Indie Soundtrack Master Cliff Martinez Talks Scoring The Neon Demon

The longtime movie maestro’s third collaboration with the director Nicolas Winding Refn opens Friday.

An important ingredient in my artistic upbringing is punk rock. Shortly after moving to L.A., I was rehearsing in South Central L.A. with a top-40 band that was doing George Benson cover songs. In an adjacent room, I heard an offensive racket that turned out to be L.A.’s first (or second) punk rock band, The Screamers. At first I was repulsed. My next response was, “This is interesting,” and by the end of the song, I was hooked. Shortly thereafter I joined The Weirdos. We played at the Whisky A Go Go and when I saw three people do swan dives off the balcony, I thought to myself, “That beats applause any day.”

Read the full interview at Vanity Fair by Spike Carter