Alan Menken - Walt Disney Records The Legacy Collection: Aladdin (Remastered 2022) (2022)

As we embarked on writing Aladdin, Howard and I started, as we always did, with fi nding our stylistic approach to storytelling through an original and entertaining choice of musical vocabulary. With Little Shop of Horrors, the world of early ’60s rock and roll provided the perfect mixture of light fun and a beach blanket horror fi lm version of the end-of-theworld, apocalypse. With The Little Mermaid, a combination of Calypso, German and French cabaret, and traditional sea shanties created a mixture of innocent fairytale and knowing pop-culture winks. And Beauty and the Beast came alive through the infl uence of romantic classical music, operetta, French music hall and classic Disney tropes. The key to our Aladdin came from paying homage to homegrown All-American ways of portraying the “mysterious east”; the backstreet “Timberg Alley” of the Fleischer cartoons, the exotic fun of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road pictures, the zesty irreverence of Harlem jazz; all mixed with the intrinsic touch of Ashman and Menken.

In our fi rst take on this project, we approached it as an action-adventure buddy pic, with romance as more of a sub-plot. Aladdin was one of a group of four busking street performers in Baghdad. His mother, like any contemporary mom, wanted him to make something of himself. The genie, much like the fabled Genie of the Ring, was depicted like a hipster, with his earring and black complexion. Jasmine was a bit of a spoiled Valley Girl. And Jafar was our mustachetwirling, hook-nosed, larger-than-life villain. The Sultan was that slightly befuddled, ineffectual, coddling daddy, so common in Golden Age Hollywood romantic comedies.

The fi rst presentation of our new animated musical score included the full length “Arabian Nights,” which presented a breathlessly exaggerated depiction of the excitement and dangers of the world of Aladdin. We wanted to bring the audience into the ’30s and ’40s sensibilities of the Hollywood version of these faraway tales. In doing so, we made fun of a litany of cliché stereotypes in order to establish a playful and knowing tone to our storytelling. Comic references to cutting off body parts or making light of mythical barbarism (which eventually ended up hitting the cutting fl oor) were intended to bring comic relief to a part of our world that was more than a bit on edge. The opening musical motif broadly uses deliberately simplistic echoes of traditional Arab and Mediterranean themes. And the vocal style pays homage to the colors of the muezzin’s call to prayer from the minarets throughout the Islamic world.

As it turned out, not surprisingly, the Disney studio, and Roy Disney especially, was uneasy about the way Aladdin pushed boundaries. And the project was shelved temporarily, making room for other, more traditional Disney territory, including Beauty and the Beast. In putting this project aside, we were putting a treasure trove of amazing songs into mothballs. Besides our opening we had “Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim,” the signature song of the street-performer quartet; in which Al and his three buddies celebrate their freewheeling lifestyle and sense of youthful bravado. Then an “Arabian Nights” reprise about the evil Jafar’s bargain with Aladdin. “Friend Like Me,” written in the style of the great Fats Waller, introduced the Genie as a high energy shapeshifter in what was always intended to be our biggest, through-the-roof, showstopper. Then, in “Proud of Your Boy” Aladdin, fresh from becoming the Genie’s master, makes a promise to his mom that he’ll somehow turn his life around and make good. “Call Me a Princess” introduced us to an early version of Princess Jasmine, in which she revels in her entitlement, drawing on a more contemporary connotation of the word “princess”. In “How Quick They Forget,” the three remaining buddies sing a barbershop quartet, minus-one, about how Aladdin abandoned them to become Prince Ali. And, when his trio-posse come to rescue Aladdin in heroic and hilarious fashion, they sing “High Adventure” all the way to total disaster (followed, of course, by a happy ending reprise of “Arabian Nights.”)

So, with all of that material pulled from production, Howard and I moved on to working on Beauty and the Beast, putting our work on Aladdin aside. And, along with that, terrifi ed and insecure, but with Howard’s full encouragement, I dove into learning the craft of composing movie underscore on The Little Mermaid. With all of these exciting new chapters opening up, there was also a different level of angst under lying everything. At creative work sessions Howard would unexpectedly become emotionally unhinged by seemingly small incidents. He would suddenly want to pull the plug on sending material out of fear of humiliation. An intermittent mic connection would result in an expensive Walkman Pro being smashed on the ground. And it all became explained as of the Governor’s Ball at the ’89 Oscar® ceremony, after we’d won three awards between us. Howard felt happy and grateful. And, at the same time, he told me that, when we got back to New York, we had to have a serious conversation. That conversation revealed the fact that he was dying of AIDS, something he had known for years and kept secret from nearly everyone, for fear of being ostracized and, that word again, “humiliated.”

So, I suppose it is fi tting that, when we were asked to return to work on Aladdin, and we focused on writing a song for Jafar to sing, that song became “Humiliate the Boy”; in which Aladdin is robbed of everything he ever had or ever dreamed of. To say that the connection was deliberate would be a complete misunderstanding of Howard’s creative process. But, as in many of our songs from that period, the signifi cance is undeniable. Another important remaining song was Aladdin, as Prince Ali, along with the Genie and a throng of thousands, making a huge and triumphant entrance into the royal palace. And the writing of this song, it turned out, happened as Howard was hospitalized at St. Vincent’s Hospital in the West Village. I brought a light, portable keyboard with me, sat on the edge of his hospital bed and, together, we wrote “Prince Ali.”

As Howard’s condition worsened, it became necessary for the creative process of story rewrites on Aladdin to continue without Howard’s participation. And, as with Howard, I was protectively omitted from these discussions, to avoid a strained dishonesty in our collaboration. Starting with a day that’s been referred to as “Black Friday,” in which Jeffrey Katzenberg insisted on a change in direction, the basic story shifted from a buddy adventure to a romance between Aladdin and Jasmine. Al’s gang was axed. Mom was cut. It was a new journey. And I only became aware of this following Howard’s passing in March of ’91.

He died over six months before the release of Beauty and a full year and half before Aladdin became the highest grossing animated movie of all time (later to be surpassed by The Lion King.) And as I composed the score for Beauty and somehow also wrote the songs for Newsies (along with my friend and lyricist, Jack Feldman,) I was also working on the revised Aladdin. Where I had a collaborator and partner in all aspects of these projects, songwriting, story structure and music producing, I now had to do these things without him.

(Thanks to being associated with the fantastic team that was Disney Animation at that time, I had amazing talents to help me, most especially head of music at animation, Chris Montan and my music team, which consisted of, musical director/conductor, David Friedman and orchestrator/arranger, Danny Troob.)

One of my fi rst adjustments was to deal with the cutting of Aladdin’s mother. With that decision, “Proud of Your Boy” became unusable. Instead of singing to his mom, we decided to try an idea of having Aladdin sing to his little sidekick, his pet monkey, Abu, about how he would be there to protect him. And I wrote music and lyrics for a song called “You Can Count on Me.” But further story changes led to a song idea that Howard and I had previously discussed; Aladdin and Jasmine singing on their magic carpet ride.

And, to that end, Tom Schumacher and Peter Schneider, the joint heads of Disney Animation, asked me how I’d feel about collaborating with Tim Rice to complete the score. And, for me it was an incredible blessing at that diffi cult time, a blessing that has only grown exponentially over the ensuing three decades. I knew of Tim as half of the team of Webber & Rice, who had struck gold with Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. And the marriage of our styles proved extremely successful. When we started our writing together it was a relatively highpressure endeavor, as the picture was well into production with the opening only months away. We had three assignments to tackle: a production number to replace “Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim,” a new song for Jafar and a love song to be sung on our magic carpet ride. Plans were made for me to fl y over to London to work with Tim on these songs. And, feeling the pressure, I didn’t want to show up empty handed. One of my biggest concerns was to make sure there would be a seamlessness between the songs I wrote with Howard and the new ones I’d be writing with Tim. In service of that, a few days before fl ying over, I sent a cassette of musical ideas along with some dummy lyrics that I thought might help convey my intentions. For the magic carpet ride song, I used a dummy title of “The World at My Feet,” which Tim, wisely revised to “A Whole New World”; probably realizing that, foot fetishists aside, the word feet is not the most romantic image. For the new production number, we wrote a song in which Aladdin sings to the audience as he schemes, steals and frantically escapes from people pursuing him in the marketplace. And, for Jafar, we wrote “Why Me?,” a stylish soft shoe litany of complaints.

In the end, the Menken/Rice Jafar song moment became a reprise of “Prince Ali.” The marketplace song became “One Jump Ahead” and “A Whole New World” became one of the most successful songs in either of our careers, not to mention in the history of movies. It won the Academy Award® and Golden Globe® for Best Song (along with a Best Song nomination for “Friend Like Me” and a Best Score win for the Aladdin score), as well as shockingly winning the Grammy®� Song of the Year. And, besides that, the pop single of the song reached number one on the Billboard charts. Now, some three decades later, when I look back on those few years in the early ’90s, I shake my head in wonder. How to explain the confl uence of wonderful projects, exhilarating moments, heartbreaking losses, incredible acclaim and weird turnarounds. And, as I expressed before, it’s a story that continues to be written to this day. Just unbelievable.

Alan Menken
Composer
Aladdin