And then I saw something that made me turn the machine off because I knew it just wasn't going to work and it had nothing to do with the metrics. It had to do with the colour value of the shots that I was looking at and the tonal values of Leinsdorf's recording. At the point that Solti had emphasised the brass, Leinsdorf was emphasising the strings. And without knowing it, as I was editing the film, the collusion of brass and a certain colour blue in the ocean, there are a number of shots where you are looking down out of the helicopters at the ocean, and that blue and that brassy sound work together synergistically to produce something that was to me correct and even thrilling. And when I heard the Leinsdorf, the blue looked dead, and the sound sounded disappointing. So they cancelled each other out in my view. So I went up to Francis [Ford Coppola] and I said, 'I don't think it was going to work. There's only one recording, the Leinsdorf, and it has this problem. The tonal values of it are significantly different.'

And luckily for us, Francis made another effort and this time he actually got in touch with Sir George himself, explained the situation and Solti said, 'Of course, dear boy. Why didn't you talk to me in the first place?' And Solti issued instructions to Decca and Decca opened up their hearts and gave us the material. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, this all happened so late that we were never able to get hold of the original masters of the recording. But what's in the film is a transfer from the vinyl LP of the Solti recording. But that's what Kilgore... Robert Duvall, would have done. He wouldn't have been able to get hold of the masters; he would have done a transfer from the LP recording. And we manipulated the sound so much to make it sound like it was coming out of these big broadcast tannoy horns and adding echo and other things. So that even if we had gotten a hold of the masters, I think it would've wound up sounding very similar to what it sounds like in the film.