Legendary composer Alan Menken on his early days at Disney
Alan Menken is being honoured with a BBC Proms night featuring music from his work with Disney
- Published
"I don't want to say a whole new world - it was a new world for me," says award-winning song writer and composer Alan Menken on his early days at Disney.
He's the musician behind hits like A Whole New World and soundtracks including Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, which he co-wrote with the late Howard Ashman.
Menken is one of only 22 people on the planet to have attained a competitive EGOT: a term that refers to having won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. In fact, he has eight Oscars.
However, his early days at Disney were not so glamorous: "We weren't on the main lot because animation had been exiled," he says.
Menken's work for Disney, with Ashman and after, is being honoured with a night at the BBC Proms, which will see the Royal Albert Hall filled with music from Hercules, Pocahontas and Tangled.
"It's always a thrill to have a demonstration of how much my work has meant to people," Menken says, adding that it's amazing to have the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra perform his work calling orchestral performance an "endangered medium".
Menken composed the musical score for the songs in The Little Mermaid - while also composing the music for the song A Whole New World, from the film Aladdin, with lyrics by Sir Tim Rice
Music has always interested Menken, from watching Disney's Fantasia as a young child to being a messy college student with a broken bust of Beethoven balanced on a heating pipe in his dorm room.
In the mid-1980s, the American musician remembers getting a call from Ashman about an offer to create The Little Mermaid soundtrack; he had been watching old Disney films on VHS with his daughter.
"The world was a pretty fraught place then, as it is now - that's the way it is - and I had this feeling, this is the one safe space in the world," Menken recalls of the cozy afternoon spent watching films.
He fondly recalls working alongside his close friend Ashman, the pair having previously co-created the musical Little Shop of Horrors, based on the 1960 film of the same name. He recalls Roy E. Disney, wanting to "give new life to animation" at the studio, which had dwindled in output and staff after his uncle Walt Disney's death in 1966.
Menken and Ashman would go on to win their first Oscars for their work creating the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid.
"It was an incredible time," Menken recalls. However, he explains, he became aware during this period that Ashman was dying, due to complications from Aids, adding: "It was a plague that was affecting so much of the theater world and the film world".
Ashman (left) and Menken (right) were close friends and won multiple awards for their work on The Little Mermaid including Best Original Song at the Golden Globes
After the success of The Little Mermaid, Menken and Ashman went to work on Beauty and the Beast and they started but never finished their work together on Aladdin.
Menken's memories from that time are bittersweet and he recalls writing the cheery song Prince Ali with his friend: "That was written on Howard's hospital bed, I brought a keyboard in, Howard was dying," he recalls, a slight crack in his voice.
"It is life and death and emotion and birth and everything and that drama I think also lives in the work itself."
"I think about him a lot", Menken says, explaining when he plays the songs he wrote with Ashman he can't help but admire his old friend's work as a "uniquely amazing lyricist" with a particular talent for marrying the different aspects of songs together.
Taking a moment to pause, Menken says he often wonders what Ashman would think of his newer work, including Enchanted and Tangled: "I'd like to think that he would like and approve of where my career has gone since he's been gone."
Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda collaborated on an updated soundtrack for The Little Mermaid live action movie
While it was "heart-rending", Menken describes the time they had together as a "blessing" and remarks on the impact it had on others: "those kids who grew up watching those movies, like Lin-Manuel Miranda or Bobby Lopez, they're the ones writing it now."
Bobby Lopez co-wrote the songs for Frozen and Coco, while Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote Hamilton and co-wrote songs for Moana.
Menken fondly recalls working with the next generation of musical theatre artists: "I wrote with Lin on The Little Mermaid live action [and] it's like a passing of the flame."
The musician says that musicals are a "wonderful form" and he encourages other young people to write musical theatre.
His advice to those wanting to follow in his footsteps is not to fall in love with your own songs because they may need to be cut, "just be in love with the process and do it, and do it, and do it and do it, and let others fall in love with the result."
While he's hopeful for the next generation of musicians, the award-winner is concerned about the future of musical theatre as a sector, noting that "the logistics are kind of broken right now, financially".
The musician explains how hard it is to make money due to the high cost of production, and also notes that high ticket prices are making the art form prohibitive for a lot of audiences.
"We have to work on that," Menken says.
You can watch BBC Proms: Enchanted - Alan Menken's Music for Disney on BBC Two at 17:30 BST on Saturday 5 September and on BBC iPlayer now.
