![]() Little wonder then that he has been able to suggest a variety (or sometimes a combination) of styles - from pop to jazz to soul to calypso - in each "Miami Vice" episode. Always on the cutting edge of the synthesizer revolution, Hammer eventually drifted to rock, working with artists like Neal Schon, Al DiMeola, Mick Jagger and Jeff Beck. Hammer started off playing in Sarah Vaughan's backing group, before turning to jazz fusion as a key member of the original Mahavishnu Orchestra. He had formed his first group there in high school, a trio with bassist Miroslav Vitous (later a founding member of Weather Report), and Vitous and Hammer ended up with scholarships to Boston's Berklee College of Music. The keyboard player immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1968, just before the Russian invasion. I've lived that life, believe me, for long years. I'm in the middle of woods and meadows, I don't need to go to the city at all."Īnd about the show's ambience, he says, "I've done it. I have everything I need to do my work here - a state-of-the-art 24-track automated studio. ![]() "Personally I cannot imagine a better arrangement. "Wouldn't you prefer not to leave your home, if you have a beautiful home, a beautiful family and didn't have to go anywhere?" he says. Hammer's workplace, on a 150-year-old farm about an hour outside New York City, is not precisely "Vice"-like. But from talking to Michael, I immediately sensed that he was onto something, that he was after a different sounding show, not just a different looking show." But I had no idea it was going to turn out to be such a good show, so different. "And you think, if it goes, it can be lucrative. When producer Mann first approached him about a weekly show, with new music for every episode, "I was interested it was something I wanted to try. Hammer was no stranger to scoring before "Miami Vice," having worked on several movies and television specials. It works because Hammer composes, performs and engineers every note of original music heard on "Miami Vice." Music coordinator Fred Lyle selects the rock songs that are also prominently featured. Here, I've been totally left alone and I can do all the things I've ever done at the same time. "I was allowed to work under my own terms. "There is a good reason for it," he adds. It's an honest-to-goodness rock thing - driving, rude rock and roll. "It's really a rock thing, which is why it stands apart from all other series themes. The only time we talk is if he says 'we want more, more, more music.' "Īs for the music's success, Hammer says that most hit themes have been wimpy. This is an unprecedented move, producer Michael Mann giving me this much leeway, but it's really paying off. "I think that's why so much TV music sounds so bland, so prefab. "Producers usually not only want scorers on site, they want to look over their shoulder, they want to meddle," Hammer says. Without Hammer's music, it wouldn't be the same. Louder than life and obviously geared to the MTV generation, "Miami Vice" is yuppie hip. ![]() Sound is an integral part of the show's appeal, as important as Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas' fashions or the stylized violence. Unlike most television shows, "Miami Vice" puts its music in the foreground. "Miami Vice Theme" is his first hit single. "It's really wonderful," says Hammer, who finds himself at 37 both a celebrity and a chart-topper after almost two decades of trench work in the music business. That was also the last time musical textures were so crucial to a show's integrity. And where the album sits, too - the first TV sound track to do so since Henry Mancini's "Music From Peter Gunn" 27 years ago. Which is exactly where his high-voltage theme song for "Miami Vice" is listed on the pop charts.
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