GRAY LADY DOWN
Composed and Conducted by JERRY FIELDING
Intrada continues its focus on Jerry Fielding with the release of his previously unavailable score to the 1978 Universal Pictures film Gray Lady Down. After a freak accident, the submarine USS Neptune under the control of Captain Paul Blanchard (Charlton Heston) is struck by a merchant freighter emerging unexpectedly from the fog. The submarine immediately goes into a catastrophic dive, falling more than a thousand feet. It rests finally on a precarious shelf from which it could tip any moment into still deeper water, crushing its shell and drowning all aboard. As various areas of the sub flood and lives are lost, the topside plotters, Captain Bennett (Stacy Keach), and Captain Gates (David Carradine), figure out how to get their DSRV (Deep Sea Rescue Vehicle) prototype, the S.N.A.R.K., down to the helpless tin can in order to salvage the survivors.
Gray Lady Down was a tricky film to score, because much of the action takes place in extremely confined spaces. Fielding’s “Main Title” sets the tone admirably with
an insistent motif that bespeaks the ocean’s limitless scope and power. For “The Collision,” his explosion of vibrant brass instrumentation veritably shatters the sub’s hull as it drops perilously into the murky deep. Album producer Doug Fake enthusiastically notes, “This score has some of Fielding’s most extensive use of brass writing...and he avoids virtually all of his customary ‘jazz’ elements in terms of color, and instead writes in a typically complex but completely symphonic vein. It’s definitely military in style, and ranks with the best of these kinds of scores. Fascinatingly, there are oodles of his trademark ideas, complex string writing, intricate solo colors in the woodwinds, and something else: the underwater collision music is particularly aggressive, with a considerable amount of low brass clusters which are not so usual for this composer."
For this release, Intrada had access to all the 1/2" stereo 3-track music masters housed at Universal Studios. The masters were in perfect shape, granting a crisp sonic quality with superb dynamics and a solid punch.
This release is limited to 2000 copies.
01. Gray Lady Down (Main Title) 1:51
02. First Surface 1:46
03. The Collision 3:06
04. Leveling Off 2:47
05. Control Room Of Neptune 1:21
06. Fair Haired Wonder 1:05
07. DSRV 0:54
08. Leaky Hatch 0:56
09. Visual Inspection Of Hatch 2:29
10. Snark Lowered For Mission - #1 1:23
11. Snark Lowered For Mission - #2 1:19
12. Finding The Sunk Sub 4:03
13. Zeroing In On Sub - #1 2:10
14. Zeroing In On Sub - #2 0:45
15. Dave Dies/Blanchard Cracks 2:51
16. They Set The Charge 2:34
17. Count Down 2:04
18. The Launch 2:26
19. First Rescue 2:41
20. Gates’ Sacrifice 4:43
21. Gray Lady Down (End Credits) 2:29
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