Think of him as Mr. Curious, mellow
Jack Johnson‘s soft, melodic blend of acoustic folk pop has gone from Hawaii to Hollywood – in a curious way.
The surfer-singer-songwriter gives voice to the voiceless star of “Curious George” with nine songs woven into the score of the new animated movie.
Five more tunes can be found on the soundtrack, available Tuesday – which includes Johnson’s musical amigo Ben Harper – as well as singalongs and lullabies for the kiddies. (Johnson has a 2-year-old son.)
Billing just below Will Ferrell and Drew Barrymore is a big shift for the sometimes reluctant musician behind “Brushfire Fairytales” and “In Between Dreams” – as was creating music within the micromanaged movie studio system.
Johnson wrote and rewrote songs as filmmakers tweaked the storyboard and script, matching lyrics to pictures and adjusting as both were changed.
“I’ve always written songs and had control of my own things. I’ve never really done art by committee before,” he says from his home in Oahu.
“Sometimes you’d do the songs, you’d show it to everybody, and they’d say, ‘Well, I like this, I think it could go somewhere else in the film. I think it’d go better here.’
“And sometimes you’d feel like it was perfect for the scene. So there was a lot of compromising going on with that. But they were actually pretty great about never having me change the lyrics.”
For example, with George was loose in the city, Johnson wrote a relatively uptempo celebration of “People Watching,” figuring the monkey was excited by everything around him. Animators asked that he intersperse darker moments.
“When George realizes he’s lost the Man in the Yellow Hat, the mood had to change,” says director Matthew O’Callaghan. “He had to adjust the lyrics and the tone of that piece to work with that part of the feature.”
Kathy Nelson, president of Universal Pictures Music, says she had approached Johnson to license songs for movies at least a half dozen times, but he wasn’t interested. She pitched “George” expecting just three or four songs, but he went all-out.
“In terms of music, it was Jack from the beginning,” she says. “I’m not so sure if it had been a movie with initially tremendously high expectations, if it had been a big event movie, if I’d have ever been able to do anything this daring.”
O’Callaghan says Johnson’s gentle music perfectly matches the monkey.
“It’s like you’re sitting at a little fire at the beach, and he’s sitting next to you playing his acoustic guitar,” O’Callaghan says. “It has a very small feel to it. … It fits really well with George. He’s such a small little guy – monkey – and it really works for him.”
Stripped-down orchestration is used in the movie alongside Johnson’s tunes. It was recorded in London, and Johnson says producers offered to fly him there to collaborate, but he declined.
“The waves were calling,” he says.
The birthday bunch
Actress Kim Novak is 73. Actor George Segal (“Just Shoot Me”) is 72. Actor Bo Svenson is 65. Singer-bassist-actor Peter Tork (The Monkees) is 64. Actress Carol Lynley is 64. Actress Stockard Channing is 62. Jerry Springer is 62. Peter Gabriel is 56. Actor David Naughton is 55. Singer/spoken-word artist Henry Rollins is 45. Actress Mena Suvari is 27.