Interview: Slash on Creating Music for Cosmic Horror Movie The Breach

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with rock and roll legend Slash about his work for the horror movie The Breach. Slash discussed working on movies, collaborating with Michael Jackson, and appearing in Guitar Hero 3. The Breach is now available digitally and through video-on-demand platforms.

“Counting down his last days as Chief of Police in the tiny town of Lone Crow, John Hawkins must investigate one last case when a mangled body with uncanny wounds washes up on the shores of the Porcupine River,” reads the movie‘s synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Can you tell me about how this all came about and how you got this opportunity to executive produce and do the music for The Breach?

Slash: When it comes to producing, one of the turn-ons to producing is to be able to be involved with the music, so it’s almost a prerequisite. If I’m going to produce something, I want to have something to do with the music, given that I’m a musician [Laughs]. Anyway, with The Breach, I loved the story and we got into it and so I told Rodrigo [Gudiño, director] I definitely want to write some melodies for this, but I don’t want to actually score the whole movie. It’s one of those things where I don’t have the wherewithal to be able to sit still that long and score an entire movie. So I like to work with other composers so I can give them an idea and then they can actually deal with the instrumentation and we can sort of work on it together, but they can do the heavy lifting, because I just don’t have the patience for it.

So on this one, I wrote a bunch of stuff and then Andrew Thomas Hunt, who’s one of the production partners on this, introduced me to a guy named Aybars Altay, who is the composer. And Aybars and I communicated — this was all during Covid, so everything was done sort of long distance –and he and I communicated via email and sending recordings back and forth. I had my ideas and how he interpreted those ideas and back and forth. And so we finally arrived at something that I thought sounded really cool. So that was the intro and a couple [of] other bits in the movie. Then there’s a couple scenes that I recorded just on a single acoustic guitar that are incorporated in other parts of the movie that I actually sort of timed to the dailies [Laughs], so anyway, that’s sort of the process

What was most unique about creating music for a movie versus more traditional songwriting? Because you’re really there to elevate the story and complement what’s happening on screen.

Yeah, as a songwriter even, I’m more of a composer than a songwriter. I really put musical ideas together in certain kind of song arrangements, but I’m really thinking about how the music works off itself as opposed to what the vocal is. I don’t sing along with it necessarily, but when I’m working on something off of a script or a visual or both, I use a completely different part of my musical mind. It’s a different part of me than writing for a record for a rock band. I start basing everything off of my visual imagination to what the story is and what it looks like in my mind. And I start coming up with those ideas, and it’s really sort of new for me, because obviously, I didn’t start doing this until … the first movie I worked on was 2013.

I love when you put the right piece of music to the right visual, even if it’s a prerecorded song by a band on a soundtrack. But when you put it together with the right visual, it’s the ultimate entertainment experience. So being able to write to a concept of a story invokes a whole different part of my imagination musically. And it’s a lot of fun to do it.

That’s awesome. I saw on a Reddit AMA that you said that you listened to a lot of movie scores. Do you have some particular composers or some film scores that have really served as an influence?

Right. Well, I said Ennio Morricone, who was somebody that I always loved it. He also did The Thing, which was one of John Carpenter’s movies. That was one of my favorite horror movie scores. But he also did a lot of great spaghetti Westerns and stuff. I really do like Han Zimmer and I have to say that I love John Williams — one of my all time favorite film composers.

But there’s some obscure people that have just done these really great scores that … they’re not big household names and I can’t remember the name of the girl who won an award for doing The Joker [Hildur Guðnadóttir], but that particular score was fantastic. Then Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood was amazing. If I sat here and thought about it, I could give you hundreds of different scores that are really amazing. But those are a couple that come off the top of my head.

The movie starts with this body being found and there’s a slow burn, but then we get some awesome body horror by the end. How was using your music to build that tension and aid the narrative there in that manner?

It’s not something that there was a lot of forethought [for]. That that body in the water scene was one of those tension moments where the boat’s floating down the river and the group of picnickers see it and then they discover it and they’re horrified and they come screaming. That was something that I wrote a certain kind of a riff for, and then I worked with Aybars to do this sort of build thing. So it wasn’t like a conscious effort, “We’re going to build this,” but it was just a natural thing to do. It just lent itself to that. I think, throughout the movie, you just get a feel for what’s happening and you don’t really even consciously identify it. You just go with it the way that it feels like it’s going to go, you know?

Rock music and horror as genres have always gone together. There’s a gel between them and it’s just a natural fit. Why do you think those genres work so well together?

I have a theory on that … I think a lot of it has to do with horror and rock and roll having a kindred spirit. They’re are a kindred spirit because they’re both rebellious. They’re both antisocial in a sort of general society type of way. They both use individualistic thinking and disturbing social commentary and subject matter [Laughs]. They’re perfect for each other. They just work, you know? But I also think that that great classical obviously works with horror, but a lot of, especially, modern horror — especially when you get into stuff that involves teenagers and slashers and that sort of frenetic pace stuff — rock and roll works really well for that, because it’s got a certain energy that helps support that. I could theorize about it all I want, but there definitely is a relationship there. I don’t know why fusion jazz works for porn though. [Laughs].

That’s a great question. You also had a cameo as a DJ in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. How did that come about?

You know, that’s so funny to bring that up. I didn’t even know that. I forgot. I don’t even know when that was done. I don’t know what state of mind I was in, because I was recently reminded of that a few months ago. I had completely forgotten about it, and I still can’t remember actually doing it.

One thing you probably remember is your great collaborations with Michael Jackson. How did you find Michael as a collaborator? You worked together so well.

Mike just does his thing and he does it so incredibly well. I mean, he just exudes … it just comes out of him and he just let me do my thing. So I just did what came natural to me and he just let me have the floor — that was basically it. There wasn’t, again, a lot of forethought. When I did “Give in to Me,” I went down to the studio [and] met up with Michael for like 15 minutes. He went to dinner, and I worked with the producer, and I just put guitars on the thing and left. Then Michael heard it, and I got a call back the next day. “Loves it. It’s great.” So it wasn’t what you’d call “true” collaborating, it was just like, “Slash do your thing on this.” [Laughs]. That kind of deal.

It’s pretty incredible that such an artist would have that full trust in you and give that sign-off, like he knows that you would do it best.

It was. It evolved into a lot of live performances and stuff during that period in the 90s. I guess he sort of related to what he thought my trip was all about and just let me do my thing. So it was great for me because I loved working with Michael because he’s such a phenomenal talent, and I would’ve been probably not into it if he tried to get me to conform to some other person or style or whatever, and it probably would’ve never have happened.

You’re front and center for the Guitar Hero 3 video game, and that really got a lot of people back into different aspects of rock music at the time and was hugely popular. Did you feel like that introduced you to a whole different audience through that game?

There are some funny Guitar Hero stories. I mean, when Guitar Hero first came out, I stayed clear of it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. It just looked like a silly toy, right? And so, the second iteration of Guitar Hero, there was one on the Gibson tour bus, and I was having a meeting on the Gibson Tour bus, and my kids were with me. My kids were — I don’t even know what year that was — but they were pretty young. So we took them in the back lounge, and they had that game, and I said, “Oh, here, check this out.” And I got it set up so that they could play it. And in doing so, I was like, “Oh, this is actually sort of cool! I know all these songs. What is this?” [Laughs].

So because of my interest in it, Guitar Hero contacted me not too long after that and got me involved in Guitar Hero 3. And so I did the motion capture video thing with them and all that to be a character in the game and they ended up putting me on the box. So I was introduced to a legion of kids, all under the age of 10, from that game. I actually went over to go visit a producer friend of mine’s place one night and I went over there and his kid came out of the dressing room and he freaked out when he saw me because he couldn’t believe the guy on the box was actually a real person — lost his mind! And that’s stuck with me ever since. I’d never witnessed that before. [Laughs]. So it was an interesting new reality, that Guitar Hero period.

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