{"id":2446905,"date":"2019-07-29T07:56:35","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T13:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=863783"},"modified":"2019-07-29T07:56:35","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T13:56:35","slug":"edward-norton-on-how-thom-yorke-helped-shape-new-film-motherless-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/edward-norton-on-how-thom-yorke-helped-shape-new-film-motherless-brooklyn\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Norton on How Thom Yorke Helped Shape New Film \u2018Motherless Brooklyn\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThere\u2019s a certain risk in making a bid to work with people that you love and admire. There\u2019s always the risk because collaborations get messy and someone\u2019s schedule can put pressure on a thing,\u201d Edward Norton tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. It\u2019s especially daunting when that \u201csomeone\u201d is Radiohead<\/a> singer Thom Yorke<\/a>, who the actor reached out to while writing his second directorial effort, Motherless Brooklyn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing you want is to get at loggerheads about something you care a lot about and you invite someone you care and love in and it\u2019s not working,\u201d Norton cautions.<\/p>\n

Norton \u2013 who wrote the script, directed and stars in the upcoming adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel about a Tourette\u2019s-stricken detective in 1950s New York \u2013 has known Yorke since soon after Radiohead\u2019s days opening for R.E.M. in the mid-1990s. The actor excitedly recalls attending Radiohead\u2019s star-packed June 1997 gig at New York\u2019s Irving Plaza the week before OK Computer<\/em> was released.<\/p>\n

Norton\u2019s presence at that concert is captured in the \u201c+Guests\u201d next to R.E.M. on the now-viral guest list<\/a>; it was Michael Stipe who would introduce Norton to Yorke, igniting a two-decade friendship strong enough that Norton felt confident asking the singer to contribute music to Motherless Brooklyn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t presume he would do it,\u201d Norton admits. \u201cI wanted Thom to write an old-world melancholy ballad, and I wanted his voice to be the properties for [Norton\u2019s character] Lionel\u2019s voice \u2026 But I sort of said to myself, \u2018Yeah, you and everybody else in the world.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Before production began, Norton emailed Yorke the request and the Motherless Brooklyn<\/em> script. Two weeks later, the actor received a 6 a.m. email from the Radiohead singer with the song \u201cDaily Battles\u201d attached.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sent me this track of him on a piano singing it and I was sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark, crying from listening to this song,\u201d Norton said of his response. \u201cIt\u2019s so instantly heartbreaking and evocative of so many of the themes to the movie without being overly specific to them, but so much so, I thought the idea of daily battles that everyone is fighting, that you\u2019re trying to rise up and out of, was so evocative that I went back into the script and put the phrase into a scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song impacted Norton so much, it became a unifying theme in Motherless Brooklyn<\/em>, featuring in a crucial scene where Norton\u2019s Lionel and a character played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw go to a jazz club. To transform \u201cDaily Battles\u201d into \u201ca ballad done by Miles Davis in \u201957,\u201d Norton enlisted jazz great Wynton Marsalis to record a jazz arrangement of the song.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted the characters to dance to a ballad and we were trying to think what to do; we didn\u2019t want to do a famous Miles Davis track or anything like that. So I played Wynton Thom\u2019s song and he said \u2018That\u2019s a really pretty tune,’\u201d Norton said. \u201cWynton, two days later, came back with this arrangement. And the first time Thom heard it, he kind of put his head between his legs and said \u2018Jesus, fuck.\u2019 It was really a wonderful moment, so we did this great weird thing of inserting Thom\u2019s song into the Fifties.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark, crying from listening to this song\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rolling Stone<\/em> will premiere both Yorke and Marsalis\u2019 versions of \u201cDaily Battles\u201d in the coming weeks, when the new trailer for Motherless Brooklyn<\/em> arrives ahead of the film\u2019s November release. The two versions of \u201cDaily Battles\u201d will also be released as a split seven-inch vinyl.<\/p>\n

In order to create cohesion between Yorke\u2019s \u201cDaily Battles\u201d and Marsalis\u2019 instrumental jazz rendition \u2013 and root it further to the time period \u2013 Yorke recruited an unlikely musician to contribute horns: His Atoms for Peace bandmate Flea, who also laid down the song\u2019s waltzing bass line to, as Norton says, \u201cput [\u2018Daily Battles\u2019] in the language of the same jazz instrumentation, piano and bass.\u201d The song is itself reminiscent of Radiohead\u2019s non-LP piano ballads like \u201cLast Flowers\u201d and \u201cI Want None of This,\u201d and the softer half of slow burners like \u201cThe Daily Mail\u201d and \u201cYou and Whose Army?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t really know this, but Flea went back to USC and got his masters on music theory on trumpet, and his dad was a jazz musician and he is a deep aficionado of jazz,\u201d Norton says of the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist. \u201cSo Flea came in and played the most beautiful, simple lines that add that dimension. And then Thom took some of them and reversed them and put them through compressors so that it\u2019s playing backward and forward at the same time. It\u2019s really beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDaily Battles\u201d is a stark contrast to Yorke\u2019s usual electronics-and-beats-laden solo work, as evidenced recently by his third solo album Anima<\/em><\/a>. \u201cI\u2019ve had it on loop. I don\u2019t even remember where it starts and where it ends anymore,\u201d the actor said of Yorke\u2019s new LP. \u201cIf you close your eyes and put it on, you can think it\u2019s a 10-hour record because it keeps going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norton also praised the \u201cone-reel\u201d Anima collaboration between Yorke and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen anything like that that I can think of. That was like Thom meets Kafka meets Buster Keaton. It is a really beautiful, beautiful piece. I was knocked out by it,\u201d Norton said, adding of Yorke\u2019s acting abilities, \u201cHe might be more Chaplin than Buster Keaton. He\u2019s got some slapstick chops.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my generation, no one has really captured longing in the heart and terror in the head like Thom,\u201d adds Norton. \u201cHe has really grabbed the nerve of the fearfulness of the age that we\u2019re living in and also figured how to create anthemic melody and total discord and chaos at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere\u2019s a certain risk in making a bid to work with people that you love and admire. There\u2019s always the risk because collaborations get messy and someone\u2019s schedule can put pressure on a thing,\u201d Edward Norton tells Rolling Stone. It\u2019s especially daunting when that \u201csomeone\u201d is Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, who the actor reached out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-25 09:44:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}