Leonard Bernstein , who died in 1990, had not expected the score to have such a long lifeNEW YORK - Leonard Bernstein's score for"West Side Story" has become so ubiquitous in Western culture that it has popped up in such unlikely places as Metallica and Wu-Tang Clan albums.
One of the pioneers of hard rock, Alice Cooper, also mined the musical for inspiration on his"Gutter Cat vs The Jets" in 1972, using the theme song from one of the rival gangs in the story. "In the documentary about the recording, you can hear him saying that he thought it would have aged badly, but it hadn't at all," said Laurent Valiere, host of a new podcast about the movie.
Bernstein's score has become so ubiquitous that it has popped up in places such as Metallica and Wu-Tang Clan albums"It became a sort of albatross around his neck," his daughter told Britain's Radio Times."He had to work all the harder to get people to focus on his other works, especially his symphonic works."