Michael Kamen (Lethal Weapon 2) Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Michael Kamen was forty-one when Lethal Weapon 2 opened in July 1989. He had scored Lethal Weapon (1987) for Donner with Eric Clapton on guitar and David Sanborn on saxophone — a signature instrumentation that gave the franchise its sound — and Die Hard (1988) for John McTiernan, two of the defining action scores of the late 1980s. The LW2 score continues the LW1 instrumentation almost exactly: Clapton again, Sanborn again, the orchestral chassis again handled by Kamen.
The Riggs theme and the Murtaugh theme
Kamen's LW1 score introduced two distinct musical signatures: a Clapton bluesy guitar line for Riggs (cool, dangerous, slightly haunted) and a Sanborn alto-sax line for Murtaugh (warm, domestic, slightly weary). The instrumentation is character-coded — guitar for the loose-cannon, sax for the family man — and the two themes recur throughout LW1 in counterpoint.
LW2 carries both themes forward. The freeway-chase opening uses the Riggs theme in motion; the Murtaugh family scenes use the Sanborn line. The stilt-house assault and the cargo-bay climax both use orchestral cues that integrate the two themes — Riggs and Murtaugh acting as a unit, the Clapton guitar and the Sanborn sax trading lines.
"Michael's idea was that the two themes had to be able to talk to each other. They are the partnership in music. When the partnership is operating, you hear both. When one of them is alone, you hear one. The whole score is in that decision." — Richard Donner, Empire oral history (2017)
The Honeymoon Suite cue and the trailer scene
The LW2 score's most striking new contribution is the trailer-chair midpoint cue. The scene is mostly silent — Vorstedt's monologue is the audio focus — but Kamen scores the silences with a low, sustained string drone that doesn't resolve until the cut. The choice not to underscore Vorstedt's lines is structurally important: the speech is the score, in that scene, and Kamen's job was to leave the speech alone.
"The trailer scene was the only place I told Michael not to score. We wanted the speech naked. He came back with the drone, which is barely there, and that was perfect. It's not music. It's the room hum." — Richard Donner, Lethal Weapon 2 DVD commentary (1997, archived)
By contrast, the Vorstedt-killed-by-container sequence at the dock is heavily scored: the orchestra builds through the cargo-bay hunt, the Clapton guitar enters as Riggs catches up, and the cue resolves on the container drop.
Eric Clapton and David Sanborn
Clapton's involvement in the LW franchise was a coup that Kamen arranged personally. Clapton has said in interviews that he was reluctant at first — film scoring was not work he sought out — but Kamen persuaded him by playing the LW1 themes on a piano in Kamen's London studio. Clapton recorded the guitar parts in single sessions and was credited as "themes by" rather than co-composer.
Sanborn had been a session collaborator with Kamen since the late 1970s; their working relationship predated both Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. He returned for all four LW films.
"Michael was the orchestral mind. Eric was the guitar voice. David was the sax voice. The three of them together built something that nobody before or since has built — a buddy-cop sound." — Hans Zimmer, Score: A Film Music Documentary (2016)
What followed
Kamen continued with Donner on Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), and Conspiracy Theory (1997). His broader career included Die Hard 2 (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991, with the Bryan Adams song "Everything I Do (I Do It for You)"), The Three Musketeers (1993, "All for Love"), Mr. Holland's Opus (1995), X-Men (2000), and the Metallica orchestral collaboration S&M (1999). He died of multiple sclerosis in November 2003 at age fifty-five.
The four-film LW score continuity — same composer, same instrumentation, same themes, eleven years — is one of the most consistent music continuities in any major American action franchise.