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Here, Landrum reminisces about helping create the sonic landscape for that famed Pacific Northwest town.
I was recommended to Angelo by the recording-studio owner named Art Polhemus.
He had asked Art who could do this gig and he recommended me.
Angelo gave me a call first.
He wanted to see what I was able to accomplish with synthesizers.
Id never seen anything like it before.
I could understand, musically, where they were coming from.
We went in and did some sessions at Arts studio.
It was mostly Angelo, me, and Art, although David would come in occasionally.
Twin Peakswas calledNorthwest Passageoriginally, so I never heard the wordsTwin Peaksuntil after we recorded the stuff.
The showwas going on at the same time asWild at Heart.
Id come into the studio and didnt necessarily know what I was going to be working on each day.
This was unusual we worked with no pictures or imagery at all.
I didnt see anything until it came on the air.
I worked with Angelo with a lot of lead sheets.
All we could see were chord symbols, melodies, and sometimes a bass line.
Usually that was it.
We werent seeing a score.
I had no idea what the visual reference point was.
Angelo had been told something by David, but I never was.
I related to it as a piece of music.
I didnt know where this music was going.
But thats what made it so special.
The main thing from the firstTwin Peakssession was Laura Palmers Theme.
We only had a lead sheet for it.
I never even asked about how it went.
The vamp, the minor key at the beginning of the song, had been written as two half-notes.
Angelo said, Great, thats fine.
So we did it.
Theres a very famous piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff called Prelude in C-Sharp Minor.
Its a solo piano piece.
Angelo may have joked to me at one point, Hey, thats your fault!
Because it was my idea to put the low note in there.
Laura Palmers Theme is a fairly unique piece of music.
It goes through multiple keys.
Some parts remind me of the theme fromLast Tango in Paris.
It would usually just be me, Angelo, and Art in the room.
David was in the room when we did Laura Palmers Theme from that very first session.
But after that, he was out in Los Angeles working and would rarely be with us.
Angelo would walk in each morning with a lead sheet with whatever cue wed be working on that day.
Wed take a piece of music and just work on it.
For the melody line on Falling, he suggested a French horn sound.
We talked a lot.
We needed a battle martial sound.
I said, Angelo, Ive got to do some marching drums on this.
I sat down and played the whole thing in one sitting.
We spoke in specific musical terms.
But its up to the composer to translate that into concrete musical terms.
Thats how Angelo was with us.
Boy, it couldnt have been easy.
