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Is Dracula (1979) Soundtrack Lost to Time?


RICHARDSTRAUSS68

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3 hours ago, Richard said:

2/ Nic Raine could reconstruct the score, by ear. Sure, it would take a while, and would end up a "labour of love", but, hey...

3/ I can't believe that JW does not have his sheets for this. If he doesn't have them, where are they?

 

The sheet music is not a problem. "Only" the recordings are gone forever...

 

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The sheets are not lost, at the time of posting this I thought they were, but now I have them haha. On a side note there is way to get these rerecorded but we would need to hold a crowdfunding campaign but not out in the open. I do not think they were erased, I put my money that either A they have been destroyed in the universal fire B Lost to time or C some composers kept copies and recordings of their own music. I talked with Goldsmith's daughter and she told me her father kept reels of his stuff. SO maybe Williams has a copy. Next question how do we ask him haha.

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There are usually duplicates made of the sessions, albeit with lower quality.

 

I'd be shocked if there were truly no copies left except the film stems (then again, apparently Hook had no second generation copies either, hence necessitating film stems for that expansion).

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14 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

Why has it to be "Dracula"? Why not "Always" or "Sabrina"?:(

 

Ah Sabrina.  The least essential post-Jaws Williams score, maybe?  It's not bad or anything, just...inessential.

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Quote

Although I can not go into too much detail about the following, a very reliable source of mine had the following exchange with three people involved in the original dubbing and recording of 1979's DRACULA.

Most unfortunately, following the original sessions held at Anvil studios, most of the master stereo tapes were ERASED. This was done at the time for outrageous reasons, i.e.: crass commercial ones. Anvil Studios was then in deep financial trouble, hence most of the surviving tapes were erased and reused for other commercial purposes. 

This is very sad news indeed. Personaly, I can't believe the late Eric Tomlinson would have approved such an awful turn of events. Suffice to say, the people in charge at Anvil Studios then were responsible for such a terrible decision, just a few months shy before their closing in mid-1980 (August '80.)

 

Sounds a lot like what happened to many of the old DOCTOR WHO shows.

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  • 1 year later...

I didn't know where to post this, so I decided to place it here:
 

Quote

 

Quote
Quote

Dracula ..Williams hated Warner Brothers efforts...The sound Quality is poor...though it s LSO.

How does Warner Bros. figure into DRACULA?


It doesn't, but something tells me that this might be leaving the crypt sometime in the none too distant future.

Ford A. Thaxton


http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=129323&forumID=1&archive=0&pageID=14&r=899#bottom

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Do we have a clear idea of whether the session tapes are misplaced, deteriorated or burnt? As Alien 3 proved, you never know when tapes might turn up, if they're "merely" missing. 

 

Unfortunately digital masters won't save us this time.

 

Was it for the Dracula or Jane Eyre sessions that rumour spread about tapes being reused for other scores or binned after recording? 

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1 hour ago, crumbs said:

Do we have a clear idea of whether the session tapes are misplaced, deteriorated or burnt? As Alien 3 proved, you never know when tapes might turn up, if they're "merely" missing.

 

Last info we had was a post from 2016 by a member on the FSM board (Christian Lauliac) who revealed that "a reliable source" told him the original session tapes stored at Anvil Studios were erased and re-used because the studio was in financial trouble back then. Before that piece of info, all we know is that people who looked for reels in the Universal Studios vaults didn't find anything other than "bad sounding mono mixdown reels", according to LLL's MV Gerhard. Also, there was speculation that reels could have been destroyed by the huge fire that happened in the Universal Studio lot several years ago.

 

Of course we know that anything considered "lost forever" could really turn up all of a sudden if the right people are given enough time and resource to make a thorough research. Now that Universal Studios started this process of major restoration of their music archives, I hope there are strong chances that something will be found (or perhaps it has already).

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Perhaps it will be one of the side benefits of this major project LLL just announced with Universal, which has surely opened up huge swathes of their archives for LLL to plough into. Maybe Dracula turned up unexpectedly, mistakenly stored in the wrong place?

 

I'll be gutted if it was lost in those fires a few years back. We'll likely never know, if that was its ultimate fate.

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2 hours ago, crumbs said:

Perhaps it will be one of the side benefits of this major project LLL just announced with Universal, which has surely opened up huge swathes of their archives for LLL to plough into. Maybe Dracula turned up unexpectedly, mistakenly stored in the wrong place?

 

I'll be gutted if it was lost in those fires a few years back. We'll likely never know, if that was its ultimate fate.

I think that would be great but it was a MCA release... Would that change anything?

 

Just now, Score said:

If the Dracula sessions are lost, for any reason, it is a moral duty to re-record the complete score.

The problem with that is though we will never have originals for any sort of expanded release of true nature or alternates of that matter...

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Just now, dillweed97 said:

The problem with that is though we will never have originals for any sort of expanded release of true nature or alternates of that matter...

 

In principle, the complete score can be re-recorded from the sheets, including all the alternates, so there would be no need of an expanded release. Of course, it will not be identical to the original recording, but if that one is gone...

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9 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

Just give Tadlow the sheet music! It's that easy!

 

It's not that easy. Firstly, one has to find out who owns the rights to the music - which is probably Universal Music.

Secondly - and although they don't have to - they'd probably ask JW's permission to rerecord, and he might, for whatever reason, choose to nix it.

Remember that DRACULA has been sitting around for 39 years. I suspect that, as much as it's loved by fans, JW is probably not too keen on either an expansion, nor a rerecord.

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, Bespin said:

Forget the "complete" about Dracula, we have he OST that's all.

 

I'm afraid you're right, Bes; the VS is all we're ever going to get, however...

 

8 hours ago, Bespin said:

Just a new HD transfer from a mint LP would do the job for me. I don't have it on CD.

 

...amazing things are being done with remastering, these days.

I have some 5.1 mixes, which, until I looked on the credits, didn't know were    stereo-to-surround upmixes, and not true descreet 5.1 mixes!

Simarlarly, stereo remastering has improved so much, over the last 20 years.

The information is there, it just needs to be mined well.

 

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14 minutes ago, Richard said:

 

It's not that easy. Firstly, one has to find out who owns the rights to the music - which is probably Universal Music.

Secondly - and although they don't have to - they'd probably ask JW's permission to rerecord, and he might, for whatever reason, choose to nix it.

Remember that DRACULA has been sitting around for 39 years. I suspect that, as much as it's loved by fans, JW is probably not too keen on either an expansion, nor a rerecord.

 

 

 

 

I'm afraid you're right, Bes; the VS is all we're ever going to get, however...

 

 

...amazing things are being done with remastering, these days.

I have some 5.1 mixes, which, until I looked on the credits, didn't know were    stereo-to-surround upmixes, and not true descreet 5.1 mixes!

Simarlarly, stereo remastering has improved so much, over the last 20 years.

The information is there, it just needs to be mined well.

 

 

 

I just listen yesterday a copy of The Reivers MFM 1990 CD , my God, it's the day and night in comparison to the 1995 expanded set, the sound is so much better. Let's really hope a new CD set will be released in a near future that could improve a lot more the sound, by using new HD transfers from the tapes and modern digital sound restauration.

 

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:o Er...I didn't even know that there was a 1990 THE REIVERS CD!

Call myself a JW fan?! I'll be killing myself, after I post this, but, before I die, a picture of the booklet cover would be nice, y'know, just something to look at, as the carbon monoxide takes effect.

Tatty bye, everyone.

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1 minute ago, Richard said:

:o Er...I didn't even know that there was a 1990 THE REIVERS CD!

Call myself a JW fan?! I'll be killing myself, after I post this, but, before I die, a picture of the booklet cover would be nice, y'know, just something to look at, as the carbon monoxide takes effect.

Tatty bye, everyone.

 

Posted in the Reiviers proper Thread.

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2 hours ago, Bespin said:

Forget the "complete" about Dracula, we have he OST that's all.

 

Life is made of Dreams!❤️ And some broken ones 💔 !

 

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Is your vinyl sounds better than the CD?

 

If someone can make a good WAV rip of his mint Dracula Vynil, I can digitally restore it.

 

I would not be surprised if the sound on the vinyl is better than the one on the 1990 CD.

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