Inside Johnny Marr’s guitar contributions to Inception

Looming large in the incredible catalog of Hans Zimmer, perhaps the greatest film composer of the 21st century, are his collaborations with blockbuster artisan Christopher Nolan.

Zimmer scored almost all of Nolan’s films between 2005 and 2017, a run that included the Batman Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, and Inception, the mind-bending epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a sort of dream thief given the near-impossible task of planting an original idea into someone’s mind while they sleep without their noticing. Trust me, it rocks, if you haven’t had the pleasure.

Zimmer is, in Nolan’s words, “A minimalist composer with a maximalist production sense.” He tends to be best-known for the blaring climaxes of his scores, but he often doesn’t really get enough credit for the subtler, more atmospheric soundscapes that help make those tremendous swells, when they arrive, so powerful.

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Indeed, another, milder texture was what Zimmer had in mind when he began writing a guitar part to counterbalance the leviathan low brass swells of Time, one of Inception‘s pivotal instrumental themes.

“I was sitting and playing around with bad sampled guitar sounds, and I started coming up with this little tune,” Zimmer said in a 2010 interview. “I knew at that moment who I was writing for.”

“[Hans] said he was going to get somebody like Johnny Marr,” Nolan recalled in a 2010 interview. “That was how he said it, [but] the smile on his face meant to me that that was exactly who we were going to have playing it.”

Luckily for Zimmer, the real Johnny Marr was happy to put his inimitable touch on the ringing arpeggios the composer had written for him.

The Music of Inception- The Making of the Inception Soundtrack [Score Featurette] (Hans Zimmer) – YouTube

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Marr discussed the experience of working on the Inception score in a 2013 Guitar World interview. He realized there are rules you have to follow when contributing to film scores, and shared what he learned from working with the decorated composer.

“As a guitar player I used to think that you could approach soundtracks in an abstract fashion, perhaps because of Neil Young’s work on [the 1995 Jim Jarmusch film] Dead Man,” he said. “It seemed like there was a lot of scope for experimentation.

“That may be so, but my experience doing two different soundtracks – Inception and [2011 film] The Big Bang – taught me that there are two aspects that you absolutely have to follow.

“The first is that you must be appropriate to the scene’s emotion, whether it’s sad, dramatic, tense, excited, erotic, or whatever,” he explained. “The second is that you have to click with the director, because it’s his vision.

“Working with Hans was great, because he insisted on me being free to make it sound like me.”

That said, the collaboration presented a number of obstacles for Marr – not least because he was adapting another instrument to the electric guitar.

“The most challenging thing about the Inception pieces was that the parts were originally composed on a piano and written for 10 fingers to play.

“Even though some of the parts sound simplistic, I had to really work it out by detuning and playing in weird positions,” Marr continued. “Then there were the odd time signatures and key changes to deal with. But I really love Hans’ voicings, so it was fun to work them out on guitar.”

Marr recently announced that he’s set to join the parade of celebrity guitar auctions with a mega sale of his own. All proceeds from 10 of the guitars will go to British charities, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and The National Autistic Society.