Notes On A Score: ‘John Wick’ Co-Composer Joel J. Richard On Expanding The Franchise’s Sound In ‘Chapter 4’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Welcome to “Notes on a Score,” GVN’s interview series highlighting the composers and musicians behind some of the year’s most acclaimed films and television series

The following article contains spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4.

After attending the red carpet premiere of John Wick: Chapter 4 back in March, series co-composer Joel J. Richard couldn’t help but be reminded of where it all began.

“I tend to skip premieres, but I did go to the first one for John Wick,” recounts Richard, who is credited on the score alongside Tyler Bates (Guardians of the Galaxy, Pearl). “It was small and intimate. It felt like going to the movies, except that the cast was there. With John Wick 4, it was insane. There were thousands of people lined up outside of the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.”

It’s hard to remember that, just a decade ago, John Wick was the underdog. The series’ first installment had just barely secured distribution before becoming a sleeper hit, and now it has exploded into one of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. “It was essentially an indie film when it first came around,” continues Richard. “It was visually stunning, all the fight choreography was amazing, but I don’t think I could’ve anticipated that it would turn into what it has.”

In fairness, nobody could have anticipated the scale of Chapter 4, a two hour and 49 minute thrill ride spanning multiple continents and countless action setpieces. It’s the biggest film in the franchise by far, featuring the most music composed for a John Wick film yet.

“The script came in 2021 and I noticed it had a lot more pages than the prior scripts,” Richard laughs. “We went down to [director] Chad [Stahelski]’s office to start discussing music without having seen any footage yet, and he had emphasized that the music needs for the film were going to be different from previous chapters. I remember writing down descriptions of things he was asking for – he wanted a choir, a Western vibe, a samurai film. I just started creating demos to try to figure out how to incorporate all of them into what still felt like a John Wick score.”

Thus began the exciting, if somewhat hectic process of discovering new ways to expand the John Wick sound. “It was this collaborative process where Chad would go, “You know what? Let’s try a song here,” or, “Let’s try it with an electronic driving track. No, let’s swap that out for a more orchestral track.” It wasn’t a film that you could map out in a linear fashion.” Unlike a majority of studio films, Richard was composing music up until the final day of mixing. “Right up until the end, we were figuring out how music was going to work.”

The final product is a massive expansion for the franchise, encompassing several different styles and tones that seamlessly flow between each other: familiar bass drones, pulsating club rhythms, Japanese taiko percussion, twangy homages to Sergio Leone, and even a traditional orchestral sound. Director Chad Stahelski pushed for the addition of a 72-piece orchestra, a first for the franchise, in an attempt to give Chapter 4’s score a cinematic quality.

With the orchestra came opportunities for Richard to reflect Chapter 4’s new ensemble of characters with new instruments. “There are certain moments in the film where the orchestra’s showcased. For example, one of the instruments associated with Caine’s character, when he talks about his daughter, is an alto flute. Adding these other colors expanded the sonic palette of the franchise.”

However, the series never forgets its roots, especially during the film’s final shootout. Knowing John would meet his demise, Richard saw the ending as a chance to musically bookend the entire saga. “I viewed his death as him reconnecting with Helen. There’s a sense of yearning, mourning, and loss in Helen’s theme that’s already baked into the motifs associated with John, so I knew that by the time we got to the end of the film it would make sense to lean into that material.

“When John’s finally on the stairs alone, it becomes this sparse, ambient, mournful version of the John Wick theme. Then it transitions into Helen’s voice calling to him. By the time he puts his head down on the stairs, we’re fully in Helen territory and even reflecting on Helen’s funeral from the first film. Now, John has been reconnected with Helen.”

When asked if he would return for another installment, Richard is quick to joke. “I do need a vacation,” he says, laughing. “Maybe [I could score] a comedy or a light drama as a palette cleanser.

“I imagine if they make more, and I get to be a part of them, I would get to continue on that path of finding new sounds and new ways to manipulate audio and add new colors to the franchise. That would be really exciting. If the opportunity comes up for more John Wick, I’d be excited to participate. Just not today.”

In this extensive and exclusive interview with Geek Vibes Nation, Richard talks about chasing picture lock, the challenges of fighting against his own temp music, the advantages of performing parts of the score with his own instruments, and more. Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

It’s incredible to see how far the John Wick series has come, beginning as this borderline indie action film that struggled to get theatrical distribution to now being a blockbuster franchise grossing the highest numbers the series has ever seen. You have been with the series since the first installment. How does it feel to have seen this story grow into a banner franchise?

Yeah, it’s something I’ve been thinking about, especially since the premier. I tend to skip premieres, but I did go to the first one for John Wick and then for John Wick: Chapter 4, and they were drastically different. The first premiere was small and intimate. It felt like going to the movies, except that the cast was there. There wasn’t a lot of pomp and circumstance. With John Wick 4, it was insane. There were thousands of people lined up outside of the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. As you said, it was essentially an indie film when it first came around nine years ago. It was visually stunning, all the fight choreography was amazing, but I don’t think I could’ve anticipated that it would turn into what it has or that the John Wick world had so much room to expand. The universe just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s been a really incredible ride.

Is there something about the character of John Wick especially that you, as a composer, find really appealing? You wouldn’t come back for four films in a row if there wasn’t [laughs].

The first thing I tapped into was the overall sadness that follows John throughout the film. In John Wick 1, the loss of his wife originally encompassed about 15 minutes of the film and was a longer sequence.

Wow, I didn’t know that.

The through-line is he doesn’t want to be a part of the assassin world anymore – the escape was his wife, and it was the purest form of happiness that he had found in life. I found that to be really compelling, that coupled with Chad Stahelski’s [director of all four John Wick films] approach to the filmmaking, and not wanting it to take itself too seriously. It’s not mired in the pathos that John’s living in. Chad wanted to keep it fun at the same time. I found all of that challenging and exciting to work on because, in any given moment, you might be tapping into the loss of John’s wife, or then you’re tapping into him being this badass character running around doing his thing. It’s been a fun project to work on because you get to throw everything you can think of at it.

I want to touch a little bit on your collaboration with co-composer Tyler Bates. What, for you, makes collaborating with Tyler a unique experience?

Overall, he’s been a supportive friend and an artist I respect. I worked on John Wick 4 for more than a year, so it was a long, arduous journey to get to the end. It’s extremely valuable to be able to call each other and keep morale up on the days that you just want to go to sleep. It’s really valuable to have someone that you can say, “Hey, what do you think of this?” Because after a while, when you’re working on something, you can lose a sense of if it’s any good. You get so desensitized by hearing your own perspective, so it’s great to be able to bounce something over to somebody else and say, “Hey, is this a terrible idea? Is this a great idea?” Even getting that feedback is such a valuable thing to have.

This has the most music out of any of the John Wick films. When did it become clear to you that this film was going to be the biggest film, musically, in the franchise and how did you go about taking on that challenge?

The script came in 2021 and I noticed it had a lot more pages than the prior scripts. That was the first indicator. [laughs] John Wick 4 was the most hands-on Chad has ever been with the score. At the beginning of 2022, we went down to Chad’s office to start discussing music without having seen any footage yet, and he had emphasized that the music needs for the film were going to be different from previous chapters. He was like, “I’m going to need music to do a lot of things it didn’t do before. I’m not sure what all those things are yet, but we’re going to figure it out as we go.” I remember writing down descriptions of things he was asking for – he wanted a choir, a Western vibe, a samurai film. I remember going back to the studio and thinking, “well, this is a lot of things,” but then I just started creating demos to try to figure out how to incorporate all of them into what still felt like a John Wick score.

When the first assembly cut showed up, it was approximately three hours and 45 minutes long. Day by day and month by month, new edits rolled in. Chad was figuring out where he wanted to have songs, where he wanted to have score, and that process went right up until the final day of the mix. I was still writing music up until the last day. Every day, a new piece of music or a new visual effect or the sound design element would change, and all of those pieces would inform the next decision made. It was this collaborative process where Chad would go, “You know what? Let’s try a song here,” or, “Let’s try it with an electronic driving track. No, let’s swap that out for a more orchestral track.” It wasn’t a film that you could map out in a linear fashion. For some films, the placement and use of music is obvious, and you go, “Okay, this is definitely a score moment,” or, “This is definitely going to be played dry without music.” With this film, right up until the end, we were figuring out how music was going to work. 

Did the score and the edit have a relationship at all? Were you ever scoring to a locked cut?

Oh, no. I couldn’t tell you anymore – I’d have to go count – how many cuts of the film I have. 

[laughs]

I have probably a terabyte’s worth of different versions of picture. The film was always changing and at a pretty quick pace. Oftentimes, you would write a piece of music on Monday and by Tuesday a new cut comes in that eradicates the piece of music that you just made. A scene might be five minutes long and you score the entire scene and then, three cuts later, it’s now a two-minute-long scene, so you’re trying to conform it and see what you can salvage to make the piece still work. Sometimes you just can’t salvage it and start over, but sometimes you can make it work. Then, four cuts later, the scene might now be seven minutes long. It’s this accordion effect. You add to that a film of this length, everything is moving and shifting. I don’t think I ever had any locked picture on this.

Wow.

It was the same with John Wick: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 – Parabellum. Right into the final stage of the mix, Chad’s making tweaks and modifying cues. I wish there was locked picture. [both laugh]

That’s so crazy. It’s always fascinating to see how different projects interact with the score. Some people are scoring to a lock, some people are chasing the lock, and some people are composing music before a picture is even given.

They all really do vary more and more with digital editing. Everything happens at a faster pace. Filmmakers no longer have to commit as much as they used to early on in the filmmaking process. John Wick 1 was nearly locked when I came onboard. I attended a family and friends screening, and it was a complete film. I think I had maybe four versions of picture with minor edits, the main one being that 15 minute version of Helen’s introduction. But for the most part, the film was intact.

Did the family and friends screening have temp music?

That had temp in it. The interesting thing about the temp was it was very ominous and dark. The first film was co-directed by David Leitch, and I remember David saying, “I want the film to feel fun,” but I didn’t see that. I went back to my studio and I muted the temp score and re-watched the film and realized that the temp was playing through the humor. I needed to remove all the music to actually see what Dave was talking about. For John Wick 2, they used the John Wick 1 score as temp for a good portion of it, if not all. By the time we got to John Wick 3, the temp score was all John Wick material. 

So, it sounds like you’ve never really been battling with temp for the series.

I would say there was some temp love in John Wick 4 because it happened to be temped primarily with John Wick material. One challenge working on a franchise is you get to a point where you want to explore new ideas and move away from some of the pre-existing material because the world’s expanding and the characters are expanding. In some cases, that worked out, and in others, Chad would go, “You know what, I really love this temp that relates to John Wick 3,” for example, “Can we stay in that realm? Do something new but stay in that realm?”

Blessing and a curse. They love your work so much that they just use it again.

When the temp is your own, that can be really challenging because you know how it’s made. You know where those sounds came from. In a way, I prefer if it’s someone else’s temp or no temp at all. If it’s someone else’s temp, you can listen to it once, get a sense of what the director’s going for, what emotional beats they want to hit, and then mute it and never listen to it again and find your own way into a scene. When it’s your own music temped in, you’re trying to figure out how to get that music out of your mind. It can be a blessing and a curse. I think it might be a curse. [both laughing] I think no temp music’s the better way to go.

Moving on, you played a number of instruments on the score yourself. Does playing in the score at all affect your relationship to it? Do you maybe feel more ownership when you’re the one who actually needs to be playing the music?

I think so. Every player has their own feel. I play acoustic and electric guitar, the bass, mandolin, miscellaneous instruments. The way I play acoustic guitar, for better or worse, is how I play it. It’s my hands, my instrument. The John Wick 1 score had a smaller budget. That in itself put up parameters where I said, “Okay, how do I, within this budget, make this score sound as polished, unique, and supportive of the film as it can be?” A lot of that then became, “Well, alright, these are the instruments I have. Let me play these and figure out how they work and if they benefit the film.”

When playing and producing yourself, you’re working on the sounds and all those variables lead to a series of choices that create a sound that is your own in that moment versus if you brought in a session player, who’s going to already have their own sound. If you play a phrase and then in your mind go, “Oh, I really like the first three notes and the last four notes,” you’ll mentally do a few more takes where you’re making fine adjustments to the phrasing. It’s harder to do that with another individual, especially when they’re really minute changes. Any score where someone’s playing a ton of the instruments, it’s going to be more of a personal touch for themselves. I really like doing it. It’s quite satisfying.

This is the first John Wick film that incorporates an orchestra. What was the feeling like getting to record live with the players? Was there something special about hearing this new musical sound make its way into the film?

Recording live players is always a great experience. I put a lot of time into programming an orchestra in order to get it to sound good, but there really is something about putting people in a room, moving air, and having them all, as individuals, come together. There’s so much more expression that gets added, even playing the simplest of parts. For Chad, who pushed for a more prominent use of orchestra in Chapter 4, music was one of the last stages. The orchestra was recorded the weekend prior to the final mix of the film starting, so it was a last-minute scramble to get the orchestra recorded and mixed.

There are certain moments in the film where the orchestra’s showcased, which was this trial and error of Chad trying to figure out where he wanted to augment the sound. Finding those places and then recording the players enhanced those moments. The programmed orchestra sounded great, but the live stuff moves and breathes and ebbs and flows. For example, one of the instruments associated with Caine’s character when he talks about his daughter is an alto flute. Adding these other colors expanded the sonic palette of the franchise. Chad was happy with it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lvsNUQTXaE]

Since the movie’s been out for a little bit, I think it’s fair to dive into spoiler territory a little bit. John Wick is, as of now, no longer with us.

[shrugs]

You never know.

I don’t know.

For our purposes today, John Wick’s death is a really emotional piece of the film, and I like to think of “Twenty Paces,” “Ten Paces,” and “Helen a Handbasket” as a suite of sorts. When you learned that this death scene was going to happen, what were the first ideas that you thought of as you began to score it?

Chad had expressed early on that it can’t end well for John. There’s nowhere for him to go. He can’t kill every assassin on the planet—or maybe he can, I don’t know. [both laugh] He can staple himself together all he wants, but he’s pretty much a dead man walking in a lot of ways. I think that was baked into the character from the beginning so, in a way, I was always preparing for this moment. I viewed his death as him reconnecting with Helen. There’s a sense of yearning, mourning, and loss in Helen’s theme. That’s already baked into the motifs associated with John, so I knew that by the time we got to the end of the film it would make sense to lean into that material. Whenever there’s a bit of Helen sprinkled into cues throughout the franchise, I remember myself always having that tightness in your chest over the loss of Helen. I knew that was going to be a component in the end.

For the final stretch, when “Helen A Handbasket” kicks in, the John Wick theme is sprinkled throughout it. The top line is an augmented version of the John Wick theme. Then there’s a little bit of Caine and John having a moment together and Caine’s flute tune comes in. It soon starts to transition more and more into Helen territory. When John’s finally on the stairs alone, it becomes this sparse, ambient, mournful version of the John Wick theme. Then it transitions into Helen’s voice calling to him. By the time he puts his head down on the stairs, we’re fully in Helen territory and even reflecting on Helen’s funeral from the first film. Chad wanted to bookend the film with the first film. Now, John has been reconnected with Helen.

I don’t want to put you in a compromising situation, but I do have to ask, should you get the opportunity to return to John Wick, would you be excited to return to the franchise?

[laughs]

Are you looking for a vacation from it? Where’s your head at?

I think my mind’s in the same place Chad’s is. One, I do need a vacation.

[laughs]

I think what’s fun with the John Wick world is there’s typically a lot of creative freedom, and because the universe is expanding, one of Chad’s key bits of direction is always, “Make it weird. I want it weirder.” This one I had baritone guitars, harmonica, all sorts of random instruments. I think that’s compelling, and I imagine if they make more, and I get to be a part of them, I would get to continue on that path of finding new sounds and new ways to manipulate audio and add new colors to the franchise. That would be really exciting. At the same time…maybe [I could score] a comedy or a light drama as a palette cleanser.

A tight 90. [laughs]

Yeah, yeah. A 90-minute film with some comedy in it. If the opportunity comes up for more John Wick, I’d be excited to participate. Just not today. [laughs]

I’m sure you’re also excited for new voices to throw their hats into the ring.

Absolutely. The world’s expanding and it can go anywhere. With each film, they’ve expanded out further and further. In John Wick 1, he doesn’t even leave New York. By John Wick 4, he ends up in four or five different countries by the time it’s all said and done. They’re becoming almost like the James Bond films. If they make a fifth, I’d be really interested in seeing where they end up. Who knows? By John Wick 8, maybe he ends up in space!

John Wick in space!!!!

Think about it, you know? I mean that could be interesting. How do you fight in space?

Look, if Fast and the Furious can go to space, any movie series can go to space, as far as I’m concerned.

There you go.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjRHZEUamCc]

John Wick: Chapter 4 is now playing in theaters everywhere. Lionsgate will be releasing the film on Blu-Ray and DVD this June.