The Bad Angel

A little over 26 years ago, composer Angelo Badalamenti recorded an album (Booth and the Bad Angel) with Tim Booth, the lead singer of one of my favorite rock bands, James. I don’t know what I expected in the union of a musician who created woozy dreamscapes for David Lynch and a singer from a band known for big, emotional anthems, but I know I was disappointed by the in-between sound they produced. However, years later, as I (hopefully) became a little more sophisticated in the area of taste, I came to appreciate the album more and more. The lush beauty of the background music with Booth’s pensive tones in the foreground finally caught up to me. Actually, check that. I finally caught up to it. It is neither Badalamenti’s nor Booth’s fault that I wasn’t ready for them. As you might guess from the title, Badalamenti was the “Bad Angel.”

But what a wondrously bad angel he was. While Badalamenti composed a number of scores for film and TV, it is, of course, his work with David Lynch that he will always be known best for. Starting with Blue Velvet in 1986 and ending with the Showtime continuation/reboot/whatever the hell that was of Twin Peaks in 2017, Badalamenti worked on eight projects for Lynch – all of them sublime. The strange soundscapes he created were all his own. They were languorous and brooding, while also being playful and even comforting at times. More than anything, his scores were wholly original. If you heard Badalamenti, you knew it was Badalamenti.

While I don’t want to give short shrift to the other fine work Badalamenti created (among other films, he scored Christmas Vacation – really, he did) including The Comfort of Strangers, The City of Lost Children, Arlington Road, Holy Smoke, The Beach, Secretary, Auto Focus, Cabin Fever, A Very Long Engagement, and A Late Quartet, among others. But let’s face it, all roads lead back to Lynch.

Even more than his extraordinary score for Blue Velvet, I believe it is his work on Twin Peaks that truly endures. The show may have only been a brief two-season phenomenon, but the tone of the series, at least in an aural sense, was set by Badalamenti. Whether it was a demon figure screaming into the void, a little person dancing in what appeared to be a dream, or a beautifully gauzy-voiced night club singer (the late, great Julee Cruise) casting her voice out in hushed tones over Badalamenti’s perfectly synergized orchestrations, it was Twin Peaks and David Lynch that put Angelo Badalamenti on the map and thrust him into the area of lore.

There is simply no escaping what his compositions accomplished in bringing Lynch’s visions to fruition. The odd combination of beauty, dread, and curiosity made for a perfect blend betwixt director and musician. In fact, I find it difficult to think of one man without considering the other. I know not what David Lynch is thinking at this moment. He seems to have essentially retired from filmmaking. I do know that if he were to come back to his profession (please do, Mr. Lynch), he will be lacking a resource that was essential to many of his visual creations.

That resource was Angelo Badalamenti.

You’ll have to excuse me now, I need to go cue up Booth and the Bad Angel, and pour me a glass of red. A maestro has passed.

Angelo Badalamenti died today. He was 85 years old.