaks” music is high school, and the “Fire Walk With Me” music is college. That’s the difference in its complexity. It was a lot deeper and was moving into jazz.
LE: Yeah, it was really fresh and a different mood. What’s cool is that I got to be in New York when they were recording the music, so it was much more satisfying. It gave me a greater awareness of all the different elements and the direction the music was taking. We were all there talking about it when the musicians weren’t telling silly jokes. [laughs] They were playing around an awful lot, and I was super-serious at that point in my life, so I was like, “Come on, guys!”
SR: In the main theme for “Fire Walk With Me,” you have the saxophone, which is evocative of sex.
LE: It’s a jazzy instrument, but when it’s used in a darker theme like that, it becomes a different paintbrush.
SR: Then you have the synth, which has a scary sound, and then you have the rumbling base that goes through it, which is kind of like rock ’n’ roll. When you take sex, rock ’n’ roll and Bob, you put that together and you’ve got Laura Palmer. That’s why the theme from “Fire Walk With Me” is my favorite song. It is Laura Palmer, whereas “Laura Palmer’s Theme” is how the town feels about her being dead. There’s nothing about Laura Palmer in “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” which I think is pretty interesting.
LE: I think you’re right on about that. Laura’s theme is really about how everybody else felt, and it had nothing to do with what she was going through.
My favorite footage of Angelo is when he is recounting how David’s descriptions for what he wanted “Laura Palmer’s Theme” to sound like informed the music he was improvising on the piano.
LE: That’s how they worked together. David sometimes did that with the musicians as well, and the improvisers got it. That’s probably part of why Angelo worked so well with David. He was great at improvising.
The more I read about the circular nature and repurposing of the show’s music—particularly “Laura Palmer’s Theme”—the more I was reminded of Bernard Herrmann’s score for “Vertigo,” a film that “Twin Peaks” pays homage to in ways both overt and subtle. Do you sense a connection between the music of Herrmann and Badalamenti?
LE: Yeah, I think you’re right about that. Angelo was probably influenced by him, but I don’t know for sure. He worked a lot like Ennio Morricone in that he would take parts of something he’d written and use it in something new. There were a lot of references to “Vertigo” in “Twin Peaks.” I remember Tim Hunter used to do the Dutch tilt angle with the camera a lot, and it was sometimes really subtle. Many historic pieces of cinema were referenced in the show.
SR: One of the things I discovered in making the book that I thought was really fascinating was the story that Dean Hurley tells about when David and Mark Frost screened Episode 29, which was the last episode of the “Twin Peaks” series, in preparation for making “The Return.” David was disappointed with how much music was in it, and that’s why he didn’t put as much of it in “The Return.” What did you think when you read that, Lori? You helped put that music into Episode 29, and I happen to think that episode is pure perfection. It’s the best hour of “Twin Peaks.”
LE: David directed that episode, so his feelings about the amount of music was probably something that he realized after the fact. He was really good at pulling things out that were too much.
David’s sensibilities may have just changed over those many years in between the series and “The Return.” The absence of music in “The Return” conveys a sense of loss, reflecting how the characters cannot go back to how things were. When the themes we recognize do turn up, they pack an enormous punch.
SR: I still think David is incorrect in his assumption. I wouldn’t change one music cue in Episode 29. You need it all. When I timed the music out, I found that 87 percent of that episode is scored with music. Also, 50 percent of that episode is in the Red Room, where there’s “always music in the air,” so I think it made sense. I think you guys did it correctly, and I think there should still be music in the Red Room in “The Return.” It doesn’t have to be the music that we love because it is different in Laura’s dream than it is in Cooper’s dream than it is when Mr. C. goes in. But there should always be music in the air because as the Man From Another Place says, “Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song.”
I watched “Twin Peaks” when it was on the first time, and we were allowed to make fun of the parts that we didn’t like. It’s just so weird that with “The Return,” you have to accept it as perfection. Even David Lynch looks back at Episode 29 and says, “I did that wrong.” An artist is always looking back. I might be a little hard on “The Return” musically, but I also think I’m right. “Viva Las Vegas” does not belong in “Twin Peaks.” It just doesn’t. It’s a mistake. It’s okay to make a mistake! They were making an 18-hour movie in one year, which is ridiculous. I think if he had unlimited time, they could’ve written something that would’ve fit better for that cue.
LE: One thing that was discovered was in Episode 14, where Maddie is murdered. We had originally planned on having no music in the scene where she is killed, but it was so terrifying that it was unwatchable. We found that it was too intense to not have music there. Music has great emotional power, but it also has the power to box in the amount of emotion that is allowed, so all of the stuff that is too much to handle kind of gets fenced in. We can manage your emotions with the music.
If the entirety of “Twin Peaks” were divided into three acts, that episode feels like the end of Act One. The end of Act Two would be “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk Me” and “The Missing Pieces,” following the remainder of Season 2, and Act Three would, of course, be “The Return.”
LE: I don’t know that anyone could have steered Season 2 in a direction that would’ve been satisfying, after the mystery of Laura’s killer was solved.
SR: There’s this idea that they never should’ve solved it. But if you don’t have episodes 14, 15 and 16, I submit that there is no “Twin Peaks: The Return.” “Twin Peaks” would have just faded away and we would have forgotten about it because people would’ve been like, “Oh, was that the show that built its whole story around a murder, and they never told us who did it?” That’s all it would be remembered for. But you have this height of 14, 15, 16, mostly from Ray Wise’s performance, honestly. Ray Wise delivered one of the greatest performances ever put on television, and never even got an Emmy nomination for it. It’s the height that we remembered, even though it has a downfall, but I actually don’t think it is as big of one as everyone says. I think there are only two stupid storylines in Season 2, Little Nicky and the James subplot.
I actually enjoyed the goofball levity provided by Little Nicky.
SR: Well, now we know that your parents dropped you when you were a baby. That’s fine. [laughs]
To me, “The Return” erases many of the problems I had with Season 2 by making it part of a larger whole, while also serving as David’s career-spanning magnum opus.
SR: I have problems with “The Return,” but I totally agree that it is Lynch’s magnum opus. It is a great, spectacular Lynch film. I just am not sure that it is the third season of “Twin Peaks.” That’s where I stand on it. Watching “The Return” in the summer of 2017 was the most fun that I’ve had watching anything in my entire life.
LE: I watched it all together, once it was all available. It was hard for me because when I was asked to come work on it, I was in that caregiving part of my life, so I didn’t have the availability that they needed. I told them, “I could be here to consult,” but they said, “No, we need you here like you were before,” so it was sad. But I really loved “The Return” when I watched it, and I really wished that I had worked on it.
There’s also an element of caregiving in “The Return.” For me, the timing of it couldn’t have been better, since David provided the viewer space to think and intuit, which was a refreshing breather from the cacophony of noise coming from Washington, D.C.
LE: It was so respectful of the audience to do that.
Which may have been why he didn’t want as much music.
LE: Yeah, he trusted people to not be television viewers because he had schooled everybody for so long. Anybody who was following David Lynch by that point had the tools to watch “The Return” in the way that he presented it.
SR: I totally agree. That really makes me feel good because I don’t actually think that “The Return” is difficult or confusing. If you know how to speak Lynch’s language, it really is like a David Lynch film. It’s like a final exam on his ten major films.
I like how Scott’s attempts to solve the mystery of “Sycamore Trees” runs throughout the book, since the song’s use in Episode 29 is emblematic of how David would create material years before he’d find a perfect place for it.
SR: I start every book that I write with just one simple question, and ever since that episode aired 34 years ago, I never understood how “Sycamore Trees” could’ve just gotten into it. This is the final episode of a show that pretty much knew it was cancelled, and yet, the song is such an incredible production number with jazz great Little Jimmy Scott. It’s also scary in how it sets up the final act of that episode. I just couldn’t stop wondering where this song came from, and that set me on the path of asking everyone I interviewed for the book about “Sycamore Trees.” They all had one little piece of the puzzle, and the fun part is that we get an answer. I never give it away in interviews because when you read the book, it’s such a cool mystery to gradually uncover. Lori, do you think the answer of “Sycamore Trees” is true as detailed in the book, or do you think it is still a mystery?
LE: For me, it is still a mystery. I do remember having the recording for some time and talking about it with David. I think that he had it inside him through this long period, and he had the recording of Jimmy Scott singing it. That song informed so much leading up to us finally hearing it, and it was so perfect.
The first thing any “Twin Peaks” fan will want after reading this book is Scott’s 39-track dream playlist of unreleased music on vinyl. Is there any particular track that you would be most excited to have out in the world?
LE: Nothing specifically. There were tracks that I wasn’t fond of, but I won’t talk about those. There were only a couple. But it was such a beautiful arsenal of material to work with. I had so much satisfaction working with it, finding out what worked together, categorizing things and then breaking those rules and playing with it. I loved every simple little thing, like Grady Tate playing the cymbals while humming. The sound mixers would be like, “What is that sound?”, and would have to isolate all the tracks to figure it out. When it was discovered that Grady was humming during the recording, conventional people were horrified, and other people were really entertained by it. It was hilarious.
SR: I think it really matters that these songs come out. Yes, I do whittle them down to what I think would be the best songs, but honestly, any combination of them would be welcome. There are 212 songs that have never been released, and that is only from the original series. Then we discovered that there are a couple more piano tunes that Angelo did for the scene where the woman thanks Mr. Jackpots in “The Return” that haven’t come out, which is heartbreaking. There’s stuff from “The Return” that we probably don’t even know about that hasn’t come out.
LE: And you’ve certainly made a strong argument for that to happen.
So now, in addition to March 22nd being the birthday of Angelo, Stephen Sondheim and yours truly, this book shows that it also was the day Dean Hurley dropped into the Twin Peaks Archive five of Scott’s favorite unreleased tracks: “Great Northern Big Band,” “Wedding Song #1”, “Wedding Song #2 (‘Stranger Nights’)”, “Attack of the Pine Weasel” and “Great Northern Piano Tune #4.”
LE: The piano stuff was a blast. Whenever there was some sort of bizarre source cue, it was always really fun.
SR: Here’s one of my favorite things that Lori did, even if she doesn’t remember doing it. The Great Northern piano tracks all play in, not surprisingly, the Great Northern when people are having dinner, and the songs that play sound like they are being performed by someone sitting at the piano. In Episode 14, when Catherine reveals her identity to Pete at their home while disguised as Mr. Tojamura, Lori brings back the piano song that originally played when the pair met at the bar in the Great Northern. She also adds a little bit of mysterious drone sounds to make it creepy. Only Lori would’ve known to use that song there, and those cues matter to me. They are what keep “Twin Peaks” all together, even if you aren’t consciously aware of them. That’s why those songs should come out. They are really Lori’s mixes.
LE: Cues like that illustrate the power I was entrusted with to make those decisions without even having to get approval by that point. I really loved that scene between Catherine and Pete.
I love the fact that Alicia Witt, according to her interview in Scott’s book, improvised the unnamed song she plays on the piano during the “It Was Laura” poem in the first episode of Season 2.
SR: They released that song on the “Season 2 and More” vinyl as a hidden track. For the vinyl, they put several minutes before it that the needle has to go through before you arrive at the track. It doesn’t show up for a while, and when it comes up, you can hear the poem about Laura being recited in the background.
LE: Watching the end of that episode cut from Bob screaming to Alicia, who is just adorable, playing the “Hayward Boogie” [confirmed in the book by Alicia as “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” by Pinetop Perkins] was so surreal. It was such a great juxtaposition of one mood clashing up against an entirely different one. It’s hard to get away with that, I would think, in most situations. But with David, it was a convention that we were accepting.
Two tracks from “Fire Walk With Me” that Scott singled out for their emotional resonance were “Girl Talk” and “Birds in Hell.”
SR: On the “Fire Walk With Me” soundtrack, those songs are mixed into the track, “Montage from Twin Peaks,” which culminates with “Falling.” But in the Twin Peaks Archive releases, you get the full “Girl Talk,” which is a much longer song, and then the full “Birds in Hell.” “Girl Talk” plays when Laura and Donna talk on the couch, and ask if Mike can write a poem. Later on, “Birds in Hell” plays during Laura’s last day at school when they’re doing all the fades with the clock and the school desk. When you hear the full three minutes of “Birds in Hell,” it’s up there with “Laura Palmer’s Theme” as one of the most beautiful themes that Angelo ever wrote. For there to only be a minute of it released is just criminal to me.
“Birds in Hell” would definitely be in my top five all-time favorite “Twin Peaks” songs as far as pure beauty goes. It’s just incredible, and it’s not protected anywhere. It’s not on Apple Music and you can’t stream it or own it. Why are these compositions from one of the most important shows of all time not available to us? But like clockwork, they are going release Seasons 1 and 2 on another DVD, and I’m like, “How about one year, you don’t re-release the show that we all own 45 times, and you give us this music?” It is so important. I sent a copy of my book to the president of Sacred Bones Records, which has released all of Julee Cruise’s albums and all of the “Twin Peaks” soundtracks. He has the book, so people could send a message to Sacred Bones and ask, “Where is this vinyl set?”
I was amazed by the serendipitous way David discovered “Agnus Dei” from Luigi Cherubini’s “Requiem in C Minor,” which plays a crucial role in the final moments of “Fire Walk With Me.”
LE: David was flying back from Europe and sitting next to a woman on the plane. They were talking about music, and she had a cassette of the song. She said, “You have to hear this, it’s so beautiful,” and gave him the cassette. We hadn’t looked into a clearance or anything like that, and David asked me, “Could you digitize this, and we’ll try cutting it in?” When you digitize a cassette, there’s no sync reference or anything, so it’s not ever going to be the same or even in the same key, necessarily. This wasn’t a professional situation. The track had a little bit of warbly-ness to it, but we cut it in and fell in love with it.
Then poor John Wentworth, who was the film’s co-producer, had to try to get clearance from the conductor Riccardo Muti, who was opposed to it. So John had to get David on the phone with him, and of course, he talked Riccardo into it. But when they sent us what they thought was the master track, it was nothing like the one from the cassette. It was not playing at the same speed as what we had essentially finished the film with, which was the recording transferred from the cassette, and that’s what’s in the film.
SR: I’ve always liked that song, of course, but I had never owned it before. When I was going to work on the book, I decided that I needed to get this track on vinyl. But when I got it and listened to it, I couldn’t hear what was in the film. When I told this to Lori, she gave me one of my favorite quotes that is in the book: “Did you try listening to it backwards and at a different speed?”
LE: That’s my answer to everything. [laughs] Scott, I just want to tell you that your book really helped me. It’s such an honor that you put so much energy into the research that you did. It’s really serendipitous that this book is coming out now because—after not playing or making any music for many, many years—I now have a studio here in my house where my writing partner, Dale Flattum, and I are working on an album. I have a free music editing software called Audacity, and it’s so easy to use. I am using a lot of the same techniques that I used on “Twin Peaks”—all the mystery loops and dark stuff—but I am also making less dark music. I feel like I’m sort of making up for the fact that I didn’t get to work on “The Return” by making music again.
I cannot wait to hear it! What are your thoughts about the way that music is preserved and consumed now?
LE: Nobody should listen to music on their phones. It is just insane. I sent one of our tracks to a friend, and when she gave me notes after listening to it on her phone, I told her that she needed to hear it on good speakers. Whenever I need to laugh, I watch David’s beautiful rant about people watching films on their phones. I’m really excited about the new music I’m doing. It’s very cinematic and has some ethereal elements and bedroom pop mixed in there. It’s a full album that has a lot of narrative going on without relying heavily on lyrics. Most of it is instrumental and there are only a few songs, but it has sort of a metaphorical narrative.
It was very spontaneous how this all came together. I hadn’t played or written anything for many years, but when we started making the album in February, we just plowed all of this music out. Dale lives in Minneapolis, so we are mixing it there while starting the manufacturing of the vinyl and packaging. Then we will begin releasing singles from it on Band Camp. We work really well together because we have a similar approach to things. Dale’s a semi-legendary punk rock bass player, so he’s got a really edgy sound that is so fun to add into the more classically oriented stuff that I do.
We were friends in Seattle in our 20s, and it was a really experimental musical time. Everything was new and fun and amazing and filled with wonderment, and I had so many happy memories from that time. Now here I am in my 60s, and I’m doing it again! I never dreamed that this would happen. We reconnected in January and decided that we had to do something together. The album feels like the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made yet, so now I’m thinking, ‘I need to make that film!’
You can order your copy of Always Music in the Air: The Sounds of Twin Peaks here. All three seasons of “Twin Peaks” will be streaming on MUBI starting on Friday, June 13th, while “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” and “The Missing Pieces” are currently available to view on The Criterion Channel.
