NEW LP
New sealed copy. Reissue.
The Big Lebowski - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was originally released on February 24th, 1998 and was produced by T-Bone Burnett, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen.
The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a veteran of all the Coen Brothers' films. While the Coens were writing the screenplay they had Kenny Rogers' "Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was in)", the Gipsy Kings' cover of "Hotel California", and several Creedence Clearwater Revival songs in mind. They asked T-Bone Burnett (who would later work with the Coens on O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis) to pick songs for the soundtrack of the film. They knew that they wanted different genres of music from different times but, as Joel remembers, "T-Bone even came up with some far-out Henry Mancini and Yma Sumac."
Burnett was able to secure songs by Kenny Rogers and the Gipsy Kings and also added tracks by Captain Beefheart, Moondog and Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me". However, he had a tough time securing the rights to Townes Van Zandt's cover of the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers", which plays over the film's closing credits. Former Stones manager Allen Klein owned the rights to the song and wanted $150,000 for it. Burnett convinced Klein to watch an early cut of the film and remembers, "It got to the part where the Dude says, 'I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man!' Klein stands up and says, 'That's it, you can have the song!' That was beautiful.
"Burnett was going to be credited on the film as "Music Supervisor", but asked his credit to be "Music Archivist" because he "hated the notion of being a supervisor; I wouldn't want anyone to think of me as management".
For Joel, "the original music, as with other elements of the movie, had to echo the retro sounds of the Sixties and early Seventies". "Music defines each character. For example, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" by Bob Nolan was chosen for the Stranger at the time the Coens wrote the screenplay, as was "Lujon" by Henry Mancini for Jackie Treehorn. "The German nihilists are accompanied by techno-pop and Jeff Bridges by Creedence. So there's a musical signature for each of them", remarked Ethan in an interview. The character Uli Kunkel was in the German electronic band Autobahn, an homage to the band Kraftwerk. The album cover of their record Nagelbett (bed of nails) is a parody of the Kraftwerk album cover for The Man-Machine and the group name Autobahn shares the name of a Kraftwerk song and album. In the lyrics the phrase "We believe in nothing" is repeated with electronic distortion. This is a reference to Autobahn's nihilism in the film.
TRACKLIST:
A1 Bob Dylan – The Man In Me
A2 Captain Beefheart – Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles
A3 Elvis Costello – My Mood Swings
A4 Yma Sumac – Ataypura
A5 Piero Piccioni – Traffic Boom
A6 Nina Simone – I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good
A7 Moondog With Orchestra – Stamping Ground
B1 Kenny Rogers & The First Edition – Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My
B2 Meredith Monk – Walking Song
B3 Erich Wolfgang Korngold – "Glück Das Mir Verblieb" From The Opera "Die Tote
B4 Henry Mancini – Lujon
B5 Gipsy Kings – Hotel California
B6 Carter Burwell – Wie Glauben
B7 Townes Van Zandt – Dead Flowers
