Only Fangs: Daniel Hart on Writing the Music for The Vampire Lestat | The Quietus (original) (raw)
Words by Claire Biddles. Cover image of Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt from The Vampire Lestat, by Sophie Giraud/AMC
“I was trying to write from a vampire’s perspective, but a vampire who still has a connection to the human experience,” explains musician Daniel Hart, composer of songs for The Vampire Lestat, the bolshy, brash, rock opera follow-up to AMC’s cult adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire. The season sees Rice’s vampire creation – played by Sam Reid – become a rock star, with songs written by Hart narrating over two centuries of undead life, love and loneliness. “Songwriting is one of the main ways in which he stays connected to humans in season three,” says Hart, speaking from his home studio in LA. “Humans write a lot of songs about love, and we write a lot of songs about loss, and Lestat has loved a lot and lost a lot. The songs feel very specific to Lestat now.”
Hart was crucial in establishing and developing _Interview With The Vampire_’s mood and texture with his evocative scoring of seasons one and two, but The Vampire Lestat sees him take a central role in the storytelling. “I was in the writers’ room from day one,” recalls Hart. “We talked through all the permutations of this story, what kind of music Lestat would make, how much we wanted to stay faithful to the music as described in the book, and how much we were going to make it our own.” Hart set up a music room in the same house as the writers’ room and worked between the two, eventually writing music and lyrics for around 20 songs to be performed by Lestat and his band.
Daniel Hart
“It was meaningful to think about things from [Lestat’s] perspective for a while, to think about someone else’s musical experiences and their history,” Hart says, referring to Lestat’s canonical history as a composer, and his enthusiasm for everything from Italian opera to Southern blues. “I actually found it much easier than writing songs about myself. Having the permission to be silly and bratty was so freeing.” Typical of the show’s attention to detail, the press releases for each track include a quote from Hart, and “a quote from Lestat about how shitty I am.” There’s a running joke in the first few episodes about his debut single ‘Long Face’ being a disappointment. Lestat’s notes? “The bass should have walked down with the guitar at the end instead of pedaling on E. Predictable. Like everything Daniel Hart touches.”
For Lestat’s lyrics, Hart incorporated phrases from Rice’s original novel, and worked closely with both Reid and showrunner Rolin Jones – two key co-authors of this version of the character. Reid’s input varied from suggestions for phrasing and vocalisation, to specific lyrical critiques based on “his very deep thoughts about this character he has spent so much time thinking about.” Jones made a significant contribution to ‘Long Face’, the first song Hart wrote for the season in summer 2024: “We were in the studio recording the lyrics, and Rolin stopped by,” Hart remembers. “Near the end of the song, Lestat is doing this building rhyme – ‘another taste, another year, another place, another fear’ – and Rolin suggested ‘give me some face, a souvenir’, which is a great callback to something that happened in season one, that could only have come from Rolin.”
Reid, Jones and Hart also all compiled “huge” playlists of inspirations for the songs. What were some key songs? “‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath, ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love; by Van Halen,” Hart recalls. “There’s some David Bowie on there, some Bikini Kill, some Led Zeppelin. Rolin added Chappell Roan. Then there’s ‘All Apologies’ by Nirvana.” Although tracks like ‘All Fall Down’ lean into the kind of glam rock that allows his peacocking tendencies to thrive, there’s room for all the nuances and contradictions of Lestat’s character in his music. An arresting early scene sees him perform a piano version of Baudelaire’s ‘La Fontaine de Sang’, both a melodramatic reference to the fresh kills surrounding him (its title translates to fountain of blood), and a more human reflection on the curse of his outsized emotions (“like a fountain that gushes in rhythmical sobs”). It’s also a way of positioning Lestat as someone whose life stretches centuries. “We wanted to show music that would come from his pre-rock & roll era,” explains Hart, who set the poem to music. “More like an art song or a chamber song from the 19th century. I really enjoyed writing it – there were definitely some words that Sam had never said before in French in there.” Unlike his co-star Jacob Anderson, who performs as Raleigh Richie, Reid isn’t a professional musician, but Hart acknowledges his “very musical mind” and the adaptability he brings to his vocal performance.
Lestat’s music couldn’t be further from the zeitgeist in 2026 – a tension which Hart and his fellow writers use cleverly in the show. “We discussed him being a much bigger and much more successful rock & roll star, playing for big crowds and playing in arenas, but it didn’t feel true to the state of rock & roll in the world today,” says Hart. “We didn’t think that our Lestat would be into playing with tracks or samples. He’s seen music evolve for so long, but it seems like he’s a bit stuck in the past in some ways.” In Rice’s novel, Lestat uses rock & roll as a tool for mass communication; in the show, he’s playing to 500 people every night as pop stars and rappers sell out arenas across town. “If he was hugely successful, there wasn’t the same self-discovery to be made. He’s really trying to find himself in these songs and in this season, and I think one of the ways he finds himself is by torturing himself.”
Hart knows mid-level touring life well, having started his professional career playing with the likes of St Vincent and Broken Social Scene. He brought his decade of experience on the road into the writers’ room. “The rest of the writers were like, ‘What’s all the weird, fucked up, sexy stuff that happened to you?’ And I said, well, it was a lot of time in a van, a lot of time unpacking and packing up gear. They were very disappointed in me as a source,” he laughs. The show draws pathos and humour from the juxtaposition of the banal parts of touring and the inherently glamorous Lestat. Another experience Hart drew from was his work on David Lowery’s recent film Mother Mary, which stars Anne Hathaway as the titular fictional pop star. Although the pop songs in the film were written by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff and FKA twigs, Lowery wrote the film’s score, as he has for all of Lowery’s previous films. “I got really lucky that I was working on both things at the same time,” Hart says. “I got the benefit of seeing how David and company created their pop star for that film, and that definitely helped me think about how to do it for our show.”
Like everyone involved in the production of The Vampire Lestat, Hart’s above-and-beyond respect for the story and the character is striking. “I very much feel like Lestat is the silent third party co-writer,” he says of the songs he’s developed for the show. “We have a lot of factors to consider [with a song] and often we have to decide what’s the more important thing: the melody, the rhythm, or the Lestat-iness of it? For the most part, we chose the Lestat-iness of it.” It’s also liberated Hart from any preciousness he feels about his work. “He remembers the first time playing a particular song for Reid, forming one of the more outrageously disturbing moments of the season that can’t be revealed because of spoilers. “[Sam] just started laughing because it was so dark and twisted, it made me really happy,” Hart recalls. “It all felt so fucked up, exactly the kind of fucked up that Lestat is at that moment. And me, Daniel Hart – I would never do that. I’m never gonna put the most fucked up thing about myself out into the world.” After three seasons, Lestat has Hart pinned in the extremities of existence that the character inhabits. “Lestat doesn’t give a shit. He wants it all out on the table.”