Labyrinth (1986)

The Bowie Project #18 – Labyrinth (1986)

In the midst of David Bowie’s 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour the enigmatic rock star had a meeting with legendary American puppeteer and inventor of the Muppets Jim Henson. To understand why we must first understand what it is the Muppet mastermind was working on. Henson had been collaborating with conceptual designer Brian Froud on a children’s movie idea, initially the only thing they were sure about was that they wanted it to feature goblins and a baby. Before too long a script was developed which featured a main antagonist, Jared the Goblin King, an unusual shape shifting villain with a long layered blonde mullet who dresses in outlandish outfits and wears sparkly eye makeup. The character exudes charisma and unusually for kids film aggressive sexuality. This movie is definitely a strange one that warrants a full psychoanalytic analysis because there is a lot to unpack here. Henson decided that the character needed to be played by a beguiling rock star and at different points had considered Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Prince and Sting for the role. Eventually they landed on Bowie and the meeting was organised. Henson showed him footage from their previous project the Dark Crystal as well as Froud’s artwork and outlined their idea for the movie. Bowie said he always wanted to be involved in writing music for a musical movie and they gave him free rein to work on the soundtrack. The result is a terribly infectious mishmash of styles that brings together the whimsy of children’s cinema along with Bowie’s tendency towards theatricality, all under the umbrella of the strange stylistic excesses of the 1980s.

Labyrinth is a 1986 musical fantasy film directed by Jim Henson with a script by Monty Python’s Terry Jones and George Lucas acting as executive producer. It revolves around 16-year-old Sarah’s (played by Jennifer Connolly) quest to find the centre of a giant otherworldly maze to rescue her baby half-brother Toby who she accidently wished away to Jared the Goblin King (played by David Bowie). Most of the other main characters are played by puppets produced by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. The movie begins with Sarah frustrated that she has to babysit her little brother and she wishes that he would be taken away by goblins, Jared appears and says her wish is granted and she instantly regrets it but it is too late. Jared takes Toby to a fantasy maze world and says that Sarah has 13 hours to solve the labyrinth or else Toby will be turned into a goblin forever. Sarah meets many characters on her otherworldly journey in a narrative that is reminiscent of things like the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Where the Wild Things Are.

At its heart this is a fairy-tale, and most fairy tales are coming of age stories that represent the transition from one world into another, and because of the nature of these stories and their relationship with real life transitions they are often as messy, weird, and confusing as actually growing up. The tales of the Brothers Grimm have always been incredibly dark and sinister, even Little Red Riding Hood is essentially about menstruation. This children’s tale is no different but in this case David Bowie is at the heart of it. The symbolism in Labyrinth is highly sexual, Sarah is being stalked by time as the clock ticks on her journey to becoming a woman, Jared is for lack of a better expression packing heat with his crouch being stuffed to excess, he represents many things for the teenage Sarah, a potential older suitor who can teach her the ways of the world, a fatherly figure as well as villain, a representation of all that is good and bad, daunting and exciting in the big new world of adulthood. Baby brother Toby too is a symbol of innocence, the childhood that is about to be lost to the unknown, she is fighting to try to save him, but it was her decision to give him up in the first place. It’s a movie about childhood and growing up, but also about a young woman’s agency and ability to find her footing in the world. It’s about all these things and one of the main devices used to tell this tale is through music and that’s what we’re talking about today, the Labyrinth soundtrack, and specifically David Bowie’s contribution to it. 

The soundtrack features six original songs by Bowie interspersed with composer Trevor Jones’ score for the film, wrote the lyrics for the opening titles set to Jones’ music and then wholly composed the other five songs himself. The songs were recorded between April and June 1985 in London, with overdubs taped in October and November in New York. Bowie and Jones produced the soundtrack along with Arif Mardin who Bowie had previously worked with on his last album Tonight. Bowie’s work on this soundtrack is often overlooked when discussing the more critically applauded phases in his career, but for many people Bowie’s boisterous singing and 80’s synth-sounds was their first exposure to him as a musical artist. These songs are often overlooked in his catalogue so maybe now is the time to give them a deeper investigation and see what is really going on in the Labyrinth soundtrack.

The song “Underground” bookends this album as we begin with the “Opening Titles Including Underground” as Bowie kickstarts things by highlighting the main struggle and fairy-tale nature of this film with the phrases “it’s only forever, not long at all”. This lyric expertly captures adolescence and the feeling that adulthood is forever away but also just around the corner. An excellent introduction into the world of Labyrinth.

Next up is probably the most well-loved song on the soundtrack with “Magic Dance”. What’s so great about this song, and what separates it from a lot of Bowie’s 80s work is just how extremely fun it is. Bowie is having a great time with this soundtrack, and I think has committed wholeheartedly to his role as Jared the Goblin King. This is the song that Jared sings after abducting the baby and was originally supposed to feature an over and back between Bowie and the gurgling sounds of one of the backup singers, Diva’s small child, however when it came time to record Bowie says the baby “couldn’t put two gurgles together” and he was forced to record the baby sounds himself. He stated, “I’m the baby on that track as well. I thought, ‘What the hell, I’ve done ‘Laughing Gnome’, I might as well go all the way.’” The introduction “You remind me of the babe” was also lifted almost word for word from the 1947 Cary Grant movie The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. The song is a serious bop and if you forget for a moment about the tracks association with Labyrinth and the plot of the movie, you get a piece of music tackling the old theme of using black magic to achieve love a la something like “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or “Love Potion No. 9” by the Searchers. “Magic Dance” was released as a single to modest success and was enough of a disco nightclub contended to warrant a seven-minute dance remix of the song.

“Chilly Down” is the only song composed by Bowie for the soundtrack in which he does not sing lead vocals, instead that honour is given to the Fire Gang creatures, the woodland puppet critters who guide Sarah on her wayward journey. Bowie acted as producer on the song and along with Eric Idle from Monty Python spent a night in the recording studio guiding the voice actors. This song re-purposed some stuff he’d been considering for his own studio albums and the reggae music backing wouldn’t sound completely out of place on his previous album Tonight. Much like “Magic Dance” it’s a lot of fun and chorus along with keyboard backing never fails to put me in a good mood, it’s very 80s, very groovy, and just perfect for a kid’s movie soundtrack, I can being imagine just obsessed with the Fire Gang as a seven- or eight-year-old watching this movie.

The ballad “As the World Falls Down” acts as part of a dream sequence in which Jared dances with Sarah at a masquerade ball and highlights the possibility that she could take Jared up on his offer to stay in the land of the Labyrinth and become his queen. The film’s story is that of a coming-of-age movie and as such Jared is portrayed as somewhat sexually alluring adult figure, she entered this world a child but as she’s grown up on this journey, she’s starting to enter womanhood and all the temptations that come with that are laid out on front of her. The song itself is quite a beautiful slow love song, it was slated to be a Christmas single in 1986 and even had a music video shot for it but the idea was scrapped at last minute, it’s said that was because Bowie was getting ready to release a more hard-rock based studio album and this slow overtly romantic track would have muddied his plans to reinvent himself once again. Although the song has hit potential, especially for this time, and had that been the case could stand among other similar songs from the era like George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”.

As Sarah reaches the heart of the labyrinth we too reach the climatic song of the soundtrack with “Within You” a track that barely has a melody with Bowie saying he wanted to write something that sounded like “stone walls and crumbling power”, it is all build up, and pleading, Jared’s last desperate attempt to bring Sarah to the dark side. Bowie called it his favourite track from the album “very tragic and slightly disturbing”.

And just like that we are back where we started with “Underground” this time it’s as a more straightforward pop version as opposed to the opening titles. We’ve gone through the full journey and come out older and wiser. The fairy-tale nature of the movie has come full circle, Sarah entered into the unknown, faced obstacles and challenges, defeated foes and villains, and came back born anew. It’s a tale as old as time from Hercules to Jesus Christ, to Harry Potter. But we love to hear it again and again because it teaches us what it means to be a human and to always be fighting and learning. “It’s only forever, it’s not long at all”

There’s some who ignore Labyrinth when discussing the discography of David Bowie and I think that’s a big mistake, he didn’t just vapidly accept the part of Jared the Goblin King and show up for two days of filming and disappear never to think about it again like some rock star roles in movies, he was deeply involved in the construction of the film, he wrote the music and lyrics to huge sections of the soundtrack, he believed in this film and committed to the same way he did with his own projects. For a lot of people Labyrinth might be their first exposure to Bowie, and that experience could nurture a lifelong love for his music. It might not be everyone's cup of tea but there’s a lot to love about it, and whenever I see Bowie with his outrageous 80s mullet, or whatever name you could give to his incredible mane of a hairstyle, it always puts a smile on my face.

Labyrinth (1986) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ [6/10]