Over four decades Jack Nitzsche functioned as an essential behind-the-scenes presence in popular music, working as composer, songwriter, producer, arranger and studio musician. His formal training allowed him to supply 1960s rock & roll performers with structural depth that enhanced their instinctive approach, most notably for the Rolling Stones and Neil Young. Nitzsche also wrote several major hits and built a parallel career scoring nearly three dozen films.
Raised in Howard City, Michigan, he departed at age eighteen in 1955 for Westlake College of Music in Hollywood and remained in the Los Angeles region thereafter. Following his studies he began 1957 as a music copyist. Sonny Bono hired him at Specialty Records, where the two collaborated closely for several years; Nitzsche also held positions at Capitol Records and Original Sound Records. While at Original Sound he composed the instrumental “Bongo Bongo Bongo,” which Preston Epps recorded as the follow-up to his hit “Bongo Rock” and which reached the national charts in summer 1960.
Arranging assignments soon followed. After Phil Spector moved to the West Coast, Nitzsche joined him and arranged such successes as the Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel” and the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” He simultaneously secured a Reprise Records contract that yielded the 1963 instrumental “The Lonely Surfer,” a Top 40 single accompanied by an album of the same name. Although further albums appeared, a sustained performing career did not materialize. His next chart success arrived via the song he and Sonny Bono wrote, “Needles and Pins,” first cut by Jackie DeShannon and later taken into the Top 20 by the Searchers in spring 1964; Smokie revived it in 1977, and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers with Stevie Nicks reached the Top 40 with it in 1986.
Spector’s productions opened doors with another British Invasion act. In fall 1964 Nitzsche contributed to the Rolling Stones album The Rolling Stones, Now!, initiating a lengthy partnership that encompassed “Play with Fire,” “Paint It Black,” and the choral arrangement for “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
His initial screen credit came as musical director of the concert film The T.A.M.I. Show, shot in November 1964 and released in January 1965. That same year he supplied his first film score, for the low-budget Village of the Giants, though steady cinematic work waited another five years. In the interim he produced, arranged and performed with Tim Buckley, Bobby Darin, Doris Day, Marianne Faithfull, Frankie Laine and the Monkees. The connection with Neil Young began when Nitzsche supplied a string arrangement for “Expecting to Fly” on the 1967 Buffalo Springfield album Buffalo Springfield Again. After the group disbanded in 1968 and Young launched his solo career, Nitzsche co-produced and arranged the 1969 album Neil Young, then contributed to After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Time Fades Away and Tonight’s the Night; he later returned for Life in 1987 and Harvest Moon in 1992.
Movie opportunities resumed in 1970 with Performance, starring Mick Jagger, effectively establishing Nitzsche as a film composer. By 1973 he was scoring major studio pictures such as The Exorcist; in 1975 he received an Academy Award nomination for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. During the late 1970s he produced new-wave releases, including the first three Mink DeVille albums and Graham Parker & the Rumour’s Squeezing out Sparks. The 1980s found him focused almost exclusively on film work, averaging two scores annually. Another Academy Award nomination arrived for An Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, and, together with Will Jennings and Buffy Sainte-Marie—then Nitzsche’s wife—he won the Oscar for Best Song with “Up Where We Belong,” already a number-one hit for Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.
Film assignments diminished after the early 1990s; his final score was The Crossing Guard in 1995. Nitzsche died in August 2000 at the age of sixty-three.
