Kamen was born in New York City, the second of four sons. His father Saul Kamen was a dentist, and his mother, Harriet, was a teacher. While attending the The High School of Music & Art in New York City, Michael Kamen met and became friends with Martin Fulterman (later known as Mark Snow, who composed the theme music for The X-Files among other projects). While studying the oboe, he formed a rock classical fusion band called New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, together with classmates Fulterman and Dorian Rudnytsky. The group performed their music while dressed in tuxedos. In the middle of the concert, Fulterman and Kamen would play an oboe duet. The group backed up friend and classmate Janis Ian in a concert at Alice Tully Hall in late 1967. After graduating high school, Kamen attended The Juilliard School, also in New York City.
Kamen's early work centered on ballets, thirteen in all, then expanding into Hollywood by writing the score for The Next Man in 1976, then into pop and rock arranging, collaborating with Pink Floyd on their album, The Wall.
Kamen became a highly-sought arranger in the realms of pop and rock music. His contemporaries in this field included Academy Award winner Anne Dudley, Richard Niles, and Nick Ingman. His successes include his work with Pink Floyd, David Gilmour and Roger Waters (he is one of the few people to have been invited to work with both former Pink Floyd members, after their acrimonious split), as well as Queen (orchestration on Who Wants To Live Forever), Eric Clapton (on Edge of Darkness), Roger Daltrey, Aerosmith (live orchestral version of Dream On for MTV), Tom Petty, Bon Jovi, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Eurythmics, Queensrÿche, Rush, Metallica (on their live album, S&M), Def Leppard, Herbie Hancock, The Cranberries, Bryan Adams, Jim Croce, Coldplay, Sting, and Kate Bush. For Bush, Kamen delivered an orchestral backing for "Moments of Pleasure" from The Red Shoes album, substantially building upon a simple piano theme Bush had composed. In this instance, and many others, he conducted the orchestra personally for the recording. In 1984, Kamen had similarly heightened the impact of a pop recording for the Eurythmics "Here Comes the Rain Again", that score relying as much on his compositional skills as his arranging talents. Five years later, he did the music for For Queen and Country.
In 1990, Kamen joined many other guests for Roger Waters' performance of The Wall in Berlin and headed the National Philharmonic Orchestra during the 24 Nights sessions with Eric Clapton the following year.
Lenny Kravitz recorded a cover of "Fields of Joy" on his 1991 CD Mama Said that Michael co-wrote with Hal Fredricks.
In 2002, he was part of the Concert for George as string conductor.
Kamen had a very successful partnership with Bryan Adams and R.J. Lange composing scores and songs. The ballad "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" for the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves would be the number one song of that year, worldwide. Other songs would be "All For Love" for the movie "The Three Musketeers" in 1993, and "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" the song from the film "Don Juan DeMarco" in 1995.
Kamen wrote eleven ballets, a saxophone concerto and an electric guitar concerto (with Japanese guitarist Tomoyasu Hotei as a soloist). Additionally, he wrote a commissioned work, "Quintet," for the Canadian Brass. He also provided scores for the films such as Back to Gaya, The Dead Zone (film), For Queen and Country, Polyester, Brazil, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Three Musketeers, Highlander, X-Men, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Licence to Kill, the Lethal Weapon series, the first three films of the Die Hard series, Mr. Holland's Opus, The Iron Giant, Splitting Heirs, Frequency, and many others. To this day the overture from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is used by Morgan Creek Productions for its logo, while New Line's corresponding theme is the opening segment of a track from Highlander. He also scored both the From the Earth to the Moon and Band of Brothers series on HBO. The trailer for the 2008 Disney/Pixar release WALL-E featured Kamen's 'Central Services / The Office' from his Brazil 1985 OST.
In television, Kamen composed music for two series of The Manageress produced by Glenn Wilhide at Zed Productions for Channel 4, but perhaps his best known work was on the 1985 BBC Television serial Edge of Darkness, on which he collaborated with Eric Clapton to write the score. The pair were awarded with a British Academy Television Award for Best Original Television Music for their work and performed the main movie theme with the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall of London in 1990 and 1991. In 1994, Kamen conducted an orchestration of The Who's music for Roger Daltrey's 50th birthday concert series entitled Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who which was subsequently released on CD and DVD. He also worked with heavy metal band Metallica, on a two day concert that was held in Berkeley, California, with the San Francisco Symphony. A recording of the concert, titled S&M, debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200, won a Grammy for the "Best Rock Instrumental Performance" in 2000 and went multi-platinum in 2001.
Kamen was nominated for two Academy Awards and won three Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, two Ivor Novello Awards, an Annie Award and an Emmy.
His involvement with Mr. Holland's Opus, a film about a frustrated composer who finds fulfillment as a high school music teacher, led Kamen to create The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation in 1996. The foundation supports music education through the donation of new and refurbished musical instruments to underserved school and community music programs and individual students in the United States. In 2005 the foundation created an emergency fund for schools and students affected by Hurricane Katrina.
In 1999, Kamen and the San Francisco Symphony constructed and performed a concert with thrash metal band Metallica. This concert was released as a live album on DVD, VHS and CD, under the title S&M (an acronym for "Symphony and Metallica" but also wordplay on the abbreviation for sadomasochism). In 2001 and 2002, Kamen performed with David Gilmour at Gilmour's semi-unplugged shows at the Royal Festival Hall, playing piano and cor anglais. The 2001 concert and highlights from 2002 were released as a DVD as David Gilmour in Concert.
In 2002, Kamen, along with Julian Lloyd Webber, Dame Evelyn Glennie, and Sir James Galway launched the Music Education Consortium in the UK. The consortium's efforts led to the injection of £332 million for music education in the UK. He was also commissioned to write a piece for the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Kamen was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997. He died in London from a heart attack in 2003, at the age of 55. His last recorded work appeared on Bryan Adams's album Room Service where he played the oboe and wrote the orchestration to "I Was Only Dreamin'". Kamen had also completed the charts for accompaniment to two songs on Kate Bush's album Aerial, which was released in April 2005. Some of Bush's fans, pleased by Kamen's scoring of "Moments of Pleasure" from Bush's 1993 album The Red Shoes, expressed gratitude when it became known that the work had been finished.[citation needed]
In 2004, when Annie Lennox accepted the Academy Award for Best Original Song (her composition "Into the West" from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), she dedicated her achievement to the memory of Kamen.
The 2004 movies First Daughter and Boo, Zino & the Snurks|Back To Gaya, which he was working on at the time of his death, were dedicated to his memory.
David Gilmour's 2006 album On an Island was dedicated in his and longtime Pink Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke's memories.
Michael Kamen is survived by his wife, Sandra Keenan-Kamen, and by his daughters, Sasha and Zoe.
The Desert
Michael Kamen Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The golden treat you never tried.
In times of old, in days gone by.
If I could catch your dancing eye.
It was on the way,
On the road to dreams, yeah.
Now my heart's drowned in no love streams, yeah.
The street is cold, it's trees are gone.
The story's told the dark has won.
Once we set sail to catch a star.
We had to fail, it was too far.
I felt the wind shout like a drum.
You said, "my friend, love's end has come."
It couldn't last, had to stop.
You drained it all to the last drop.
Now my heart's drowned in no love streams, yeah.
On this dark street the sun is black.
The winter life is coming back.
On this dark street it's cold inside.
There's no retreat from time that's died.
It was on the way,
On the road to dreams, yeah.
Now my heart's drowned in no love streams, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now my heart's drowned in no love streams, yeah.
Now my heart's drowned in no love.
The lyrics of Michael Kamen's song The Desert describe the feelings of loss and nostalgia that the singer experiences as he walks down a street that used to represent hope and promises of a brighter future, but now resembles a desolate desert. The song's title, The Desert, is a metaphor for the emotional emptiness that the singer feels as he realizes that his dreams and aspirations have been lost and that he is now trapped in a world that he does not recognize. The street, which used to be lush with trees and filled with potential, is now barren and cold, a reflection of the singer's disillusionment and loneliness.
The lyrics are filled with images of the past, of a time when the singer was filled with hope and had dreams of catching a star. However, those dreams were too far away, and the singer has come to the realization that love and happiness are fleeting and cannot be sustained forever. The line "You drained it all to the last drop" is particularly poignant, as it speaks to the idea that the singer's emotional reservoir has been depleted, leaving him unable to love or feel joy.
The repetition of the line "Now my heart's drowned in no love streams" at the end of the song emphasizes the singer's sense of loss and isolation. The song is both melancholy and beautiful, with Kamen's haunting musical composition perfectly matched to the lyrics' bittersweet themes.
Line by Line Meaning
Upon this street where time has died.
The setting of the song is a street that is stripped of happiness and growth.
The golden treat you never tried.
Possible opportunities have been missed, and the final fruit of success has not been tasted.
In times of old, in days gone by.
The past was once full of hope and possibility.
If I could catch your dancing eye.
If only the heart could be lifted from its current state of despair.
It was on the way,
The journey had begun, and new beginnings seemed certain.
On the road to dreams, yeah.
The path ahead seemed positive and fulfilling.
Now my heart's drowned in no love streams, yeah.
But now the heart is without any love or fulfillment.
The street is cold, it's trees are gone.
The environment is desolate and does not support any progress.
The story's told the dark has won.
The story has been written, and the negative aspects of the situation have prevailed.
Once we set sail to catch a star.
Hope was once alive, and the goal seemed achievable.
We had to fail, it was too far.
But reality sets in, the goals become unreachable, and failure is inevitable.
I felt the wind shout like a drum.
The environment around the artist is hostile and distracting in its quietness.
You said, "my friend, love's end has come."
A friend, possibly a lover, states that their relationship cannot be sustained.
It couldn't last, had to stop.
The relationship had an inevitable end.
You drained it all to the last drop.
The friend or lover took everything that was left, leaving behind an empty void.
On this dark street the sun is black.
Even light and hope from nature are absent.
The winter life is coming back.
Death and lack of growth are recurrent themes throughout life.
On this dark street it's cold inside.
The singer is enveloped in coldness and suffering.
There's no retreat from time that's died.
There is no going back to happier times.
Now my heart's drowned in no love streams, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The heart is fully deprived of love and happiness, and the repetition emphasizes the pain and negativity.
Now my heart's drowned in no love streams, yeah.
The heart is empty and loveless.
Now my heart's drowned in no love.
The heart is dead and lifeless.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: MICHAEL ARNOLD KAMEN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind