Part IV – Jon Brion (Part 1 of 2)
The War for Independence
Chapter 4: Jon Brion
Over the last, oh, I don’t know, twenty years or so, a trend has emerged whereby rock and roll songwriters get to do film and TV scores. The first big example that comes to mind is Oingo Boingo’s Danny Elfman, who first became hugely successful scoring Tim Burton’s movies. Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo became similarly attached to Wes Anderson, Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead recently scored There Will Be Blood, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers of The Police have both done some scoring, and hell, even Toto and Queen had some success with Dune and Flash Gordon, respectively. But the one who made the transition with probably the least amount of mainstream success is Jon Brion (one might be able to make a case for Mike Viola, or somebody else, but I’m making a case for Jon Brion, so there).