Jewish Exponent

by Michael Elkin,December 17, 1998)

"Not Just a 'YES' Man - Trevor Rabin makes a move on the movies"

From Cinema the rock group to cinema the reel thing, Trevor Rabin has
scored a gold record of a career.

When his band Cinema adopted the name Yes in 1983 - a reincarnation of
the group that had formed 15 years earlier - the Jewish native of
South Africa affirmed the direction others knew he was going in -
straight up to the stars.

"Our music was picturesque in a way," notes Rabin in reference to the
technicolor tunes he played in Yes.

It was good training for the Big Picture: Rabin is now one of
Hollywood's leading screen composers, with "Con Air", "Armageddon" and
the current "Enemy of the State" and "Jack Frost" to his credit.

He learned how to chill out early on in South Africa jsut by watching
movies. "I've always been a big fan of movie musicals," he says,
"especially 'West Side Story.'"

So what's the story now? Rabin gave up playing with Yes in 1995 to
focus more on his own work - traveling the tracks to Hollywood, where
he has been welcomed with a Tinseltown toast of job after job.

The performer who once licked the guitar on "Can't Look Away" got a
good look at the movie business and liked what he saw.

It's really a wonderful opportunity for an artist to create, he says.
On "Armageddon," where Earth was under attack by a giant meteor, he
attacked the project with big, earth-shattering sounds.

"It was a question of a 'how big can you get' kind of score," he says.

With "Enemy of the State," the paranoia chiller pairing Will Smith and
Gene Hackman, Rabin wrote an eerily claustrophobic score that careens
with chases that close in on the actors.

"For 'Frost,' I had to write songs for a blued band that was on the
verge of breaking up," he says of creating a score for the Michael
Keaton character.

"It was sort of a 'Witches of Eastwick' meets 'Forrest Gump.'"

*Moving on - and up*

Saying yes to Hollywood was not necessarily so easy after years on the
road. "It wasn't easy to leave Yes," he explains.

"But I knew if I'd stayed there, it wouldn't have been enough for me.

"My wife used to say that I'll complain about the same things 10 years
from now if I don't move on."

She rocked hubby with that one. "I left the group the next morning."

His ticket to ride landed him in the movie theaters, where Rabin
relishes the challenges. "I wanted to achieve something where the
sonic elements of music would come from different places," says the
music maven who wrote Yes' hit single "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and
also served as a producer on the group's 1994 album, "Talk".

That recording was the talk of the town for its state-of-the-art
technology, with the album recorded on hard drives rather than the
standard tapes.

The state of the art in Hollywood is ready for his innovations, too,
says Rabin.

Certainly the egos out L.A. way can send one reeling, but the music
business knows from its punk prima donnas.

"Becoming a master of your instrument became secondary to attitude,"
says Rabin of rock's royalty who hum with hubris.

"There was a tendency, too, to see how outrageous you could make the
lyrics rather than how profound they were."

He was looking for a deeper commitment from film, which is what he
found. Now, Rabin would like to combine rock and reel and tour with
concerts based on soundtracks.

"Soundtracks have become so successful," says Rabin, taking note of
"Armageddon," a monster hit with more than 2 million albums in play.

Play the tape back on his life and Rabin raves about his upbringing in
South Africa, where, "I grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood
and attended a Reform shul [synagogue - RF]."

The sights and sounds of Judaism had their own role to play in his
interest in music, a nascent talent that would take off with his
parents peddling piano lessons for their son in 1960.

More than Jewish music as an influence was the quiet sound of the
Jewish soul at work. "From a traditional point of view, my Jewish
upbringing was a huge influence," he says, adding that his father's
focus on ethics and honesty scored points with him.

Now, years later, Rabin deals with the work ethos of Hollywood, where
back-stabbing is back in style - not that it ever left - and the
former Yes man refuses to be a yes man for cultural sell-outs.