Keeping Score: Giorgio Moroder’s pioneering ‘Chase’ in ‘Midnight Express’
In the realm of electronic music, few figures stand as tall as Giorgio Moroder. The Italian composer practically invented the genre as we know it today, pioneering synthesised sounds in the 1970s (cue ‘Giorgio by Moroder’ by Daft Punk for a brief on the man set to an otherworldly tune). His collaboration with Donna Summer, the iconic ‘I Feel Love’, is widely regarded as a watershed moment not just in electronic music but in music history in general. The word ‘legend’ gets thrown around a lot, but few people have earned it quite like this guy.
The so-monikered ‘Father of Disco’ is also known for his impact on the film industry. He has contributed the soundtrack (either, partially or wholly) to a number of iconic films, ranging from Superman III and The NeverEnding Story to lesser-known projects like the 1986 sci-fi romcom Electric Dreams. This, incidentally, spawned the song ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ featuring The Human League’s Philip Oakley on vocals. It was a much bigger hit than the movie it came from. However, when it comes to the most influential score of Moroder’s career, you have to go back, right to the very start.
1978 saw the release of Midnight Express, directed by Alan Parker and written by Oliver Stone. It was adapted from his own memoirs, with the plot centring on a young American named Billy Hayes, played by Brad Davis, who gets sent to jail in Turkey for drug smuggling. Once behind bars, Hayes experiences the horrors of the prison system like never before, as he fights tooth and nail to survive the bitterly harsh conditions. The film was extremely controversial upon its release, especially in Turkey, which led to Stone even apologising to the nation for the harm his script did to their reputation.
Moroder had never written for a movie before – besides a German softcore porno called ‘Sex Life in a Convent’ – but that didn’t matter. According to him, Parker was a big fan of ‘I Feel Love’ and asked for something just like it for a key moment in the film. During an escape attempt, Billy is hunted down by Turkish police through the busy streets of Istanbul. Using the track as a blueprint, Moroder set about compiling a new piece for this dramatic scene.
The result was ‘Chase’, a pulsing, pace-quickening instrumental that was exactly what Parker wanted. Moroder knocked out the melody on a combination of Roland and Minimoog synthesisers, adding more instruments like a piano, Clavinet, and keyboard to flesh things out, before slapping a flanging effect over the top. ‘Chase’ was arranged by Harold Faltermeyer, who would go on to find his own success with ‘Axel F’, the theme tune from Beverly Hills Cop.
Not only was the track perfect for the scene in the film, but it found an entirely new life outside of it. The song has been used everywhere by everyone, from rap groups to Major League Baseball, radio DJs to professional wrestling tag teams. Alongside ‘I Feel Love’, this one is regarded as a pioneer of the ‘Hi-NRG’ subgenre of dance music, which dominated the 1980s and still, very much, has a place in the musical landscape today.
So many musicians try and fail to establish themselves as the figurehead of a new genre, but only the very best succeed. The fact that Giorgio Moroder became the face of a new breed of disco music with the help of a brutal thriller set in a Turkish prison is a fact simply too grand not to share and revel in.
