Theres a certain risk in making a bid to work with people that you love and admire. Theres always the risk because collaborations get messy and someones schedule can put pressure on a thing, Edward Norton tells Rolling Stone. Its especially daunting when that someone is Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, who the actor reached out to while writing his second directorial effort, Motherless Brooklyn.
The last thing you want is to get at loggerheads about something you care a lot about and you invite someone you care and love in and its not working, Norton cautions.
Norton who wrote the script, directed and stars in the upcoming adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel about a Tourettes-stricken detective in 1950s New York has known Yorke since soon after Radioheads days opening for R.E.M. in the mid-1990s. The actor excitedly recalls attending Radioheads star-packed June 1997 gig at New Yorks Irving Plaza the week before OK Computer was released.
Thom Yorke Creates Dystopian Rapture That's Perfect For Our Terrifying Times on 'Anima'Thom Yorke, David Byrne Sign Open Letter Addressing 'Climate Hypocrites' ClaimThe 10 Wildest Led Zeppelin Legends, Fact-CheckedCharles Manson: How Cult Leader's Twisted Beatles Obsession Inspired Family Murders
Nortons presence at that concert is captured in the +Guests next to R.E.M. on the now-viral guest list; it was Michael Stipe who would introduce Norton to Yorke, igniting a two-decade friendship strong enough that Norton felt confident asking the singer to contribute music to Motherless Brooklyn.
I didnt presume he would do it, Norton admits. I wanted Thom to write an old-world melancholy ballad, and I wanted his voice to be the properties for [Nortons character] Lionels voice But I sort of said to myself, Yeah, you and everybody else in the world.'
Before production began, Norton emailed Yorke the request and the Motherless Brooklyn script. Two weeks later, the actor received a 6 a.m. email from the Radiohead singer with the song Daily Battles attached.
He sent me this track of him on a piano singing it and I was sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark, crying from listening to this song, Norton said of his response. Its so instantly heartbreaking and evocative of so many of the themes to the movie without being overly specific to them, but so much so, I thought the idea of daily battles that everyone is fighting, that youre trying to rise up and out of, was so evocative that I went back into the script and put the phrase into a scene.
The song impacted Norton so much, it became a unifying theme in Motherless Brooklyn, featuring in a crucial scene where Nortons Lionel and a character played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw go to a jazz club. To transform Daily Battles into a ballad done by Miles Davis in 57, Norton enlisted jazz great Wynton Marsalis to record a jazz arrangement of the song.
We wanted the characters to dance to a ballad and we were trying to think what to do; we didnt want to do a famous Miles Davis track or anything like that. So I played Wynton Thoms song and he said Thats a really pretty tune,' Norton said. Wynton, two days later, came back with this arrangement. And the first time Thom heard it, he kind of put his head between his legs and said Jesus, fuck. It was really a wonderful moment, so we did this great weird thing of inserting Thoms song into the Fifties.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark, crying from listening to this song
Rolling Stone will premiere both Yorke and Marsalis versions of Daily Battles in the coming weeks, when the new trailer for Motherless Brooklyn arrives ahead of the films November release. The two versions of Daily Battles will also be released as a split seven-inch vinyl.
In order to create cohesion between Yorkes Daily Battles and Marsalis instrumental jazz rendition and root it further to the time period Yorke recruited an unlikely musician to contribute horns: His Atoms for Peace bandmate Flea, who also laid down the songs waltzing bass line to, as Norton says, put [Daily Battles] in the language of the same jazz instrumentation, piano and bass. The song isitself reminiscent of Radioheads non-LP piano ballads like Last Flowers and I Want None of This, and the softer half of slow burners like The Daily Mail and You and Whose Army?
People dont really know this, but Flea went back to USC and got his masters on music theory on trumpet, and his dad was a jazz musician and he is a deep aficionado of jazz, Norton says of the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist. So Flea came in and played the most beautiful, simple lines that add that dimension. And then Thom took some of them and reversed them and put them through compressors so that its playing backward and forward at the same time. Its really beautiful.
Daily Battles is a stark contrast to Yorkes usual electronics-and-beats-laden solo work, as evidenced recently by his third solo album Anima. Ive had it on loop. I dont even remember where it starts and where it ends anymore, the actor said of Yorkes new LP. If you close your eyes and put it on, you can think its a 10-hour record because it keeps going.
Norton also praised the one-reel Anima collaboration between Yorke and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. I havent seen anything like that that I can think of. That was like Thom meets Kafka meets Buster Keaton. It is a really beautiful, beautiful piece. I was knocked out by it, Norton said, adding of Yorkes acting abilities, He might be more Chaplin than Buster Keaton. Hes got some slapstick chops.
In my generation, no one has really captured longing in the heart and terror in the head like Thom, adds Norton. He has really grabbed the nerve of the fearfulness of the age that were living in and also figured how to create anthemic melody and total discord and chaos at the same time.