“Since we don't know when we will die, we come to think of life as an inexhaustible well, and yet everything happens only a certain number of times,” said Brandon Lee in his book Final interview Less than two weeks before his death in 1993.
Lee recited a passage from Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel “The Sheltering Sky,” explaining that people often take things for granted and have a perception of time as infinite. This concept of eternal life helped Lee sculpt the character he played in “The Crow.” Eric Draven, killed along with his fiancée by a gang on Halloween, returns from the dead a year later, guided by a crow, to avenge their deaths in the 1994 film. After his rebirth, Lee believed Draven understood the preciousness of each moment.
Artist and writer James O'Barr first imagined “The Crow” in 1981 while stationed in Berlin with the Marines following the death of his girlfriend at the hands of a drunk driver in 1978. Their story of two torn lovers developed further after he read a newspaper article about a couple killed in Detroit over a $20 engagement ring. O'Barr first published “The Crow” as a comic book series in 1989 before it was adapted into a film in 1994, directed by Alex Proyas and written by John Shirley and David J. Schow. The 30th anniversary of its release is being marked by a new version of the film, which is set to open August 26. The film will be directed by Rupert Sanders and stars Bill Skarsgård, Danny Huston and FKA Twigs.
Once the original film was given the green light in February 1992, producer and music supervisor Jeff Most began putting together an original soundtrack, recruiting alternative artists who predominantly emerged from the early '80s to early '90s, and artists who were partly inspired by O'Barr's earlier musical references. The author originally dedicated “The Crow” to Joy Division's Ian Curtis and sculpted its protagonist Eric specifically with Iggy Pop's face and Bauhaus's Peter Murphy's body in mind.
“The concept [of the soundtrack] “The idea was to do it in a way where no one had heard a single song in the film and everything was original,” says Most.
He also received O'Barr's blessing to give Eric the surname “Draven” in the film and to make the character a guitarist for an alternative rock band, Hangman's Joke.
“Everyone I talked to was like, ‘You’re on drugs. There’s no alternative album with songs that aren’t Top 40 hits on it,’” Most says. “And I was like, ‘Well, that’s the album I’m going to make.’”
For the soundtrack, Most contacted Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, and that band became the first to agree to appear on the soundtrack with a cover of Joy Division's 1980 B-side, “Dead Souls”.
Reznor also helped Most secure a record label for the soundtrack. Once Reznor and the band were on board, Atlantic moved ahead with the album.
“I said, ‘Thank you, rock star gods,’” Most recalls. In turn, the label also began sending him other artists to consider, including Stone Temple Pilots, who were the first band to write a song for the film. At first, STP submitted “Only Dying,” which was later replaced by the song “Big Empty” from “Purple,” due to the nature of the lyrics following Lee’s death. By the time “The Crow” came around, the band had already begun to explode in popularity following their 1992 debut studio album, “Core,” which only increased thanks to the film.
“At the time, life was moving at a very fast pace for us because we were saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’ to a lot of opportunities,” says STP bassist Rob DeLeo. “‘Purple’ debuted at number one, and having ‘Big Empty’ in a big movie worked out, too.” [to get] “The band introduced themselves to the audience. The timing was perfect. ‘Big Empty’ had the vibe and atmosphere they were looking for. It’s amazing when the visual and sonic worlds collide and work together.”
DeLeo continues: “The movie has a great vibe. It was a great moment in our career where all the situations came together. Those memories are priceless.”
One of the first photographs of Brandon Lee, star of “The Crow,” January 30, 1986.
(Photo: Lacy Atkins/AP)
Helmet frontman Page Hamilton said the soundtrack also made a strong musical statement at the time. It managed to bridge different strands of alternative rock without any musical discord, egotistical or otherwise.
“It was a big shock and for me it was a fusion,” he says.
On the soundtrack, Helmet contributed “Milquetoast”, a song originally written for the band's third album, Betty (1994), and reused as “Milktoast” for the film. [the] Chain of Jesus and Mary [who also contributed ‘Snakedriver’ to the soundtrack]“We were very influenced by the music of the time, and by other bands as well,” Hamilton adds. “Then it became different camps. You were either goth, New York hardcore or post-hardcore, but back then it was just… music. It wasn’t about, ‘You’re on this side or that side.’”
Though O'Barr featured the full lyrics to The Cure's 1982 “Pornography” single, “The Hanging Garden,” in “The Crow,” when the band was asked if the song could be used in the film, Robert Smith agreed to write an original song instead: “Burn.” From that opening, the soundtrack sailed from a Rollins Band cover of Suicide's “Ghost Rider” — an outtake from the album they often played during encores — along with Pantera's rendition of the Poison Idea song “The Badge” and Rage Against the Machine's “Darkness.”
“There wasn’t a separation like, ‘I only like goth and I’m going to wear black,’” Hamilton says of the soundtrack’s essence. “For me, ‘The Crow’ had more to it than that. It was music.”
That soundtrack legacy also touched the Violent Femmes, who contributed “Color Me Once” to the film, an experimental recording the band had lying around.
“When The Crow came out, we were so excited to be associated with such an iconic and significant film,” says Violent Femmes bassist and co-founder Brian Ritchie. “It also introduced us to a whole new range of listeners.”
Some artists also had small roles in the film. After Nine Inch Nails pulled out of appearing in the film due to scheduling conflicts, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult replaced the band in the nightclub performance scene, set beneath the headquarters of crime gang leader Top Dollar, during the shootout for “Big Moby.” The Thrill Kill Kult arrived on the Wilmington, North Carolina, set the next day with a reworked version of “Nervous Xians” (renamed “After the Flesh”), which they recorded at 1 a.m. before filming the scene inside a cold cement factory in the dead of winter.
Thrill Kill Kult's Buzz McCoy recalls the band chatting with Lee in the makeup room during filming. Several weeks later, the actor died from an accidental gunshot wound on set while filming a scene on March 31.
“He [Lee] “He was very humble and sweet,” McCoy recalls. “We were devastated to learn what happened just a few weeks later.”
In addition to Thrill Kill Kult, Los Angeles rockers Medicine also had a cameo in the film with their static, unpolished “Time Baby II”; the band recorded another version, “Time Baby III,” for the soundtrack with Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins.
Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure, wrote the song “Burn” for the soundtrack of “The Crow”
(Yui Mok/Associated Press)
“'The Crow' blew me away,” says Medicine founder Brad Laner, adding that the film “meant a lot” to Lee, who was a rising star after his 1992 action film “Rapid Fire.” Lee was the son of actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, who died at age 32 in 1973.
“I think that [‘The Crow’] “It would have made him a star,” Laner adds, referring to Brandon. “It was just a huge disgrace. [His younger sister] Shannon didn't know her father. She was 4 years old when her father died, so Brandon was her protector.” Shannon Lee briefly joined Laner for a reformation of Medicine in 2003 and the album “The Mechanical Forces of Love.”
Following Brandon Lee’s death, his mother, Linda Lee, and his fiancée, Eliza Hutton, called for the film to be completed and released and for work on the soundtrack to continue. Canadian singer-songwriter Jane Siberry co-wrote and recorded the mournful closing ballad “It Can’t Rain All the Time,” the title of which references a line Draven says in the film. Siberry said recording the song, co-written with New Zealand industrial musician and composer Graeme Revell, was “a special moment.”
“It was a very important thing to have our consciousness focused on a film,” Siberry adds. “It was really remarkable to be able to make a film where the real people are almost larger than life.”
As for the film, Most became friends with Lee before they began shooting on location. “Brandon was intimately involved in the development, in the script,” says Most. “He had a brilliant idea about how to make his character the only one who was not grounded.”
Now, three decades later, Most believes there is still a deep connection to the original film and the music behind it.
“I’m very proud of my first film and I think it still holds true,” he says. “We set out to push the boundaries and what struck me was that for a moment, in a comic book movie, we did something that broke the boundaries of everything that had been done before in this genre.”
The remaining scenes of the film were completed with stuntman Chad Stahelski, digital effects, and a reworking of the script.
“Losing someone who was a great friend, and everything that entailed, was a very difficult shoot. [finishing the film without Lee]“I’m very proud that we managed to get the film out of a very dark spot in post-production,” says Most.
Following The Crow, Most produced The Crow: City of Angels (1996), a third installment The Crow: Salvation (2000) and The Crow: A Wicked Prayer (2005) and the soundtracks for each, but was not involved in the 2024 remake or its soundtrack, composed by German composer Volker Bertelmann (“The Lion,” “All Quiet on the Western Front”).
Music for the new “The Crow” movie includes Ozzy Osbourne and Post Malone’s 2019 single “Take What You Want,” which was featured in the trailer. As for the new film, Most says it appears to be dedicated to the relationship between the ill-fated characters that O’Barr envisioned decades earlier, which he says was always at the core of the film and what kept it afloat for the past 30 years.
“This movie is about love,” says Most. “I think that’s what resonates with people to this day. That’s the emotional core of the movie, the emotional chord that touches people when they step back and remember it.”
