Like a number of film music composers, Jeff Beal makes his home north of Los Angeles in the rocky, canyoned city of Agoura Hills. One feels a sense of the old west before even seeing the ranch-style houses in his neighborhood and the tail-flipping horses tied out back. Questions about his work on “Appaloosa,” Ed Harris’s latest entry in the western genre, seem to manifest out of thin, dusty air by the time we make it downstairs to his efficient but Spartan studio.
At the beginning of the process, Harris told Beal he was not interested in anything overly romantic or mythic. The mandate was the relationships, the conflict they bring about and the intimate world the characters inhabit. It was a unique vision for Beal, but one he was more than willing to explore. He had his share of wells to draw upon, but his work in high-end television projects really stuck out.
“The only thing I can think of that was sort of similar was [HBO’s] ‘Rome,’” Beal said. “It was a similar approach creatively because you were dealing with a historical genre, a genre that’s been done a lot, sometimes with a lot more overt flare. And this was more like the ground view of these people.”
To that end, Beal set about constructing a theme with little harmonic movement, something that would carry the feeling of the audience being visitors in the world of Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. Spring-boarding off a life-long interest in folk music (American or otherwise), Beal wanted to make the music reflect the story-telling nature of the narrative.
“There was actually a second half that became more of a traditional piece of music because at the end of the day we decided we don’t need that because it’s better to have just a clean, simple statement,” he said. “These guys are men of action. It’s all about a process, one step in front of the other. It’s a journey. One of the phrases Ed gave me when we were starting was ‘rough elegance,’ which I loved. A lot of the music sprang from that inspiration.”