Mad Max

Mad Max (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is a soundtrack album for the 1979 film, Mad Max, composed by Brian May. It was released on vinyl in the United States in 1980 by Varèse Sarabande, followed by a CD release on 26 October 1993.

 

 

OVERVIEW

Composer Brian May first got in contact with director George Miller and producer Byron Kennedy after director Richard Franklin played the two May's score for his then-upcoming film Patrick (1978). Because the score resembled the work of Bernard Herrmann, May ultimately won the assignment of composing music for Mad Max. "The sort of score they wanted was the sort that Bernard Herrmann and Co. did in Hitchcock films," recalled May, "because they had a big action movie and they needed a score to propel it along and give it a lot of bite and energy. So it just happened that they were rather friendly with Richard Franklin, and they were at his house for dinner one evening when he played them the music for Patrick."

Combining classical orchestration with mechanical sounds, May's work on Mad Max is notable for its distinctive soundscape that interacts with the film's diegetic sounds. "Mad Max was a strongly energized score in the violence/action department, and for that they wanted a totally non-melodic score," explained May. "It was very jagged and shearing, and George particularly wanted me to antagonize the audience by making them feel uncomfortable. Sometimes we had jagged notes going against dialog so that the audience would feel frustrated." Such effects were developed through the application of stingers by way of brass and percussion instruments.

May went on to win the Australian Film Award for Best Original Score for his work on Mad Max.

 

 

 

RECEPTION

The musical score for Mad Max has received generally positive reviews. Quentin Billard of GoldenScore called it "one of the most impressive symphonic scores of Brian May", adding, "The darkness and brutality of his music for the film [...] accentuates the constant unease throughout the film."

In a retrospective review, Paul Andrew MacLean of Film Score Monthly wrote, "May's score lent incalculable scope to the film, making it larger and more furious. Coupled with furiously staccato writing and Stravinskian time signatures, the result was a strident, metallic score, perfectly underscoring the film's barbarous, high-velocity car culture." Chris McEneany, writing for AVForms, similarly praised the soundtrack, describing it as "often harsh, wild and blood-curdling". He later added, "Far more narratively structured than the two scores that followed in the Mad Max Trilogy, but no less violent, ballsy, headlong and rubber-burning, this is a classic thriller score from an era that was the change."