Michael Lehmann Boddicker (born January 19, 1953) is an American film composer and

session musician A session musician (also known as studio musician or backing musician) is a musician hired to perform in a recording session or a live performance. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a reco ...

, specializing in

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

. He is a three times

National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc. (NARAS), doing business as The Recording Academy, is an American Learned society, learned academy of musicians, producers, recording engineers, and other musical professionals. It is widely kno ...

(N.A.R.A.S.) Most Valuable Player "Synthesizer" and MVP Emeritus, he was awarded a

Grammy The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious a ...

as a songwriter for "

Imagination Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes ...

" from '' Flashdance'' in 1984. He is the president of The Lehmann Boddicker Group.

Early life and education

Boddicker grew up in

Cedar Rapids, Iowa Cedar Rapids is a city in Linn County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. The population was 137,710 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Iowa, second-most populous city in Iowa. The city lies o ...

. His parents, Arlene Estelle (née Reyman) and Gerald "Jerry" Valentine Boddicker operated a music school and store in Cedar Rapids, which served students in all of Eastern Iowa. His mother was a nationally recognized

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

ist. While still attending Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids in 1971, Boddicker enrolled full-time at the local Coe College, studying electronic music. By 1972, he continued studies at Coe College, focused on

music composition Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...

and he started taking jazz studies at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

. By 1973, he enrolled in 20th-century composition at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...

. That same year in 1973, Michael purchased a powerful portable semi-modular synthesizer, the

ARP 2600 The ARP 2600 is a subtractive synthesizer first produced by ARP Instruments in 1971. History Developed by a design team headed by ARP namesake Alan R. Pearlman and engineer Dennis Colin, the ARP 2600 was introduced in 1971 as the successor to ...

. By 1974, Michael moved to Los Angeles and found Paul Beaver as a mentor.

Career

He was able to purchase a

Minimoog The Minimoog is an analog synthesizer first manufactured by Moog Music between 1970 and 1981. Designed as a more affordable, portable version of the modular Moog synthesizer, it was the first synthesizer sold in retail stores. It was first popul ...

and a Moog System 15

modular synthesizer Modular synthesizers are synthesizers composed of separate modules for different functions. The modules can be connected together by the user to create a patch. The outputs from the modules may include audio signals, analog control voltages, ...

by 1975. As a result of his purchase, he was asked by Bob Moog (the founder of

Moog Music Moog Music Inc. ( ) is an American synthesizer company based in Asheville, North Carolina. It was founded in 1953 as R. A. Moog Co. by Robert Moog and his father and was renamed Moog Music in 1972. Its early instruments included the Moog sy ...

) to demonstrate their newest synthesizer, the

Polymoog The Polymoog is a hybrid polyphonic analog synthesizer that was manufactured by Moog Music from 1975 to 1980. The Polymoog was based on divide-down oscillator technology similar to electronic organs and string synthesizers of the time. Histor ...

, at the 1975 summer

NAMM Show The NAMM Show is an annual trade show in the United States organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), which describes it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

. He quickly found work as a

, and by 1977 appeared playing

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

, vocoder, accordion and keyboards on albums by many notables such as

Quincy Jones Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, composer, arranger, conductor, trumpeter, and bandleader. Over the course of his seven-decade career, he received List of awards and nominations re ...

Randy Newman Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer, songwriter, arranger, pianist, composer, conductor and orchestrator. He is known for his non-rhotic Southern American English, Southern-accented singing style, early America ...

The Manhattan Transfer The Manhattan Transfer was an American vocal group founded in 1969 in New York City, performing music genres like a cappella, Brazilian jazz, Swing music, swing, vocalese, rhythm and blues, Pop music, pop, and standards. They have won eleven G ...

and

The Bee Gees ''The'' is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the ...

. One of Boddicker's earliest soundtrack collaborations of note was a score for a short experimental

claymation Claymation, sometimes called clay animation or plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine cl ...

film made by

Gumby Gumby and Pokey figures ''Gumby'' is an American cartoon character and associated media franchise created by Art Clokey. He is a blocky green humanoid made of clay. Gumby stars in two television series, '' Gumby: The Movie'', and other medi ...

creator Art Clokey entitled "Mandala" (released in 1977). Soon after that he entered the mainstream with work on such films as ''

Saturday Night Fever ''Saturday Night Fever'' is a 1977 American Dance in film, dance Drama (film and television), drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian Americans, Italian-America ...

'', ''

Battlestar Galactica ''Battlestar Galactica'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Glen A. Larson. It began with the original television series in 1978, and was followed by a short-run sequel series, '' Galactica 1980'', a line of book adaptat ...

'' and ''

The Wiz ''The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard of Oz"'' is a musical with music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls (and others) and book by William F. Brown. It is a retelling of L. Frank Baum's children's novel '' The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' ...

''. Boddicker is a Board Member of The Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL), of Beverly Hills, California. He owns an audio post production facility, Sol7 (aka Sol Seven), in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. In 2019, he co-founded the Los Angeles synthesizer music festival, Synthplex.

Personal life

Boddicker was married to Cassandra Lee Jensen, from 1972 to 1980, ending in divorce. Boddicker officially changed his name to Michael Lehmann Boddicker when he married singer/conductor/actress Edie Lehmann on October 15, 1995 in Hollywood, California. He has four children, two of the children he had were with Edie Lehmann. They live in Southern California. He sued Michael Jackson's estate in 2016, alleging that he was unpaid for work and services provided early in his professional relationship with Michael Jackson.

Awards

He was awarded a

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious ...

as a songwriter for "Imagination," from the movie Flashdance in 1984. Boddicker was voted most valuable synthesizer player in 1981, 1982, 1984 by the

. In 1991, in recognition of his achievements, contributions and furtherance of electronic music in the recording industry, he was presented with an honorary doctorate of music from Coe College.Winter Courier 2004
, p. 22,

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

. Coe College. Retrieved on 9 March 2008. In 2003, Boddicker was inducted to the Iowa Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.

Film music

Among his

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

credits as a composer are '' The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension'' (1984), the score for '' The Adventures of Milo and Otis'' (1986), and additional music for '' Bulletproof'' (1996), ''The Magic Egg: A Computer Odyssey'' (1984) an animated film, '' Get Crazy'' (1983), '' White Water Summer'' (1987), '' F/X2'' (1991) with

Lalo Schifrin Boris Claudio "Lalo" Schifrin (born June 21, 1932) is an Argentine-American pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor. He is best known for his large body of film and TV scores since the 1950s, incorporating jazz and Music of Latin America, Lati ...

, and ''Starfire'' (1992). His contributions as a composer can also be heard in the film ''Battlestar Galactica'' (1978) which include the ''Battlestar Galactica'' theme song produced and arranged by Michael Boddicker. ''Freejack'' (1992), Michael Jackson's "Black or White" (music video), and "HIStory" (music video) video produced by and additional music underscore and "THE FLY" eleven cues to augment or replace the original score. Artists that have recorded his songs and compositions include

Lani Hall Lani Hall (born November 6, 1945) is an American singer. From 1966 to 1971, she performed as lead vocalist for Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66, Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66. In 1972, Hall released her first solo album, ''Sun Down Lady''. She may be be ...

("Go For The Heart"), Earth, Wind and Fire ("Opening Raise Tour"), Patti Austin ("Oh, No Margarita"),

Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan ...

("Captain EO & HIStory Unveiling"),

Isao Tomita , often known simply as Tomita, was a Japanese composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements. In addition to creating note-by-note realiza ...

's & YMO's Hideki Matsutake ("Automatic Collect", "Automatic Correct & Plan"), Kitaro ("The Silk Road"), Laura Branigan (Imagination) and David Hasselhoff. He also performed on soundtrack of the Horizons attraction Walt Disney World's Epcot theme park.

Performer

As a session musician he played

on, among others,

's '' This Is It'', ''

HIStory History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

'', '' Thriller'', ''

Bad Bad or BAD may refer to: Common meanings *Evil, the opposite of moral good * Erroneous, inaccurate or incorrect * Unhealthy, or counter to well-being *Antagonist, the threat or obstacle of moral good Acronyms * BAD-2, a Soviet armored trolley ...

'', '' Off the Wall, '' Dangerous'', '' Black or White'', and ''

We Are the World "We Are the World" is a charity single recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones for the album '' We Are the World''. With sales in excess of 20 milli ...

''; Earth, Wind & Fire's ''

Let's Groove "Let's Groove" is a song by American band Earth, Wind & Fire, released as the first single from their eleventh studio album, ''Raise!'' (1981). It is written by Maurice White and Wayne Vaughn, and produced by White. The song was a commercial suc ...

''; Lionel Richie's ''

Hello Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. Early uses ''Hello'', with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the '' Norwich Cou ...

'', '' You Are'', '' Running with the Night''; Dazz Band's '' Let It Whip''; Randy Newman's '' The Natural'' and '' Short People''; Kenny Loggins' '' Footloose''; Cyndi Lauper's '' The Goonies 'R' Good Enough''; Barbra Streisand's ''

Somewhere Somewhere may refer to: Music Albums * ''Somewhere'' (Eva Cassidy album) or the title song, 2008 * ''Somewhere'' (Keith Jarrett album), 2013 * '' Somewhere – The Songs of Sondheim and Bernstein'', by Marina Prior, 1994 * ''Somewhere'', or ...

''; Cheap Trick's '' Surrender''; The Jacksons' '' Shake Your Body''; Pointer Sisters' '' He's So Shy''; and Diana Ross's '' Missing You''.A complete discography is available a
Discogs - Michael Boddicker

Music department for television

References

External links

* *
Michael Boddicker Interview
at NAMM Oral History Collection (2013) {{DEFAULTSORT:Boddicker, Michael 1953 births Living people Musicians from Cedar Rapids, Iowa American film score composers American male film score composers Grammy Award winners Coe College alumni University of Iowa alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture alumni Musicians from Iowa American electronic musicians American synth-pop musicians