How did he get into films? It must have helped that he was close friends with Gavin Greenaway, son of Roger "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" Greenaway, a luminary in the world of advertising jingles. And Hans Zimmer famously got Powell the job of scoring his first movie, the John Woo action thriller Face/Off starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. But you don't get a second job by doing the first one badly, and I think John deserves his success. He can do a bit of Holst, a bit of Strauss, some Copland, some electronica. In fact, as he demonstrated at College, Powell can do just about everything quite well.
Sometimes when I'm sitting there I think, "Should I be feeling envious that he writes film scores that are heard all over the world, whereas I'm just a moderately successful classical composer and conductor of amateur orchestras?" On the whole, no. John must be rich; he lives in sunny L.A. But I've got drink in the house and money in the bank too, and I quite like it here in rainy Manchester.
But there is one thing I envy him. Composing is an isolating and isolated business. Sometimes you get asked to write pieces, but a lot of the time you write something just because you want to, not knowing for certain whether you'll be able to persuade anyone to put it on. John, on the other hand, must feel loved when he gets the phone call. It may not be real love, but it's pretty close and it must make him feel pretty good.
Would I like it if someone rang me up and said, "We're willing to pay you a lot of money to write some music which will be heard by millions of people all over the world"? Yes, I think I would. But - and this is where John Powell and I part company - I might not like it quite so much if the music I had to write was the soundtrack for Ice Age 3 - Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
