By CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA | Reporter
Prior to teaming up on the soundtrack of “Benji,” the Netflix remake of the 1974 film franchise, Curt Sobel and Stephen Bishop walked on very different paths.
Born in Detroit, Sobel always wanted to be a music composer. His love for music inspired him to study it at the highest level, moving from the Great Lakes state to the East Coast to study at Berklee School of Music.
Knowing that Hollywood was the mecca of the film industry, which Sobel wanted to break into, he moved to Los Angeles and began to write his own music with the help of his 1970’s Epiphone guitar, joining the race of thousands trying to get their foot in the door.
“I didn’t know what to do with them, I just loved writing songs, being in my room and writing alone,” Sobel said in a sit down with the Palisadian-Post. “But I came out here after college and realized that was not a very responsible thing to do to try and make a living.”
Sobel, who now lives in the El Medio Bluffs, remembered his interest in editing music for film—something he was exposed to during his time at Berklee—and found a job editing music for television.
Down in San Diego, Bishop had been learning how to play music in a less formal way with a guitar gifted to him by his brother. Not being able to afford guitar lessons, Bishop taught himself how to play with a warped Mel Bay record he had accidentally left out in the sun.
Once he deciphered the awkward sounds, 14-year-old Bishop formed a band with his friends called The Weeds, playing at parties and school events. At the age of 17, Bishop was wandering the streets of LA, knocking on doors of music publishers, trying to catch a break.
“I would do all kinds of weird things,” Bishop said. “I would get into whatever publishing company and I would be like, ‘Yes, you know, I actually live in England and I’m very close with The Beatles’ parents,’” he said, in his best British accent and having only met them once—being in the crowd the night John Lennon and Harry Nilsson were kicked out of the Troubadour nightclub for heckling the Smothers Brothers.
Eventually, Bishop landed his first job with Edwin H. Morris & Co. publishing.
“They hired me at 50 dollars a week. I was a staff writer at 18, I moved to LA and got myself a little apartment, and I was going,” Bishop said. “I’m like the real thing you know. I really did come out of nowhere.
“A lot of people in the business got somewhere because of their friends or because of their family, but I just did it on my own.”
Bishop got his first break when his song “Daisy Hawkins” was recorded by musician Jerry Cole.
“It didn’t do anything but it was a thrill just to go into Wallichs Music City and see my record there with my name on it,” he said, with the same excitement he probably had back then.
Bishop quickly became a known songwriter and would write music for musical behemoths like Bette Midler, Art Garfunkel and Eric Clapton. He recalled playing music for Diana Ross at her house when Smokey Robinson casually stopped by.
Bishop’s song “Separate Lives,” sung by Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin, from the 1985 movie “White Nights,” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, losing to Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me” from the same film.
By then, Sobel had made it as a music composer and editor within the film industry, and first met Bishop in the studio when he was recording a song for “The Money Pit,” a 1986 film starring Palisadian Tom Hanks and Shelley Long.
The duo would cross paths every now and then since their first meeting 32 years ago, but didn’t get the chance to work together again until the making of director Brandon Camp’s “Benji,” a revamp of the franchise started by his father, Joe Camp.
“Initially I was doing it on my own, and I was writing these ideas down and I thought, ‘You know, this project would benefit from [Bishop’s] touch, from his sensitivity and creativity that he puts into songwriting,’” Sobel said.
“I wanted to show [Bishop] I could write a little bit, and so I wrote some things, two on guitar, one on piano.”
He said the two guitar versions weren’t “up to snuff” for Bishop, but his interest was piqued when he heard it on a piano.
Bishop said he knew when he heard the first line of the song, that it was going to be the one.
“It felt like ‘Oh, well it’s like half the song is written,’ you know? When you get an opening line like that, it’s just perfect,” he said.
After settling on the bones of the song, Sobel hired Harvey Mason Jr., one of the industries top music producers, to get the song to the next level. Bishop and Sobel’s song was then sung by Dewain Whitmore Jr., and played by Randy Kerber on piano and Nathan East on bass.
As their passion for songwriting and recording music remains the same, technology has drastically changed the craft that Bishop and Sobel have dedicated their lives to. When digital sounds replaced instruments and internet distribution companies made new platforms for movies, Sobel and Bishop crafted a musical surfboard to ride the wave into the new era.
“All the advantages that it offered filmmakers and editors and sound people, and the disadvantages that sometimes you work on things so quick and the turnover is so quick and the expectation is so quick that it doesn’t allow you to sit with something and just allow it to breathe and judge it with the proper amount of time,” Sobel said.
“That aspect of the digital editing is lost on the filmmaking or maybe the songwriting experience. You’ve sort of lost the time you used to have to play something back and see if that works.”
“We’re fortunate that Netflix bought [‘Benji’] and is putting it on a medium that so many people around the world are going to see it—many more that will ever have seen it in a theatrical environment,” Sobel said. “The downside of that for us is having created something original for a theatrical presentation.”
“Almost Home” won’t be eligible for an Oscar, but their decades-long reunion in the making will still be eligible for an Emmy, an award they welcome any day and a payoff that will have made their journey worth the ride.