Luckily, I have been able to obtain a copy of the special Labyrinth preview issue (no 16) of Starzone, a now sadly, defunct high quality David Bowie fanzine edited by David Currie. It has seven pages of stuff on Labyrinth, including a sneak preview of the movie, review of the album and some full page pics, including a beautiful Jareth one on the back cover. The poster, advertised on the cover (in case you wonder) isn’t one of Jareth, but of Dave at that time, out of makeup and looking super spiffy in a black shirt and white pants. This magazine is easily obtained from eBay, you need to search for "Starzone" as it is often not key-worded as a Labyrinth item. Be prepared to dig deep (but of course you already knew that). Okay, on with the transcribing!
Soundtrack Review An unimpressed, but charmingly prophetic review by a someone who sounds completely confused because they haven’t seen the movie just yet. Nice cynical vintage viewpoint on Bowie’s musical position back in 1986.
Do, Do that Vodoo…
Labyrinth - The Original Soundtrack
The first bulk of sings from Bowie for nearly two years all written specifically for the Labyrinth movie. With these lyrics, Bowie is scott-free from haphazard dissection, not that I would be tempted, as each song relates directly to the plot of the film and characters therein.
Simple, vaguely aimed at youngsters and pure cinemascope, the songs offer only snatches of conform, probably quite effortlessly, to the theme and feel of the film.
"Magic Dance" sees Bowie still fascinated with the sparse drum effects so evident in much of American club music as he sings "What kind of magic spell to use?" against irritating gurgling sounds emanating from (supposedly) the baby he abducted in the film as Jareth. Bubble-gum bop.
"Chilly Down" features Bowie on backing vocals only, in a weird amalgamation of (ulp!) the Chi-Lites and The Rocky Horror Show - the song, when slotted into the film, will doubtlessly provide Henson’s creations with an excuse to run riot. You can imagine the blur of colours & latex screeching "Chilly Down" at the top of their disembodied voices. Next up, through snippets of Trevor Jones’ uneventful score, comes Jareth’s soft-focus love song to Sarah, "As The World Falls Down". This is the best offering from Bowie, apart from "Underground", although nothing terribly earth-shattering. It’s a nice ponderous love song with Bowie in fine voice, evoking (for me anyway, and strangely enough) scenes of a single couple dancing together at the end of an evening in a 50’s disco hall, complete with ghostly echo.
"Within You", a kind of grand-wind-swept-we’re-coming-to-the-end-of-the-film number with Bowie almost choking on his breathe (against the wind, one must assume) blurting "Your eyes can be so cruel, just as I can be so cruel". Some power-crazed demon this Jareth is!
Finally, the familiar and simply wonderful Underground in all it’s full-length glory. One mustn’t dwell too much on the merits or lack of, of this album. All songs were so obviously written with the film’s visuals in mind and the audience it would be aimed at. On-screen, ‘twill doubtlessly take on a whole new aspect and that’s probably an example of Bowie’s successful transition to writing film songs as opposed to, uh, songs (?)
The big question is, and something to which the answer might alter my lenient opinion of the material, does this album count as a Bowie album on EMI and one of the five album contract deal?
The songs are fine win their context and often highly enjoyable but I ain’t buying them as one entire studio album.
It seems that this is all we’re getting this year, so we’d better make the most of it.
But now next year …
Preview Article An expertly written, enjoyable article with some cute facts, although like almost all articles from the time, due to the ‘enthusiasm’ towards the movie, it is a bit lacklustre and cynical.
Labyrinth Preview
Forget the laughing Gnome and welcome, this coming Christmas, the singing Goblin! Bowie’s ever-increasingly list of thespian characters are nothing if not consistently bizarre - he’s played a ghost, an alien, a gigolo, a Victorian freak, a self-destructive anarchist, a vampire, a POW, a wally, a self-parody rock star, a cool killer, a crass commercialist and now (pause for breathe) in Jim Henson’s forthcoming $25 million dollar fantasy adventure "Labyrinth", he plays an egocentric, power crazy, romantic villain in the guise of Jareth, the Goblin King. The film opened in the States on June 27, but we’ll have to wait till the end of the year to see if Bowie is choosing his roles wisely or if, supposedly frequently offered parts, as "Martians playing guitar" are no that far removed from the reality of practice. In this feature, we take a look at the stories behind the making of the film which Tri-Star (it’s distributor) hope to be the smash hit of 1986 …
"We wrote the film for David." Says Labyrinth’s director Jim Henson, "And we tailored a number of scenes around what he could do musically. We worked with David throughout all that beginning time of the film and that was fun." No doubt, for Labyrinth not only sees David Bowie back in ‘glamour-gear’ reminiscent of his Ziggy Stardust days, but also contains five self-penned compositions written specifically for the movie,, which David, as Jareth, performs onscreen.
Jim Henson, who created the colourful Muppets, first for US educational show ‘Seasame Street’ back in 1969 then , more widely known in this country, in ITV’s ‘Muppet Show’ and various filmic spin-offs, serves as story-writer and director for this latest marriage of puppets, special effects and human actors.
Henson’s philosophy of entertainment that also conveys educational and social values has carried all over the world and his highly individual flavour of manic comedy and songs displayed in the ‘Muppet Show’ always attracted big name celebrities as special guests. Labyrinth, the largest puppet show of all produced by Henson succeeded in attracting a major contribution from the biggest star of all.
"David’s performance is great," comments Henson, "Though he did have some problems at the beginning. Early on, his first couple of scenes were with Hoggle (A friendly Goblin with a passion for shiny trinkets) and he kept wanting to look off-stage to see where the voice was coming from. So he’d want to play the scene over where the voice was instead of where Hoggle, the puppet, actually was. It took him a while to get use to that aspect of filming." Henson would take great arguments with the usage of the term ‘puppet’ to describe his creations as he views them as much more complicated than that. "All puppets are creatures," he says, "but not all creatures are puppets. Basically , everything that’s a manipulated figure is a puppet. One of the technical definitions is that any articulated figure is a puppet. For our own purposes, we use the word ‘creatures’. Creatures is more accurate. The characters we’ve created for Labyrinth are highly sophisticated mechanisms operated by teams of people working together. The mechanisms and the team becomes a creature when performed."
Labyrinth, as you might imagine, is populated by Henson’s and his team of creative designer’s and operator’s creatures, which include: Sir Didymus, looking like a talking Yorkshire Terrier, Ludo, a gargantuan ogre-type hulk of the best gentle-giant tradition and Hoggle, the leading ‘creature’ who is, in reality, four people operating radio remote controls for the face and a little person inside to walk it about.
These form the trio that befriend Sarah, who, in the film, is enticed into the Goblin world by Jareth by the abduction of her baby brother.
In true fairy-tale style, Sarah must enter the Labyrinth, a complicated series of tests and trials, pitfalls and challenges to reach Jareth’s imposing castle where her brother is imprisoned. (just wait for the video game! It’s a natural.) The world of Labyrinth was created by set designer, Elliot Scott in an unorthodox way to enable greater reality of Henson’s vision. Usually, film sets are designed to face the camera at specific angles, the unfilmed backs and sides remaining raw limber. In Labyrinth, Scott designed complete constructs which allowed Henson to film from any angle imaginable. From the Bog of Stench to the Goblin Village to Jareth’s castle - the sets, all built at Elstree Studios, are complete and ‘real’ in every aspect. To add a magical quality, over fifty kilos of glitter were liberally sprinkled over the sets.
Like all good myths, Labyrinth was created to work on several levels. In the surface, it tells the story of Sarah attempting to rescue her brother, disregarding Jareth’s efforts to persuade her to stay forever in his kingdom of magic and desire, and, on a deeper level, the film captures the time of a young girl on the edge of womanhood and awareness. The Labyrinth itself is a parable and a riddle where it’s creatures befriend and sometimes betray Sarah.
Bowie’s human co-star in the role of this young girl is 16 year old Jennifer Connelly, selected from some 100 girls who originally auditioned. This native New Yorker is already well-known in the US and Japan for various modelling and acting work. "We wanted someone in that sort of magic time between child and adult", says Henson, "And it was one of those nice moments when Jenny walked in and she was immediately right for the part." The story of Labyrinth was written by Henson with Dennis Lee, but the screenplay was penned by ex-Monty Pythonite Terry Jones, whose involvement with the film stemmed not from the Python’s cerebral humour, but from his children’s books ‘Fairy Tales’ and ‘The saga of Erik the Viking’.
With Henson’s basic outline and a wad of drawings from conceptual designer Brian Froud at hand, Jones said says the writing came easily: "The first draft came in about three weeks. Whenever I came to a situation where I wanted to invent a new character, all I had to do was take Brian’s creations and give them words." A book entitles ‘Goblins of the Labyrinth’ is pending, featuring Froud’s drawings and character studies to compliment each one by Jones.
Yet another famous name to help boost the success of the film s that of George Lucas as Executive Producer. Lucas of course, created the hugely popular ‘Star Wars’ trilogy as well as collaborating with Steven Speilberg on the two ‘Indiana Jones’ movies.
"One of the reasons I got involved was that this picture doesn’t talk just to kids", says Lucas. "One contribution I could make was to keep the storyline focused which is a real trick. I’m strong with script and editing. Jim is receptive to ideas and I like to throw out a lot of ideas and not have anybody be threatened or get their feelings hurt."
"George clarified the storyline", Offer Henson on Lucas’ involvement. "He cleaned up the structure so that every scene has a function."
Labyrinth should emerge, without, question, to be the most widely seen film to star Bowie to date, all the more productive as his music will reach an attentive audience. Get ready for a barrage of Labyrinth merchandise, from toys to posters and books to t-shirts. Marvel comics recently published their comic adaptation of the film, available only through specialist comic shops.
Talk of David abandoning music for film seems misplaced. "I certainly won’t stop writing songs or singing them" , he says. "I’ve never had the guts to create a big movie although I like to think that one day I’ll do that - but not in the foreseeable future. Labyrinth was great fun to do. Jennifer (Connelly) is extremely pretty. she looks rather like the young Elizabeth Taylor as she was in ‘National Velvet’. And she’s a damn good actress."
With constant chatter of another tour next year, it seems David will be very busy over the coming months and Labyrinth represents his ‘new’ departure as an entertainer - singer, actor, song-writer. But what of his still closely guarded painting skills?: "I still splash paint onto a canvas once in a while," he says, "And I collect twentieth-century woodblock prints and first editions of twentieth-century writers. I don’t do gardening!"
BACK TO THE LIBRARY **Transcript and scans by Shirlee
