Posted on Sunday, 5th March, 2023 by John Burgman
Read excerpts of our interview with Dana Kaproff, from our hour long interview! (mini-player is also embedded below)
The final episode of The Amazing Spider-man live-action television series aired more than 40 years ago — and yet, the music from the series has endured and thrived as new generations of fans have discovered the show. Although that Spider-man series had a number of people involved in the music’s creation, utilization, and dissemination throughout its initial television run, few people were more crucial to the process than musician Dana Kaproff.
Dana Kaproff's self-titled album from 1976 |
Already entrenched in the musical tier of the television industry by the time the Spider-man aired in the late-1970s, Kaproff was hired to be in charge of the music for the series’ second season, in 1978—amid the departure of composer Stu Phillips. Kaproff was not obligated to use any of Phillips’ compositions or musical motifs from the first season, and could thus create music of a deliberately more modern nature for the entirety of Spider-man’s second season.
“When I got the shot to do it, the first thing that occurred to me was I wanted to change the whole approach, the whole feel of the show because I love storytelling—that’s what I do with my music,” Kaproff explains. “I felt Spider-man could [have] much more exciting, youthful, contemporary music, and so I wanted to bring that edge of what was happening in pop-music at the time to the show and give it that energy.”
Kaproff’s own musical background and interests were diverse. His father was an accomplished cellist, often working in film and music studios around Los Angeles, and his uncle was a proficient violinist. Additionally, Kaproff cites the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, The Doors, and other famous music groups from the 1960s and 1970s as key influences. But beyond having an affinity for popular music, Kaproff was an aficionado of cinema. He knew that superheroes had rarely been treated seriously on-screen; he figured some up-to-date music could help change that. “At the time, the appearance of comic book heroes had been more dealt with in a campy way—like Batman had been on TV for a while, and it was being done in a very campy way with the Bam! and Woosh! [on-screen onomatopoeias], and the music was a kind of campy, big-band-type of thing,” he notes.
So, to make music for Spider-man, Kaproff (only in his mid-20s at the time) drew upon elements of contemporary rock, funk, jazz, and classical music. “It was a fun, exciting project to get ahold of at a very early age and to be able to fashion a sound—an identity for the show; as a composer for film, that’s really the most exciting opportunity, for someone to say, ‘Look, we think you’re creative, we want a new sound for this, go for it!’"
A Great Gathering of Talent
Fashioning a newfound sound for the second season of Spider-man was Kaproff’s overarching goal. But when it came to actually creating and recording the music for individual episodes (including “A Matter of State,” “The Con Caper,” “The Kirkwood Haunting,” “Photo Finish,” and others) the process was incredibly meticulous.
“The way that a typical episode would be approached is that there’d be what was called a ‘spotting session,’” Kaproff recalls. “So, I would get a time and date to come to the studio and the episode that now was ready for music, I would come in and the music editor would come in—along with producer, maybe director, maybe somebody else. And we would sit in a little theater, we would run the film, and we would discuss in great, specific detail where each cue would go—in exact detail, like when Peter Parker looks to the right, the cue begins; and then the cue will continue until we cut to the interior of the bank one minute and 37 seconds later.”
A music editor would then look at the section of film in question and write out “in exact detail, to the tenth of a second” each camera cut within the respective section of the scene. (John Mick was the person most often credited for the music editing in the series’ second season.)
Such scrupulous documentation of the action made it possible for Kaproff’s musical inclinations and eventual arrangements to better complement the on-screen narrative. As Kaproff recollects: “That allowed me to then identify—even without the film—spots that I felt were important to address musically, in terms of storytelling. Do I want to change the mood here? Do I want to accent something? Do I want to introduce a new musical flavor, a new instrument, whatever? Does the pace change? Is tension building or was the tension released and we want to give the audience a feeling that now things have quieted down? All of these different things that you do as a composer to tell the story from a musical perspective.”
From such thorough note-taking sessions, Kaproff was able to determine which instruments he wanted to utilize, in order to bring his musical ideas to life. He would then write out musical notation by hand on large paper, with separate lines of notes for different musical instruments. Naturally, finances for the show factored into the equation: “Because there was always a specific budget for each show, then I would know and work in conjunction with both the music supervisor and the studio’s contractor.” Kaproff adds, “The contractor would work with me to make sure the instruments I wanted fit in with the budget.”
The result, eventually, was an assemblage of talented musicians in accordance with Kaproff’s musical vision and the budget constraints for a given scene. “I sort of developed a group of musicians that I would ask for first—sometimes they weren’t available and the contractor would also be useful in helping me select alternatives,” Kaproff says. The various musicians would gather in the television studio’s recording space and the tracks would be recorded with Kaproff as the conductor. “There wasn’t time to rehearse everything a lot—these are great musicians who are great sight-readers, and they can look at something and almost play it perfectly the first time around,” Kaproff explains. “That’s a must—you have to have people like that.”
Although not identified by name in the Spider-man series’ end credits, musicians that often worked under Kaproff’s direction in the studio included guitarists George Doering, Dennis Budimir, and John Goux; Larry Brown and Domenic Genova often played the bass parts; Harvey Mason, Hal Blaine, and Larry Bunker performed drums, with additional percussion done by Emil Richards and Kenny Watson; Randy Kerber and Michael Boddicker typically programmed the synthesizers; and Joel Peskin frequently played the saxophone. Amid the recording sessions, there was occasional thinking-outside-the-box with the instrumentation as well. For example, Kaproff offers an anecdote about the repeated clicking noise of a camera’s shutter—inspired by Peter Parker’s photography profession—being used as subtle percussion in the main theme. (Fans are encouraged to listen closely to the main theme of the second season, to see if they can detect the sound of the clicking camera.)
To that point about the second season’s main theme, there were even ambitions to release it as a single, a tune that would be sold in record stores and played at dance clubs. Kaproff recalls his agent at the time taking the idea to studio executives, but ultimately a record version of the theme never materialized.
Still, Kaproff’s Spider-man theme became instantly one of the most identifiable and well-loved aspects of the show. The rigors of recording the music marked the continuation of a very prolific period for Kaproff. Just a couple years earlier, he had released a self-titled album with musical phrases and instrumentation that bore some resemblance to those in Spider-man. “The record was very reflective of my thinking and my creative sensibilities at that time; it was my statement—what I wanted to put out there and what I was into,” he says. “So, to that extent, it’s not really surprising that that style is then heard when I had an opportunity to bring what I felt was a contemporary, hip, popular music angle to the Spider-man show.” (Kaproff’s self-titled album, long considered a sought-after collector’s item, will soon be re-released in LP format via a reissuing company called Mad About Records.)
A Vibrant and Ever-Lasting Fanbase
Despite the popularity of the Spider-man series and its music, the show was cancelled after the conclusion of the second season, in mid-1979. If there were any executive deliberations about additional seasons—for instance, possibly continuing the series into the 1980s—Kaproff was never a witness to such dialogue. “I honestly don’t remember being privy to any of the discussions about the show going forward,” he says. “I probably was just informed that there wasn’t going to be another season—I’m sure I wasn’t overjoyed about it because it was a lucrative job for me and I enjoyed it creatively.”
In particular, the end of the Spider-man series was somewhat surprising since it came following the release of “The Chinese Web” (alternately titled “The Dragon’s Challenge,” released theatrically as a full-length film)—arguably the most ambitious endeavor for the series’ cast and crew from a logistical/filming perspective. Furthermore, “The Chinese Web” was a movie that Kaproff particularly enjoyed being a part of. “I was very excited to be doing a movie because it was sort of an expansion from the individual episodes, and maybe I felt like that was going to propel excitement about the show and maybe even the producers felt likewise,” Kaproff says.
Nonetheless, Kaproff’s career expanded in other directions after the Spider-man series ended, with musical credits that included other iconic shows, such as Falcon Crest, Starman, Cagney & Lacey, Matlock, and many others. Kaproff also worked musically with other feature-length movies and National Geographic television specials over the years, all while the Spider-man series—although officially off the air—developed a cult following that continues to grow to this day. It all amounts to a groundswell of appreciation that Kaproff values and welcomes. He says fondly, “I love that there’s fans, that they’re enthusiastic, and that they want to know everything about everything.”
You can listen to the full interview below.
