"David said, 'I've got a TV show to do, and the music should be slow, dark, brooding, haunting. It should start with an anticipatory melody, then build slowly up to a climax - a climax that's slow and tears your heart out.' That became 'The Love Theme,' or 'Laura Palmer' theme of Twin Peaks. He'd say these things, and I'd just start improvising at the piano. It's not difficult for me - melodies come very easily. I still don't know what all the fuss over this music is about. Anyway, after twenty minutes of improvising and him saying, 'Play it slower-no, slower,' he said, 'That's IT, don't change a note, you've captured seventy-five percent of Twin Peaks.'"
On the writing of the Laura Palmer Theme:
"David would say that the music should begin very dark and slow. He said imagine you are in the alone
in the woods at night and you hear only the sound of wind and possibly the soft cry of an animal. I'd start playing and David would say, īThat's it, that's it! Now keep playing for a minute, but get ready for a change because now you see a beautiful girl. She's coming out from behind a tree, she's all alone and troubled, so now go into a beautiful melody that climbs ever so slowly until it reaches a climax. Let it tear your heart out.' Not a single note was ever changed."
His Haunting Mood Music Makes Composer Angelo Badalamenti the Lynch-Pin of Twin Peaks's Succcess
by Andrew Abrahams, People, September 10, 1990
