The other day, as I hurtled through the air in a big metal tube, I thumbed through an in-flight magazine. An article on JOHN BON JOVI caught my eye.
He said he'd noticed that the most successful people in the music and film industry were on the whole, the most decent types.

I wondered, was it, "the nicer they are, the bigger they get" or "the bigger they are, the nicer they get."
Did they become successful because they were decent types or was it that they could afford to be decent types once they became successful. Any way I saw some merit in the Bon Jovi theory to whit…

The most successful guy I ever worked with was MAURICE JARRE and you'd certainly be hard pressed finding a more decent human being, certainly given the intensity of the studio environment. When he got me to blow didjereedoo-like into some PVC tubes for the movie "Beyond Thunderdome", he had already picked up his third Academy Award, this time for his score to 'A Passage to India'. His first was for "Laurence of Arabia" so he wasn't exactly a new kid on the block.

He was so humble that at first I thought he must have been Monsieur Jarre's manservant. He warmly welcomed me into the studio, taking me by the arm and leading me to a nice comfortable chair. He apologized in French and English for keeping me waiting for five minutes while they finished off a previous piece of work.
When I said, "Nah youse are right Mr. Jarre!" he asked me to call him Maurice.

He would have realized very early on that my considerable lack of finesse (talent) would at the very least require a lateral approach and at worst, someone else to do the job, but he gently spurred me on. The engineer Spencer Lee had an idea and Maurice gave him the go ahead, listening patiently while my sounds were sampled, possibly looped and probably flanged, phased and fed back on themselves.

We all thought it certainly sounded interesting. Maurice thanked me profusely and made me feel worthwhile. He said that I was more than welcome to stick around while they worked on some other parts and would I like a cup of tea. I couldn't believe it.
I wonder if he's ever met John Bon Jovi.
Perhaps it was after meeting Maurice Jarre that John 'the good' Jovi first postulated his theory.