The theme song John Carpenter ripped off from Led Zeppelin: “It was just very crude”
Even though he seems happy with his status as a retired filmmaker and full-time video game aficionado, John Carpenter hasn’t abandoned his secondary love, after cinema: music.
The mastermind behind several of Hollywood’s most enduring cult classics may not have helmed a feature since 2010’s The Ward, which was hardly a swansong fitting of such a stellar career, but his work in the recording studio has kept him busy, despite his inactivity behind the camera.
In addition to contributing to the soundtracks for two of David Gordon Green’s three Halloween sequels and the Firestarter remake, Carpenter has also released a couple of EPs and a handful of Lost Themes albums, with composing having long since overtaken directing as his preferred mode of creating art.
The brains behind The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and They Live has been pulling double duty on his pictures since his 1974’s Dark Star, and having been a devoted music fan since his earliest days, it made sense for Carpenter to balance both of his loves, even if he admitted that cinema always came first.
Many of his compositions have paid tribute to artists and songs he admired, or, in the case of At the Mouth of Madness, blatant rip-offs. Carpenter confessed that he wanted to use Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ as the title track to his 1994 supernatural horror, and when he couldn’t get the rights, he decided to create his own version, which is readily apparent from listening to the track.
That wasn’t the first time he’d channelled one of rock’s titans, either, and anyone familiar with the theme song to his sophomore feature, Assault on Precinct 13, will probably recognise that the underlying synthesiser riff and thumping drum track bear a striking similarity to a certain Led Zeppelin classic.
It wasn’t a totally egregious ripoff, though, even if Carpenter revealed that his secondary inspiration for the theme was another movie soundtrack, which he’s convinced took its cues from the exact same song. “The main theme from Assault on Precinct 13 has two influences,” he told Louder Sound. “One is Led Zeppelin, ‘The Immigrant Song’, and the second one is Lalo Schifrin and the Dirty Harry score.”
Of the Clint Eastwood classic’s main musical accompaniment, the director seemed confident the iconic first entry in the five-film series “borrowed from Led Zeppelin,” making it a two-for-one inspiration special. “That was just a repetitive piece,” he added. “It really didn’t do very much; it was just very crude.”
It was out of tune, too, something he didn’t realise until after he recorded it, not that he minded. If anything, it only enhanced the atmosphere: “It kind of made it creepier, being slightly out of tune,” he suggested. “I just did what I thought had to be done for the scene.”
As mentioned above, Carpenter will always know where his bread is buttered, declaring that “cinema was my first true love and still is,” not that it prevented him from looking to the music industry’s greats for inspiration during his 34-year stint as a filmmaker.
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