Interview - Tommy Tallarico

-Can you give me some Info on when you worked on "Evil Dead: Hail to the
King"?

We started the Evil Dead project in the spring of 2000. I started on the music in the summer and recorded the live orchestra at the end of September. We completely finished the project (sound effects, dialogue, music, cinematics) in October.

-What are some of your influences?

Overall I would say that Beethoven, Elvis Presley, Eddie Van Halen, John Williams, Enigma and Delerium would be my biggest influences. But when I started the Evil Dead project I was listening a lot to Carl Orffs' Carmina Burana and the soundtrack to the Omen (Jerry Goldsmith). There was also a song that Jerry Goldsmith did from the movie First Knight entitled Arthurs Farewell. Amazing tune! I high recommend people checking it out. Duel of the Fates (John Williams) from Episode 1 was along referenced along with Conan the Barbarian (of course!). As I was watching The Lord of the Rings I was thinking to myself I would have listened to a lot of that music also.

-What made you get into creating game music?

I'm originally from Springfield, Massachusetts. When I was a kid I always wanted to move to Southern California to be a musician (doesn't everybody!). Anyway, when I turned 21 I left Mass. And drove across country to Southern California. The only thing I really knew out here was Hollywood, so I drove to Hollywood. I didn't have a place to stay, didn't know anybody, didn't have a job, and oh yeah, I didn't have any money!!! So I showed up in Hollywood, took a look around and said "What the hell is this!!!" for those of you who have been to Hollywood, you know what I'm talking about. Hollywood isn't exactly the way they portray it on T.V., it's kind of a dump! The only other thing I knew in California was Disneyland, so I stopped some bum on the street and asked him where Mickey Mouse lived. He pointed me about 45 minutes south to Orange County. When I got to Orange County I said "Now this is more like it!" So I picked up a newspaper and I got a job the very next day selling keyboards at the Guitar Center. I was sleeping either in my car or on Huntington Beach at this point, so I was looking for anything I could find and I knew about music keyboards so what the hell! The next day I started and believe it or not, the very first person to walk in the store who I waited on happened to be a producer for a new software company starting up called Virgin Mastertronic. I've loved music my whole life, I've been playing piano since I was 3 years old. My second love has always been video games. Never in my whole life did I ever think of putting my 2 loves together until that day. I became the first tester at Virgin the next day. (A tester was somebody who they paid to play games and find things wrong with them. There were only about 15 people at Virgin at the time, so they didn't need a full time musician. When the first opportunity arose for music (Prince of Persia on the Gameboy and Global Gladiators for the Sega Genesis), I jumped on it. I would sit down with the programmers and technicians every chance I got to learn about the machines. I know nothing about programming. I just know music and games. It's definitely been a plus in my career. I worked on Prince of Persia for free and on the weekends and after work. The V.P. of the company was so impressed he made me the music guy!

-How long did it take to make the soundtrack for the Evil Dead game?

The music itself was about 2 months of work. The sound effects and dialogue editing were another 2 months and the cinematics about a month. So although there was probably 5 months worth of work, it's spread out over the year. It all doesn't happen at once because the designers, programmers & producers give input all along the way and sometimes we need to wait before the next animation or level design is completed.

-What do you know about the next Evil Dead game?

In the summer of 2001 we were contracted by THQ to do the audio for the trailer for Evil Dead 2. It was really amazing! It was about 2 1/2 minutes long and told the story about how the "Evil" had returned. They were doing the trailer for E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Exposition). I'm not sure of the details, but the developer who originally worked on it is now working with me on Scooby Doo. I think THQ is contracting a new company to do the work but I haven't heard anything recently.

-Will you be composing and creating music for it? similar to Hail to the King?

I would imagine we would probably go for the same gothic/latin choir feel.

-What is your favourite movie the Evil Dead Trilogy?

I would say that my favorite is probably Army of Darkness mostly because you see Ashs' whole attitude and character change. He's now this confident warrior as opposed to being a scared weakling. He had a lot more memorable one-liners also.
Runner up would be Evil Dead 2. I like the way they basically redid the first one but in a better way. It's so weird how they did that?? I'm not sure another movie series has done anything like that before.