Album Cover
There’s an element of unreality in treating the Zabriskie Point soundtrack album separately from the film. The film maker’s intent, naturally enough, is to have the music support and enhance the visuals and not to make a coherent album release in its own right.
And yet taking the audio as a separate subject helps to point up a certain incoherence in it.
The task is not helped by the dominance of Pink Floyd fans in discussions of the film’s music: the Wikipedia entry on the soundtrack (accessed 7 February) has a whole section on the Floyd and not much on the other artists. This is unfortunate, because I find the presence of the Floyd to be anachronistic. That’s not to diminish their musical contribution in its own terms, just to wonder what it’s doing in this film at all. There obviously was a purpose, because Antonioni was careful in his final selection of music, rejecting most of the material the Floyd recorded as well as a Doors recording along the way.
The music that isn’t by Pink Floyd can all be loosely described as Americana and fits the mood and topic of the film like a fedora fits a private dick; it fits much better than a bunch of middle-class art rockers from Cambridge. And I continue to think that even though Come In Number 51 Your Time Is Up (a reworking of Careful With That Axe Eugene) is far and away the best long piece the Floyd recorded in the period between Syd Barrett’s departure and Meddle.
The film and soundtrack album begin with Heart Beat, Pig Meat, a Pink Floyd piece that is largely Rick Wright and Nick Mason overlaid with found sounds and voices. In context at the beginning of the film it is very effective as a mood piece. As the film moves into its impressionistic critique of America, it is soundtracked by American music that fits, whether its Country and Western, Country Rock, 2 minutes of Dark Star with Garcia and Lesh in full flight, vintage Roscoe Holcomb, or John Fahey (I think the only artist to get namechecked in the film). The love scene is set to edited improvisations by Jerry Garcia and his Gibson SG. All of this is on the album and is at least as appealing and interesting as Pink Floyd (and in the case of the Dead, Holcomb, and Fahey, more so).
A third Pink Floyd piece, Crumbling Lady, isn’t a million miles from Crosby Stills and Nash, and you won’t be surprised that I rather think CSN would have fitted better.
As for the end sequence, it is a classic piece of cinema and I really like the music. I also like that the soundtrack to the exploding house is provided by three former architecture students. But I still think the change from Americana to brooding Europeans is jarring. This isn’t just a stylistic thing, there’s a space and airiness about the American recordings that isn’t there in the material recorded by Pink Floyd in Rome.
I don’t know whether Antonioni used Pink Floyd for the exploding house because he was making some obscure deeper point or just because he liked it; I suspect the latter and I don’t blame him for that. Odd though, that he then finished the film with Daria driving off into the sunset to a Roy Orbison song (not on the album) that plays over the credits.
What I’m saying, I guess, is that the soundtrack album is a mixed bag and, in my opinion, best heard in its proper context.
Here are John Fahey and the Grateful Dead.
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