Two pop-culture references seem to dog runners such as myself most. The more annoying one is when people shout, “Run, Forrest, Run!” at us as we trot along, alluding to the Tom Hanks Baby Boomer fantasia Forrest Gump. The other doesn’t even require words: Just some fake slow-mo combined with imitated piano and synth notes. It comes, of course, from 1981’s Chariots of Fire, which contains probably the most famous — and most-parodied — running scene in cinema history:
The man responsible for this gorgeous, inspiring, transcendent synth soundscape is the Greek musician and composer Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, who died earlier this week at 79. In his professional career, he went simply by Vangelis. Starting out as a rock musician for such acts as Aphrodite’s Child, Vangelis hit his stride as a creator of film scores in the 1980s, in which he used an array of synthesizers to become a kind of orchestra unto himself.
Apart from Chariots of Fire, Vangelis’s best work was, I think, in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner. Scott turned to Vangelis to create the moody sonic backdrop of the film’s neo-noir atmosphere. Blade Runner is a wholly immersive work from its opening scenes; it wouldn’t be complete without Vangelis’s score guiding you in:
Scott and Vangelis sustain this tone throughout. Just listen to this and try not to imagine yourself alone in a skyscraper of some futuristic city at night, looking out the window at the chaos below and wondering what it all means:
Vangelis was not asked to return for Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneueve’s worthy 2017 sequel. He claimed to be okay with that. “You can never repeat certain things,” Vangelis told NPR in 2016. “It’s only once in a lifetime. It’s like doing another Chariots Of Fire. It’s impossible.”
His work is, indeed, unrepeatable. I’d argue, moreover, that it has transcended its 1980s milieu to achieve timeless status. R.I.P. to a virtuoso.