Interview: Goldfrapp’s Gregory

When many of the artists in these pages are asked about their influences, they will doubtless mention cool sixties bands, wilfully obscure Icelandic poetry or, more often than not, claim they have no influence other than their own creative muse. It’s unlikely, though, that any of them would cite masochistic on-screen clowns of the early 1920s as a direct inspiration for their output.

Not so Will Gregory, male half of electro-poppers Goldfrapp, who is set to premiere his film score for the 1924 silent classic He Who Gets Slapped to audiences in Bristol and London in early December. Accompanied by Portishead’s Adrian Utley and drummer Tony Orrell, not to mention the BBC Concert Orchestra, the live composition promises to be more mind-boggling than a Hawkins penned Soduku.

So how did this bizarre project come about? “Before Goldfrapp I had a band called The Gas Giants with Tony Orrell,” he says. “We were anarchic and experimental and tried to blur the boundaries of jazz, electronica and pop as much as possible. Because we didn’t do conventional ‘songs’ with vocals we found we were perfectly adapted to accompany silent film. Over a few years we were commissioned by Bath Film festival and Womad among others to create a dozen or so semi-improvised scores to some of the great silent classics. One of these was He Who Gets Slapped, which was the kind of overlooked masterpiece I’d been looking for”.

He Who Gets Slapped is a peculiar film that would probably enter today’s cinema as easily as Hetty Wainthropp attempting to join the Boys Brigade. The plot goes thus: A famous scientist (‘He’, played by Lon Chaney) has his ideas stolen and then is humiliated in front of an audience of his peers and accused of plagiarism by the very blaggard who nicked his work. The height of this treachery is hammered home by his tormentor and his face cracks into a hideous grin as he joins in the uproarious laughter at his own tragedy. We next see him in the ring of a circus, now dressed as a grotesque clown while a continuous stream of other clowns process past, each delivering him a vicious slap. It is clear that ‘He’ is only at peace while reliving a parody of his original humiliation, which he does night after night. This is the first 20-minute set-up of what becomes a circus drama full of darkness, pathos and cruelty, ending very movingly with ‘He’ performing his act while fatally wounded.

The film was the first for studio magnates MGM and kick-started Chaney’s career (he would later appear in The Phantom of the Opera), but has been largely disregarded in film history as frivolous tomfoolery. Gregory believes otherwise. “Silent film is populated mainly by melodramas and anachronisms that have value to the film buff because they demonstrate some innovation or other in the language of film,” he explains. “But to the average sophisticated audience of today they are so clichéd and jar so many of our sensibilities that they fail to outlive their own generation.”

In taking time out from recording the follow-up to Goldfrapp’s 2005 effort Supernature, Gregory has gained a clear focus for the project. “At the time of our original version, we were so enthused about the film that we put weeks of preparation into the live performance of which there were only two,” he says. “Ever since, I have been passionately determined to return to this work in a more expanded and powerful format. The plan is to review the existing music and thoroughly update, re-orchestrate and rewrite the entire score.”

The film score is often seen as a strange beast, usually penned to merely add a polished sheen to an already complete film. However, with a silent film the attention is drawn much more closely to the audio accompaniment, something which Gregory insists is a two-way operation. “One musician reacting minutely to the timing and gestures of an actor while gazing at the screen in certain situations is vastly more powerful than 100 musicians sawing away with their heads buried in their scores,” he says.

Saws and scores, silent or strident, this will be a fascinating spectacle. Just don’t expect any custard pies.

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