Requesting a bit of help IDing John Debney's work

[David Durica]

Hi y'all. This is probably my second post or so.

I'm going to be interviewing John Debney this week, primarily about the soundtrack for Predators. I know he's done some WDW and theme park work, but details are tough to nail down online other than Phantom Manor. So far I found listings such as "EPCOT Theme" and "Horizons", but what I've found hasn't been very specific. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[David S.]

In the book that comes with the "A Musical History Of Disneyland" 6-CD boxed set (which I highly recommend!) it says he was responsible for re-scoring the Fantasyland dark rides for the 1983 New Fantasyland at Disneyland. WDW's Fantasyland is missing three of these five rides (Toad, Pinocchio, and Alice) and Peter Pan at WDW uses a different arrangement. I'm not sure whether the Snow White ride at MK (updated in 1994) uses the same music as DL or different. But the book says DL's Snow White uses score tracks directly from the film on the ride (which seems to be the case for WDW's as well) whereas for the other 4 (Pan, Toad, Pinocchio, and Alice) Debney rescored the attractions in 1983 based on the original orchestral scores of the classsic Disney films, but timed to better fit the pacing of the scenes in the rides. It also says he conducted the new recording sessions for these rides.

The book also credits him with some of the conducting of the whimsical Toontown music loop (based on classic Disney Silly Symphony and character shorts from the 20's and 30's), but seems to give most of the credit for these arrangements to fellow Disney park composer George Wilkins. I know most (if not all) of this original DL Toontown music loop can also be heard in the Toontown at WDW.

The only other thing the book specifically mentions is the score for the film Chicken Little, and mentions his work scoring some older live-action Disney films such as "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes". It also says he appeared briefly on screen singing the fight song in the 1975 Disney live-action film, "The Strongest Man In the World".

Another interesting point the book makes is that Debney got to spend a lot of time while growing up on the Disney Studio lot, because his father Louis worked as a producer on some of Walt's classic live-action films (such as Perri and Bullwhip Griffin) as well as the classic Walt Disney TV series Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro. It says when his father worked weekends and he would go to the studio with him, they would often run into Walt!

 

[David Durica]

Cool. Thanks for the help. I really dug the info about him going as far back as having met Walt, even if it was as a young `un.

Digging around it seems like his work on Horizons was collaborative. I'll probably use that as material.

If y'all have any more info, please keep it coming.

 

[Horizonstta]

In addition to work on Horizons, I believe he was also involved with, not necessarily as a composer in all instances, Spectromagic, Surprise in the Skies, and Illuminations 25.

 

[David Durica]

Okay, so he did some stuff for the pavilions, but one specific track on Horizons he remembered making was the John Williams-y music for the return to the present.

I'll dig through the exact words later and give a transcript of the parks-related stuff from the interview if y'all want.

 

[Horizonstta]

I'll dig through the exact words later and give a transcript of the parks-related stuff from the interview if y'all want.

That would be great, thanks.