Alf Clausen

In his three-hour interview, Alf Clausen (1941-2025) talks about his early interest in music, the instruments he played as a child, and watching his favorite show, American Bandstand. He describes moving to Los Angeles, where he started working as a copyist for various feature films and variety shows, including The Carol Burnett Show. He recounts his time as an arranger and later music director for Donny and Marie and The Mary Tyler Moore Comedy Hour. He recalls working as composer and music director for Moonlighting, where he worked closely with show creator Glenn Gordon Caron and supervised the music for such classic episodes as "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" and "Atomic Shakespeare." Clausen briefly outlines his time on Alf, where he wrote the theme song and scored episodes. He speaks at length about his duties as music director and composer on The Simpsons, detailing his many contributions to the show, including writing several songs, scoring episodes, and producing several Simpsons albums. He concludes by discussing various aspects of the art of composing for television, and his 2007 Big Band album. Adrienne Faillace conducted the interview on November 25, 2014 in Canyon Country, CA and March 6, 2015 at Fox Studios in Los Angeles, CA.