Words matter. These are the best Alan Menken Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I love ‘The Gospel Truth,’ the song that opened up ‘Hercules.’ I thought that song was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed producing that and writing that.
I’ve said, for a long time, my favorite part of my career is when I’m creating a new thing where I’m pulling from a new place.
I was always a composer since I was a kid, but the BMI Workshop is where the networking really all stems from. So many writers and influences and ways of communicating all sprang out of the time I was a member of that workshop.
Music can be witty, but it’s not funny unless it’s conceptually funny.
A lot of the projects I’ve been involved with have been my babies, and I’m not going to give my baby to anyone else.
My first success was ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ and I had been working for years on jingles.
There’s such a rich trove of unheard Howard Ashman lyrics that we’re so blessed to draw from.
Whether it’s animated, whether it’s live-action, whether it’s Broadway, whether it’s television, a musical is a musical is a musical. So, pretty much, you approach the songs in pretty much the same way.
Movies, you can insulate yourself more from audience, to a degree, and just look at box office. In theater, the audience is a very dynamic part of your process, and you feel much more exposed.
The reality is that people need to be coaxed toward a musical. They need to understand why it’s a musical.
Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it’s also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work – it’s easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own.
The Disney tradition – number one, it’s a great American classic tradition – and it’s something where you don’t want to go over certain lines. You want to poke fun, but you don’t want to poke fun in a way that’s hurtful.
I’m an architect. Before you start pouring the concrete, you build a foundation that is solid so that when you take the scaffolding down, it holds – forever. So that when junior high schools are doing ‘Hunchback,’ a 12-year-old as Frollo still works on some level.
For a while now, I try to ignore the hoopla, because if you buy into that, you have to buy into the criticism. All you can do is put your work out there and move on; you just never know what will come.
Collaboration is being open to each other’s ideas and benefiting from each other’s perspectives in an open way.
I have an awards cabinet in my studio where I keep my eight Oscars, my 11 Grammys, my seven Golden Globes, and my Tony Award.
Whatever I gain from writing lyrics, I feel I lose a little bit for the musical aspect by having that lyrical burden on me. But when I’m liberated from worrying about the words, frankly, I feel I’m a better composer.
I can’t get into the underlying psyche of someone like Robin Williams, but he was at that level of fame where he was somewhat self-protective.
I’m not interested in being the producer of somebody else’s song.
It’s writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that’s broader than just figuring out a song. You’re also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.
When I first started working at Disney animation, I can’t tell you how many people said to me, ‘Oh, man, take a powder.’ Nobody takes animated musicals seriously. I swear.
I’m very proud of ‘Will the Sun Ever Shine Again.’ That was a song written very close to the 9/11 event.
Most things that I write are in very specific forms. A score will have a shape and profile, and then the more emotional and intimate moments will come.
I have a team who I respect immensely, so if they have opinions, I’m interested in hearing them.
The act of writing a song involves a degree of letting go of yourself, and that’s very much being a child.
I have the ability to clear the decks and focus on what’s happening in the moment. And I get to spend my life doing what I love to do.
I have lots of personal feelings of my own, but at this stage in my life and career, I’m very much driven by assignment.
‘Snow White’ was really hip for its time. Walt Disney was basically using Sigmund Romberg and operetta in the telling of the story, and through animation – that was revolutionary.
What I look for in a partner is a skill, a voice of their own so I have a strength to go up against. They definitely have to be able to get out of their own way. I can’t take somebody being precious about their work.
If you’re writing for yourself as an artist, you are always pulling on your own experiences.
In animation, the directors are part of a huge team of animators who all have opinions, too. It’s a much more democratic process. Also, the animation executives oversee things more.
TV is a medium where I’ve been an outsider for the most part.
You’re creating a score that has to have an emotional and story logic to it. You want a dramatic arc. You want all the songs to push story forward. That’s the same whether it’s for stage or film or television or whatever.
I work in a dramatic context, meaning we write with a lot of character specifics, a lot of story specifics. There’s a lot of architecture in our songs.
The things I tend to do best are the things that are the most overtly emotional, whether it’s sentimental or whether it’s celebratory or whether it’s conflicted.
I’ve been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I’m very proud of it.
Music is a gestalt. Songs are a life force and they have specific vocabulary to them. You hear a few notes, and they take you into a world of association.
For a brief period, I had a gentleman’s farm in Pennsylvania, but even then, I kept a place in New York.
I was always proud of the score to ‘Newsies.’ The movie is good, but it was under-budgeted.
What brought me to Disney was the new regime, which is now the old regime – came over with Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg – and all these people really wanted to reinvigorate the animated musical, so they came to Howard Ashman and me. That was my entry into Disney.
I’ve always juggled a lot of projects because at least half the projects you do get shelved. So you have to do a lot of things in order for things to move forward.
Of my Disney material, ‘Tangled’ is my most pop-oriented.
Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm and, I think, should elicit an emotion of happiness or of celebration or of sadness or of sorrow or of love or laughter, whatever.
I think the thing that strikes you when you come back to ‘The Little Mermaid’ after all of these years is the simplicity and innocence. That’s in the look of it, and that’s in the sound of it.
Often my best work comes from somebody trying to stretch me in a direction that I wouldn’t normally want to go in. It’s not something I fight at all.
When ‘Newsies’ first came out, it just crash-landed with a thud; it won a Razzie for worst song of the year, and I felt such embarrassment. Fast-forward, and it’s a hit on Broadway, and I win a Tony for the score!
Most successful musicals need to attach themselves to something bigger than themselves, a concept that will make people feel immediately connected to it.
My favorite experience, in general, probably was the ‘Little Shop’ experience, which probably was terrifying, frustrating, and exhilarating and amazing, but because it was the first, that was the one where I watched the show just launch itself for the first time and thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to have a career.’
Most of my collaborations, certainly post – Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.
When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.