Interview: TICK, TICK... BOOM! Executive Music Producer Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a powerhouse composer, producer, arranger, and orchestrator, known for his work on stage, on television, and in film. Sherman won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations for In the Heights as well as the 2008 Grammy Award as the co-producer of the In The Heights Original Broadway Cast Album. He also produced the Hamilton Original Broadway Cast Album with The Roots for which he won a 2016 Grammy Award. Sherman also won the 2011 Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song-Children's and Animation for Sesame Street's "What I Am", the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song-Children's and Animation for Sesame Street's "The Power of Yet", and the 2018 Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song-Children's and Animation for Sesame Street's "A Song About Songs" featuring Sia.

Sherman's most recent project is the film adaptation of Jonathan Larson's autobiographical musical tick, tick... BOOM!. Directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. tick, tick... BOOM! stars Academy Award nominee & Tony Award winner Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Tony Award nominee Robin de Jesús, Tony Award nominee Joshua Henry, MJ Rodriguez, Emmy Award winner Bradley Whitford, The Roots' Tariq Trotter, with Emmy and Tony Award winner Judith Light, and Vanessa Hudgens.

We spoke with Sherman about his long-standing love of the Off-Broadway musical tick, tick...BOOM!, how he went about creating the sound for the film, working with his college roommate Lin-Manuel Miranda & more!

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You are the Executive Music Producer for tick, tick... BOOM!. For those who don't know, tell me what the Executive Music Producer on a film does.

The way we describe it, it's sort of everything that's involved musically. So, it's recording vocals, recording bands, being on set when it's filmed, and if they're singing live, making sure that's all working out, making sure the musicians are playing the right thing. And once the movie is filmed and edited, recording the band, and writing out the parts, and sometimes doing the underscoring, and listening to the mixes, and then finalizing everything. It's literally like taking the music process from the absolute beginning to the absolute end. And in the beginning it's also working with the director to shape what parts of the song we want. Do we want to cut stuff because we need something different? Do we want add something? Do we want to put a vamp in it? All musical-related things. And with a musical it's more than usual, as you would assume. Everything musical you can think of I have my hands in, in one way or another.

You reunited with Lin-Manuel Miranda for this film. You are longtime friends, you'd worked with Lin previously on In the Heights and Hamilton, and you are a member of Freestyle Love Supreme. So, how was it working with him on tick, tick... BOOM!?

Well, it's interesting, Lin and I met in college when we were 19 or 20, so that was 20 yeas ago. We were roommates for many years. He and I have known each other for a very long time. And oddly, later in life, we only really see each other when we're working. So, for us, it's an opportunity to hang out and be with each other, which is really fun. I've known him forever, and we're good at reading each other, and we don't have to say much to get the point across of what we want. And it's been interesting to watch him go from a musical guy to an actor and a director, and he's a really wonderful director. He gives you space to do your job, and then comes in and chimes in when he feels really strongly about something, similar to the work we've done in theater. He's very open to suggestions and ideas. It was really fun, a really enjoyable process, for sure. Especially during COVID, which is a weird time to make a film. But we did it! And it worked out really well.

Were you a longtime fan of the musical like a lot of musical theatre nerds, or did you become more familiar with it once you knew you would be working on it?

True story, when Lin and I lived together we had this CD player, and one of the top 3 CDs of ours was tick, tick... BOOM! the Off-Broadway recording. I had never seen the show. He loved it, so he played it all the time, and then I just got into it because it was playing, always. And then the songs just became a really big part of the sound collage of our house. I memorized them, I learned how to play them, I got really into them, it was in the early days, and that's kind of what the cool thing was at that point. And so, I knew the music very, very well. And then when we were going to do the movie, I went back with more of an analytical brain, like, "Hey, I love these songs, how do we bring them into the now and make them bigger and more 90s rock for the movie?" Because this was the opportunity to do that.

So, when we went back, it was really interesting to listen to it again. We were like, "How do we make this work for the film, and work for the visuals that are happening? And make it sound unbelievable." It was an interesting process. It was weird to work on two movies that really bookend your life. In the Heights was the first major musical we worked on, and we just made the movie, and then tick, tick... BOOM! was one of the first Off-Broadway recordings that I got into, and then to make a movie about that, it's just wild.

Tell me how you went about finding the proper sound for this film. Was there a research process for you? Was it going through more music of the time? Was there a lot of collaboration and discussion with Lin and the rest of the team to find the "right" sound for what you were going for?

Absolutely, all of the things that you just said. We talked about influences, "Maybe this could be more Smashing Pumpkins, and less this..." Jonathan Larson's songs are really this piano-driven, Billy Joel rock, or Elton John. Rent went further in a rock direction, and now tick, tick... BOOM! does to, because we pushed it in that way. Like, "How far into the style of the period can we get?" Most of us that were working on the movie, in the 90s, we were turning 15 or 16 when that music was really a part of our lives, so all of those sounds are really palpable to us, and it was exciting to go back and listen to Pearl Jam, or go back and listen to the B-52's and mush it all into a thing that works. And people use different keyboards, and different drum sounds, and different guitars, and we went after that stuff as much as possible.

How did you go about staying true to the original source material while also updating it for now and for the screen? Was that an easy thing for you to do because it was so familiar to you already?

We actually spoke with Stephen Oremus, who did the original vocal arrangements, and adopted a lot of his stuff, because so much that, vocally, is so loved, at least for me. After that, it was sort of whatever really fit the screen. When you see the movie, there's live onstage moments, and then there's narrative parts of the movie, so it was just like, "How do we really make it fit the screen?" There's some grit to it, it's the East Village and West Village in the 90s, it's kind of gross, and it's got a little more punk attitude to it. We gave it way more of an edge. We had access to Jonathan Larson's demos and early things too, so we could see what his initial intention might have been, and how maybe we could go back to that initial intention, or maybe not. We had crazy access to his archives and anything we wanted to listen to and do. So, that was really interesting, to wrap our heads around his full scope of work, and then see how we could use it for the movie.

I was wondering when we were making this film how much of it was going to be for theatre nerds, and then when we were making it I was like, "Oh, this is just a wonderful film, and a great thing about the human condition, and process, and trying to make it in the world, and love," and I feel like all those universal themes just make it a really good movie. And on top of that, the performances are unbelievable. Andrew Garfield is a singing fool and an unbelievable incarnation of Jonathan Larson and it's amazing to see!

You just touched on this, but how does it feel to be bringing something that is kind of a cult classic to a mass audience?

I think it's really cool. I don't know what my expectations were, I can't label them, but it was like, "We're going to make this cool film, I know this music really well, I want other people to know this music," And after the process went on and we were filming, and editing, and we were in post [production], and we were working on the music and really grinding it out, we would watch it back all the time, and it's just a good movie. It was like, was I having an emotional response to it because it meant so much to me when I was younger? Or was I having an emotional response because it's just a good film? And I think that it's the latter! And I hope that people will see that too. It's a cult classic, but the themes are so... everybody goes through these sort of situations, and I think people will be able to find themselves in this movie, for sure.

The film is being released November 12, what would you say that are you most excited for with the release of tick, tick... BOOM!?

I am very excited for Lin to be a director. He's great as a theater writer, and he's always wanted to direct, and he's done an unbelievable job. I'm excited for people to see Andrew Garfield sing his face off, because he's known as Spider Man and all these other things, but he's this unbelievable talent and is really great. I think that people attribute Jonathan Larson to Rent, and he was much more than that. This is a bit autobiographical, so you get a glimpse into what his life was like, and how the struggle of being an artist is real and difficult, and you wait a lot of tables, and you hope that you'll get your break one day, and it's a hard, hard life. And I think people just assume that either you don't do it, or it's glitz and glamour and you have this huge success. This shows all the sides, and I think that's a fascinating thing to see.