About
Jim Manzie has had a long and illustrious career in both the film and music world. Film score composer, award-winning jingle writer, record producer, hit songwriter, pop/rock musician - he's done it all!
Biography
Australia first became aware of Jim Manzie as the bassist/songwriter with the phenomenally successful chart act OL'55 who announced themselves with a quadruple platinum debut album, "Take It Greasy", in 1976, knocking ABBA off the top of the charts. He wrote the group's first top five hit, "On the Prowl", and several other top twenty entries thereafter. "(I Want A) Rockin' Christmas", which he co-wrote with author Glenn A. Baker, spent seven weeks at number one in Melbourne and won a Radio 3XY Gold Chart Award.
After OL'55, Jim turned his talents to commercial jingle writing. His first serious effort for the ANZ Bank won him a Golden Stylus Award for Commercial of the Year. Jim also began to venture into film music during his days with OL'55, when he scored the Mike Thornhill film "The F.J. Holden", (for which he received a Sammy Award nomination).
In 1982 Jim was invited by the legendary Vanda & Young team to become a house producer for Albert Productions (home of AC/DC). He went on to produce a charting album for the hard rock act The Choirboys and power pop masterpiece "Sooner or Later", for Tasmanian band The Innocents.
During this period, Jim acted as a musical director of stage productions (including “The Iceberg Cometh”) and led a number of bands, including THE BREAKERS, who recorded briefly for Powderworks Records and were seen in the Bruce Beresford film "Puberty Blues", to which Jim contributed soundtrack songs.
In 1986 Jim set his sights on the active film music scene in Hollywood and beat out 15 established composers at a cattle call to land the scoring assignment for the Vincent Price film "The Offspring". After landing "The Offspring", Jim relentlessly worked himself up into the middle level of Hollywood film composers. He went on to score "Texas Chainsaw Massacre III: Leatherface", "Stepfather 2", "Servants of Twilight" and for Paramount, his first major studio assignment, "Tales from The Darkside: The Movie".
Of Jim's work on the latter, the director, John Harrison (also responsible for "Creepshow", commented: "Tales From The Darkside” was enhanced by his work. His music not only gave the story the perfect atmosphere, it added production value to the entire film."
Since that time Jim established himself as one of Hollywood's premier horror composers, and has scored 19 US films in that genre, plus one romantic comedy!
Jim's fundamental skill has always been live onstage work, and he currently enjoys performing around the clubs with OL'55, 2 German bands, and rockabilly swing group On The Prowl.