Released by Film Score Monthly
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Petulia
Liner Notes
This was one of my all-time favorite album projects: two brilliant John Barry scores. One was a landmark Richard Lester film from 1968, the other a little-seen musical version of Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic released in 1972. Luckily both were Warner Bros. LPs and so they could be combined into a single 79-minute CD. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland boasts an incredible British cast including Peter Sellers, Michael Crawford, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson and a young Fiona Fullerton as Alice. The film got terrible reviews but the songs by Barry and Don Black are delightful (especially “Curiouser and Curiouser,” “I’ve Never Been This Far Before” and “The Me I Never Knew,” all of which Barry later turned into a symphonic suite). Petulia starred Julie Christie and George C. Scott and seems today to be a sharply observed look at Flower Power-era San Francisco with one of the composer’s most haunting themes. Any excuse to call John Barry for fresh insights into his work was welcome, and I did so again here.
