Cinematic musical legacies simply don’t get any bigger than STAR WARS. Helmed by the incomparable John Williams since 1977, the music of STAR WARS is as integral to the franchise’s identity as lightsabers, adventure, droids, and fantastical displays of good vs. evil. Fueled by captivating themes, romantic orchestral fantasy, and exhilarating swells of interstellar action, Williams’ music has elevated and supported George Lucas’ cinematic outer-space escapist vision for decades. However, with the expansion into spin-off stories and “small screen” adventures, the opportunity finally arose for new musical voices to enter the STAR WARS conversation.
One of the voices to chime in recently is composer Joseph Shirley. A dedicated and sincere talent, Shirley’s deep passion for film and television composing has led him down some interesting musical pathways. One of which, led to the STAR WARS universe. After assisting his friend, collaborator, and former boss Ludwig Göransson (CREED, TENET) on the score for THE MANDALORIAN, Shirley secured the gig as lead composer for THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT.
A natural evolution for both Shirley and Disney+, this new story brought one of the franchise’s most enigmatic and popular characters out of the shadow and into the bright light of Tatooine. Having been previously reintroduced in THE MANDALORIAN, the continuation in a new space provided an interesting musical challenge. After teaming up with Göransson for a moment to spiritually link the two series, Shirley effectively picked up the gaffi stick and blazed his own musical trail through the desert.
Utilizing a stunning array of vocals, soaring themes, expansive instrumentation, and adrenaline-inducing rhythms, Shirley injected an incredible amount of emotion and heart into Boba’s seemingly steely exterior. To learn a bit more about Shirley and his own personal STAR WARS adventure, I sent him a message via an R2 droid inviting him to chat. This is the conversion that resulted.
DG: Tell us a little bit about your musical journey and how you got here.
Joseph Shirley: I started playing piano when I was really young. I remember my relatives saying that when I was before-I-can-remember young, I was trying to figure out melodies on our family piano. That led to taking lessons when I was seven and studying classical piano throughout those years and into high school. And that carried on into college too. I studied classical piano and jazz piano in college.
But I do come from a musical family. I have three brothers and we all play different instruments. I do wonder if my oldest brother was kinda the mastermind behind it. He told us what we should play when we were old enough to start doing it. For my younger brother, he was like, “You should play drums.” And for me, he was like, “Well, you’re playing piano so why don’t you keep doing that? I’ll play bass. And, our other brother will play guitar.” He was kind of masterminding a family band out of it. We grew up playing at family events and small gigs around town, and that was our childhood together. I’m from Mississippi so we played a lot of blues. It was a really cool entrance into popular music while I had the classical side going.
As far as film scoring goes, it actually [started with] my aunt’s class. My aunt taught me English and Creative Writing at the high school that I went to. She’s a brilliant lady and she allowed me to write a musical for a creative writing project. My buddies and I, with our family’s cameras, shot it and made a movie out of it. I had my friends over to record their vocal parts and everything. That was just an amazing eye-opening experience of writing music for a visual medium. And I swear, I think that’s what started it for me. It was wanting to do more music for film and TV that kind of opened up the door. A lot of credit to her.
I then studied composition down in New Orleans at Loyola. I just always knew I wanted to write music for film and TV. I did a bunch of student shorts and projects along the way and was playing in a lot of bands around town. But I just knew I wanted to move out to LA and follow that dream, you know? That’s what brought me out here. I then went to USC for their Screen Scoring Program where they take in like, 20 composers a year. I was very fortunate to be able to get into it. When I graduated from there, Ludwig Göransson needed an assistant. He hired me after a couple of months of stress and anxiety from not knowing what I’m going to do in Los Angeles. But he luckily took me on and hired me as his assistant. That’s truly how I got into the business; through that assistantship.
I definitely want to dig into that as there are many paths that lead folks to successful film composing careers. While assistantships may not be for everyone, there are folks like yourself who have had really positive experiences going that route. What did you love about going through that process? But also, what was tough about it?
There are many routes. Everyone has their own route to getting into this business. Even my own classmates at USC, some of them decided to not take any assistantships and just start their own careers. I think that is really brave and amazing. A good friend of mine, Nami Melumad is an Israeli composer and she just got done with STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS. She was a classmate of mine and she just started doing her own thing. There’s so many ways to get into it and everybody’s path is unique.
I would say for me, what I needed out of school and what I wanted out of an experience, I’m definitely glad I chose the assistant route. I don’t think I would’ve learned the same lessons had I just gone out on my own. And honestly, it would have just been scary with no work, you know?
What I loved about it was just being able to watch a guy work on projects that I could only dream of working on. I mean, the first project I assisted [Göransson] on was CREED. It’s like, you sit down in a studio, fresh out of college and you’re looking at a picture with Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan!? I was like, “This is crazy!” I was just blown away at the experience, you know? Like, how lucky could I be?
But, my favorite thing about working for Ludwig was just gaining that experience and being around him all that time. Luckily I still call him a friend and he’s my mentor still. He’s a major presence in my musical life and in my scoring life still. I’m happy to have had that experience with him. It was also a lot of fun. Probably my favorite time was going to London to record THE BLACK PANTHER score with him and his wife. He allowed me to bring my wife out there and it was an amazing time.
Usually, the scoring sessions are the most fun as an assistant because you’re done with all the hard work. You’re done with all the long hours and you just get to sit back and enjoy hearing this music that you’ve assisted on and been a part of preparing. Even now as a composer, those scoring sessions with the orchestra are my favorite times. It’s just so much fun hearing the musicians bringing the music to life after you’ve lived with it for five, six months or however long it is.
But, the tough part of being an assistant is just the long hours. It kind of goes with the territory.
From composers to orchestrators to copyists to the librarians, everybody that’s involved with the music, the music always comes right at the end of the project. There’s usually not much time to get the job done. So assisting a composer, a lot of time you do have to work some really long hours. As long as that relationship is good and friendly and you work for a good person like I did, it’s not hard, you just have to get the job done. And that goes for everybody involved in the film music end of it. Everybody is rushing to get to the scoring gates and then rushing to get those mixes out the door. So it’s really nice when you have a little bit more time. If it’s stretched out a bit, you can take your time with some things and not make mistakes.
How did you navigate the transition from assistant to solo career? Was it a smooth process for you? Or tricky at all?
You have to trust in yourself and prove yourself to that guy or girl that you look up and that is your mentor. It took years of that. [Just] finding confidence in myself and him finding confidence in me so that at a point, he had opportunities that he could endorse me for. He needed to feel enough trust in order to do that for me. And, I think that’s amazing.
Throughout my time assisting him, another great thing that would allow me to do that, and what I’ve started with my assistant, is if an opportunity that comes up (a short film or something off on the side that they can do in their own time) they can work on that. I would constantly be doing that. I’d make sure I would get the things he needs as a priority first, but then also focus on my own projects. No matter how big or small, I’m just constantly writing. You just have to keep writing. So even while I was under Ludwig’s roof, I was still doing my damnedest to build out my own solo career. I’d do student projects, other short films or advertisements, these sorts of things. That’s really how you learn the craft — just doing a bunch of projects.
The first one where we worked together was BAD TRIP, this Netflix comedy with Eric André. And, that was ridiculous. [Laughs] But that was a situation that was a growth project for me and him as far as me taking on a new role and him allowing me to take lead and take the reins. That built a lot of trust, doing an okay job on that. Then that leads to another thing. But, it has a lot to do with just constantly wanting to write.
I would always remind him that I wanted to be doing more. It was a conscious decision for me to say, “I want to write more. I want to build out a career.” And he knew that. And because he’s a good guy and he’s a friend, he wanted to try and help in certain ways, you know? So, I wouldn’t say it was tricky. It was just, as I got busier while also working for him, it got to a point where it was like, “Okay. We need to reassess how this is going and maybe bring in some more help.” That sort of thing. It grew organically, but it was also something that he knew I was pushing for. I guess it’s been like two years now that I’ve been on my own and, we’re still working together on stuff. So, it’s a great arrangement, right?
That’s a great segue into discussing THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT. You helped Ludwig on THE MANDALORIAN, but this project was really your baby. As there are threads that connect the two series I’m curious, what were the initial conversations like with Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Robert Rodriguez regarding the music for this new adventure?
The initial planning was really just sitting down and spotting the first two episodes with them.
They had some temp music in there and they had some of the music that we worked on for THE MANDALORIAN. Like, they had that theme when we first meet Boba from Episode 6 of Season 2 and they had that threaded throughout a couple of moments in the initial temp. So, they knew that they were into that theme and that they wanted to expand upon it.
That was really the only clear direction. They wanted that theme to carry on, even just for continuity. But we also knew that the show needed its own prowess and strength as a fully-fledged show for Boba Fett. So Ludwig wrote that new theme and they really gravitated towards that. Knowing that helped steer the ship tonally. And, John, Dave, and Robert are extremely open-minded collaborators. If you have an idea and you can present it in a good way, and it resonates with them like, they’re down. So I feel like the doors were kind of wide open on what we could do, but there was the natural inclination to say, “Okay. This is still based out of a timeline that’s similar to THE MANDALORIAN Season 1 and 2.”
Since this is a character that we met in Season 2, we wanted to have some of those types of textures and flavors incorporated in some way while still giving it its own sound. And, I think we went grittier, more brute. There’s a savageness to Boba that we wanted to highlight with some bigger drums and a little bit of a desert mystique sort of thing with him. It’s even kind of religious or ceremonial as we wanted to highlight those elements of his backstory too.
The aspect of this series is so interesting because we get to see Boba at different stages with Ludwig’s theme kind of right there in the middle. Can you talk a little bit about how you utilized and worked with that theme to explore Boba’s past while also expanding upon it to meet him in the present?
It was a really fun musical device type of task. I hope that it is noticeable while watching the show, but basically, Ludwig’s theme that plays at the end of every episode, I really only use in the flashback timeline. There were only a couple of moments where I really played it out. And there were other times where I took sections of it, maybe just four or eight bars, and found a way to arrange that in a certain way that sort of fit with what was going on on-screen.
That theme, to me, felt like it matched more to his “coming of age.” After his rebirth from the Sarlacc pit, through the whole Tusken arc, and then even meeting up with Fennec, that felt like it worked there. But the theme that we introduced when Boba meets Mando in THE MANDALORIAN Season 2 series felt like it fit more with his current timeline as a crime boss. So what I attempted to do at least, I hope it works, was have both themes help delineate between the two timelines. But over time, throughout the flashback timeline, to have him earn the Present-day Theme.
You’ll hear the Present-day Theme when he blows up the speeder gang in Episode 4. It’s kind of the first heroic thing that he does to help out humanity, I guess you could say. It’s like his first hero move and him earning that present-day crime boss mentality. So, I played his Present-day Theme over that sequence of events there, and as we end our final flashback where he wakes up in his Bacta Tank. He was earning it along the way over the course of the two timelines. Once we pick it up from the end of Episode 4 onwards, whenever we see Boba we’re playing his Present-day Theme.
BUT, I did then choose to go back to the original Main Theme that Ludwig wrote right at the end of Episode 7. When Boba finally kills [redacted for spoilers] with his gaffi stick, he remembers his Tusken Raider family there and that’s how he is able to overcome this guy. So since he took out his gaffi stick and it was something that he learned from the Tuskens in his past, we went with the Main Theme there to recall that storyline.
Maybe that was super confusing, but it was just two different things trying to help. Honestly, it was an ask from Jon and Dave that they needed us to be able to separate the two timelines even more for the viewer and for the audience. They wanted them to feel different and feel separate so that when you’re watching the show you can somehow feel, even subconsciously, that we’re in a different time now.
I want to talk a bit about Tatooine. It is obviously such a big location in the overall story of STAR WARS and this series explores it in both familiar and new ways. How did Tatooine and the inhabitants that live there influence your music?
Tatooine is such sacred ground for STAR WARS, you know? There are so many important storylines and characters that live there or have lived there. Along with Tatooine, there’s so many cultures and ethnicities that, musically, it was cool to have a lot of different styles happening along with that sort of environment. Like, yes. We’re in the desert. That opened things up to an arid type of percussion sound that felt like it worked, and a lot of gritty guitars and organic sounds.
But then you also have all these new age elements too. All these different types of STAR WARS people, aliens, and creatures…it’s such a melting pot for different types of characters and situations. Musically, I tried to represent that by using lots of different types of world music, different types of rhythms, and different types of instruments that you wouldn’t necessarily all hear at the same time altogether, but that represent the melting pot that is Tatooine. The Jabba’s have their own sound and the new-mod electro folks have this retro-futuristic electronic thing. And Boba has this Italian sort of crime boss, GODFATHER style thing to him. Anytime there’s a crazy action sequence, you hear all these different types of instruments happening all at the same time. It just adds that flavor. It gives it its own alien-type flavor, having a lot of different music from our world mixed together.
I have to say, it was also really cool to visit the classic STAR WARS cantina atmosphere in this series. And, from what I understand, you created all the music in those scenes as well. Was that as fun as I imagine it to be? Do you have a favorite Max Rebo Band composition?
What’s funny is, a friend of mine named Max Sandler helped out with some of these too. So, we had an actual human named Max and we were making music for Max Rebo. [Laughs] All of them were really fun. What’s so cool about The Max Rebo Band is how extremely talented they are. They can play all these different types of styles and they can just pull it out of nowhere. [Laughs]
That was something that Jon, Dave, and Robert really wanted to highlight too. We would call it source music when you see a band playing diegetically, but they wanted it to still be tinted with what was happening in the stories. So it was almost in-between score and source and we would always call them “scource” [sic] cues. I think that’s a Jon Favreau originally coined term, which I think is great. He still wanted it to be stylistically apropos for what was happening in the story. So there were times when it was a little bit club-ier and more casino-driven. Then there were times where it’s a little bit lighter.
Sometimes those are the most fun cues to work on because it can kind of be anything. I mean, you’re writing music for a STAR WARS band to be played live, you know what I mean? I still love everything John Williams has done and the music that he wrote for the cantina is some of my favorite music in all of STAR WARS. It’s just such a great jazz, Klezmer-y sound that he came up with. It’s just amazing and has a lasting impact. So, you can’t really do that. You need to make it your own and try to make it cool for our story. It was just…fun. I mean, it was all these different styles and each episode had its own flavor.
I know I only have a couple more minutes, but I have to ask you about your work on JACKASS FOREVER. What was that experience like?
Well, I have to admit, the only portion of the movie I scored was like, the first six or seven minutes. Everything from that point forward they had music edited in and it was the classic JACKASS stingers. It was crazy. It was just nuts and hilarious all at the same time. But, I scored the opening of the movie where there’s this big retro monster. We’ll leave out what the monster actually is for the purposes of this publication, but they wanted a retro, old school, classic Hollywood monster-type score which I was super excited about.
I was immediately thinking of KING KONG and Max Steiner’s [music]. They wanted this old ’30s-’40s type of thing and that’s somewhat how they shot it, or at least certain areas of it. So, it just kinda fit. I came up with a theme for the monster and just tried to heighten the action happening on screen. It was a blast. Jeff Tremaine brought me into that one and he also Executive Produced BAD TRIP so that was the connection there.
It was so fun working with him again and working with Spike Jonze, of course. Those were the two guys that were kind of overseeing things and who I was writing music for on that one. I went with my wife the night it came out in theaters and we sat down in a packed theater. Everybody was losing their minds for this movie. I’ve never experienced something like that where people were just audibly cackling throughout the theater at the crazy stuff that was happening on screen. That was a hell of a lot of fun. It really was.
THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT is currently streaming on Disney+. JACKASS FOREVER is available via Paramount+ and VOD.
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