JAN HAMMER SCORES A HIT

Jan Hammer was dead tired. He’s that way often these days.

His job, composing the score for TV’s smashing cop show “Miami Vice,” is at fault. On one hand, it’s a dream. Because of it he’s suddenly a wealthy celebrity. But the job is also an energy-sapping nightmare.

Hammer often spends as much as 80 hours a week creating the “Miami Vice” sound tracks, working in a studio in his rural home about a hour’s drive from New York City. He’s messengered a rough cut of each “Miami Vice” show. Music coordinator Fred Lyle has already added his songs--usually familiar singles. Then Hammer writes his score and sends it to Los Angeles, where it’s edited into the final version.

Sometimes Hammer doesn’t like Lyle’s selections. “If I don’t like a song, I say, ‘Get rid of this junk,’ ” Hammer explained. “If the song has instrumentals, it could embarrass me. People might think I’m playing on that awful song.”

His score accompanies the escapades of the show’s chic cop heroes, played by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. While they’re tracking villains, the sound track is blaring either appropriate singles or ominous instrumentals.

Using a variety of styles--such as pop, jazz, soul and calypso--or combinations of styles, Hammer writes all the instrumentals. And he does it the hard way, handling all the composing, instrumentation and engineering himself. This one-man sound-track factory grinds out 20 minutes of original music per show at the rate of a sound track a week--a remarkable output.

On other shows, sound tracks are treated less seriously--with little emphasis on originality--and are truly background music. “Other shows recycle music and use stuff over and over,” he explained. “They take the show’s theme and restate it a thousand different ways. I could do the same thing, write some stuff and then recycle it ad nauseam. But I prefer writing all new music for every show. That freshness is important to the show. But I’ve created a monster for myself. It’s incredibly hard work.

But his hard work pays off. The “Miami Vice” sound tracks are the Rolls Royces of the genre. Nothing else is close.

Music is an integral part of the show’s appeal, a dimension as vital as the fashions, the handsome actors and the violence. Geared to the MTV generation, “Miami Vice” is ultra hip. Without all the up-to-the-minute music, the show wouldn’t be the same. Some of its atmosphere would fade. Sound-track music hasn’t been so crucial to a TV dramatic series since Henry Mancini made a name for himself composing for “Peter Gunn” back in the ‘50s.

“Music From the Television Series ‘Miami Vice,’ ” made up of new material and some songs from last season, is the most popular TV sound track since “Gunn.” Also, it’s the hottest new album in recent months, shooting up to No. 1 on the Billboard magazine pop album chart in just four weeks. It will probably be the first TV sound-track album to top the chart since “Peter Gunn” in 1959.

The album features Hammer’s “Miami Vice Theme,” a pulsing jazz/rock single currently in Billboard magazine’s Top Five, as well as Glenn Frey’s’ Top Ten single, “You Belong to the City.” Besides material by Phil Collins, Tina Turner, Chaka Khan and Grandmaster Melle Mel, the album includes four other Hammer instrumentals.

Hammer, 37, immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1968, shortly before the Russian invasion. He tried straight jazz, playing keyboards in Sarah Vaughan’s backing group, before turning to jazz fusion, with the original Mahavishnu Orchestra. Eventually he switched to rock, working with artists like Jeff Beck and Mick Jagger. But record companies, he complained, never acknowledged him as a rock musician.

“They saw me as a jazz artist,” he said incredulously. “My audience was a complete rock audience yet they saw me as jazz. I still can’t believe it.”

The “Miami Vice Theme” is the first time Hammer has ever had a hit single. Record company executives, naturally, would say Hammer’s records were never quite good enough or commercial enough. Like many artists, however, he blames the failure on the record companies. He seemed especially angry about two flop albums--”Untold Passion” (1981) and “Here to Stay” (1983)--recorded on Columbia with Neal Schon of Journey.

“They thought we were sowing our wild oats,” he said. “We created some good songs. I hate to see them go down the drain because the record company blew it.”

Yet, he praised MCA Records, which released the “Miami Vice Theme” and the sound-track album. “I’ve gotten used to companies missing all the buttons, but MCA pushed all the right buttons,” he said. “It amounts to spending the extra amount of money on promotion. That’s crucial to the album’s success.”

Hammer hasn’t had a solo record contract since 1979 with Elektra Records and is in no hurry to find a new one.

“I gave up on record companies,” he explained. “When you’re dealing with record companies, it’s like you’re talking Mongolese. They don’t understand.”

After having only modest success as a rock musician in the ‘70s, Hammer retreated to movie sound tracks. His first was “A Night in Heaven” in 1983; his most recent was this year’s “Secret Admirer.”

While in Los Angeles at a movie meeting in March of last year, a friend introduced him to producer Michael Mann, who was then assembling the “Miami Vice” concept. Hammer, whose musical ideas meshed with Mann’s, wound up composing the music for the pilot, which evolved into scoring the series.

Because of his “Miami Vice” sound tracks, Hammer is in demand to score movies. But he doesn’t have the time.

“I’ve turned down more money to do sound tracks than I’ve made in the last five years,” he lamented. “That’s a horrible feeling.”

Not winning the best sound-track Emmy, one of the show’s 11 losses out of 15 nominations at last month’s Emmy ceremonies, was, for Hammer, a stunning disappointment.

“I refused to go to the show at first, but so many people told me that I would win hands down that I decided to go,” he recalled. “I went and sat in the audience and sat through that whole silly show. I’m sorry I went.”

Refreshingly, Hammer isn’t one of those humble losers who stoically masks his disappointment while praising the winner.

“That Emmy had nothing to do with merit,” he insisted venomously. “The voters were saying, ‘We’re not going to give it to the guys who are trying to stretch limits, who are trying something new. We’re going to give it to the old guard.’

“Who won? I think it was ‘Murder, She Wrote.’ I didn’t even know the show had music.”

Who on “Miami Vice” tells tough, no-nonsense Hammer what to do?

“Nobody,” he answered proudly.

Once a luxury, that freedom, he observed, has become a necessity: “I can get adventurous and interesting because I have no one telling me what to do. From the very beginning I haven’t had anybody telling me what to do. Michael Mann gave me a free rein.”

Hammer absolutely loathes creative interference: “I wouldn’t take it. I’d quit. I refuse to compromise on that.”

Later, though, he admitted he has to contend with it occasionally. The sound mixer who integrates Hammer’s sound tracks into the show often infuriates him.

“When they mix in sound effects--the screeching tires, the gunshots--they turn down my music,” he complained. “The special effects sometimes are too loud for my tastes. Special effects are great but they’re not the key to our success. Music is more important.

“I’ve had problems with this at the beginning of last season and of this season. I’m trying to take care of this problem now. It’s something I don’t like dealing with.”

Surprisingly, Hammer revealed that this season, only the show’s second, will be his last with “Miami Vice.”

“I don’t want to start repeating myself,” he said. “It’s inevitable if I’m doing scores about the same characters in the same locale. In two years that’s 44 shows. It’s hard to stay fresh doing that much original music.”

Another reason, and probably the most vital, is financial. Hammer can make more money on the projects he’s been rejecting. “I could stay on the show, but it wouldn’t be worth it to them to keep me,” he said proudly. “After this season, they couldn’t afford me.”