Soundtrack Review: Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese's Sensational Sounds of the Seventies

For me, the song "What is Life" from George Harrison's groundbreaking 1970 double album All Things Must Pass is a joyous affair that always coaxes out those "feel good" endorphins from my brain. But as with most really good love songs, there is an undercurrent of uncertainty, even anxiety in the tune that makes it all the more compelling--at least for me.

I'll start with the most visceral element: the opening fuzz guitar riff, which so reminds me of the opening notes from the Stones' "Satisfaction." This simple three-note Stones melody is repeated in virtually every bar of the song itself, tying it together by "hook" and by crook.

To a lesser extent, the opening bit of fuzz that starts off "What is Life" is also repeated, but in a more intermittent, subliminal way--with bass and strings echoing and underscoring this addictive riff over and over again.

And that, in and of itself, makes for an irresistible piece of pop ear candy.

But the lyrics themselves hint at the ambivalence behind the joy:

But if it's not love/that you need/then I'll try my best to make everything succeed

Is followed by his admission that that life without his beloved would be empty and bleak:

Tell me what is my life/without your love/tell me who am I/without you/by my side?

This is why I so adore how Martin Scorsese's '70s musical score in Goodfellas succeeds so brilliantly--like Quentiin Tarantino's after him--in enhancing the emotional impact of this masterful film. In fact, the combination of movie and music even transforms the core "meaning" of the music in our--the viewers'-- collective unconsciousness forevermore.

Ever since the film's release in 1990, whenever I hear "What is Life," part of me always visualizes gangster Henry Hill's harrowing yet exhilarating day of coke-fueled drug running, gun selling, helicopter dodging, dinner making, and, last but not least, arrest. The combination of joy and anxiety already present in the song is only made more explicit by this newfound synchronicity.

This is, of course, far from the only scene (or movie) where Scorsese uses his soundtrack judicioiusly. Here's a few others from the film:

As the movie begins, transporting Henry Hill (and us) back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York in 1955, Ray Liotta, as Henry, laconically explains to "you" and "I" how "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster." This, as Tony Bennett croons the ballad "Rags to Riches" in the background--a song of the hope and promise that reels Henry into a life of crime at a very tender age.

When Henry wows his soon to be wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) by escorting her through the kitchen of the Copacabana, stopping to greet the staff and greasing every palm from the maitre'd on down as he enters the floor of the club, Karen's dewy-eyed point of view is made crystal clear with the help of "And Then he Kissed Me."

Bobby Vinton's rendition of "Roses are Red" at the club is instant shorthand for how instantly Karen is seduced into the bling of Henry's glamorous but unsavory lifestyle.

In the harrowing sequence where "made man" Billy Batts is given his comeuppance by Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) et al. in a local bar--followed by the transport of a battered but still alive Batts in the trunk of Tommy's car--the peaceful strains of Donovan's "Atlantis" play ironically in the background.

When wigmeister Maury and wife Belle are killed and left sitting dead in their car, it is to the melancholy coda of Derek and the Dominoes' "Layla"--also used in the grisly scenes where various cohorts Jimmy eliminated show up in garbage trucks and meat lockers. It also plays, like a disturbing, recurring dream, in the closing credits.

Article Author: Elvira Black

Elvira Black is a “retired” New York writer blogging for her own amusement here on BC. Her passions are politics, the arts, the weird things we do, and New York City.

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