Is Trainspotting the greatest film soundtrack ever? Think of scenes like Ewan McGregor\u2019s character Renton being chased ( Lust for Life), Renton sinking into the carpet ( Perfect Day), Renton climbing into the toilet (Brian Eno) or Renton possibly breaking free ( Born Slippy) and you\u2019d say \u201cyes, 100%.\u201d But honestly the soundtrack isn\u2019t even the half of it!<\/p>\n
The film is 30 years old this year and looking back on the era it came from it is hard to imagine another film that so perfectly captures the times that created it. It is the zeitgeist, it is the heady drug-fuelled optimism, the energy and the youth, and it\u2019s then dark, drug-fuelled destruction.<\/p>\n
It is an era too from which you cannot separate Tony Blair. The youthful, guitar playing face of New Labour seemed to mark a dramatic ending to the Thatcher era. The pantomime villain and her acolytes were gone. Smooth, cool, honest Tony was in the house.<\/p>\n
\u2018Back to Mine\u2019 was a popular music magazine feature in which celebs notionally invited you back to their place after closing time to enjoy their music tastes. In 1996, Number 10 Downing Street was suddenly on that list. It was back to Tony\u2019s gaff with, incredibly, Blur and Oasis. Tony was one of ours.<\/p>\n
The writer Nick Hornby, himself a part of that scene through the success of Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, described it as \u201cthe last time the country was happy\u201d. He said also: \u201cWe felt influential again, culturally… our generation was obsessed with America when we were in our teens, but the gap had started to close.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Closing that gap, in a way not seen since the Swinging Sixties, was Britpop. Those involved in that scene may have dismissed it as a media invention, but for those of us in radio at the time, it was like surfing a musical tsunami. Putting a \u201ccool radio show\u201d together was child\u2019s play.<\/p>\n
You had to contend with new, often career-defining releases from Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Radiohead, Suede, Beck, The Manic Street Preachers, Underworld, DJ Shadow, Nick Cave, Orbital, Beth Orton, Ash, The Divine Comedy and REM. People paid me to arrange these in order and enthuse about them. No joke.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just music. The YBAs (young British artists) like Tracey Emin and David Hirst were doing things with sharks and unmade beds that was all a bit 1960s’ Andy Warhol. Lads mags had arrived; the Premier League was making people like David Beckham into superstars; Kate Moss was everywhere.<\/p>\n
All of this coalesced into something that was referred to as Cool Britannia. Beatlemania and the great British invasion had been reinvigorated. The Union Jack was everywhere. That could have been divisive, but here it evoked only images of Brett Anderson\u2019s cheek bones. It was beautiful, end of.<\/p>\n
It was into this sea of optimism that Danny Boyle placed\u00a0 Trainspotting. \u201cChoose Life,\u201d it told us. “Choose a big-screen TV, fixed interest mortgage repayments, low cholesterol, leisurewear and matching furniture.” Then came the kicker: \u201cChoose heroin\u201d said Renton, as the edifice collapsed around him.<\/p>\n
I had always given Danny Boyle total credit for the effectiveness of the music in this film. After all, he was the man behind The Beach, Slumdog Millionaire, Yesterday and 28 Years Later, all films in which the music choices have been centre stage. But it would appear I was wrong.<\/p>\n
The person we should have been feting is a man called Tristam Penna, a then EMI A&R man. A rough soundtrack had already been assembled by the time he was brought it to advise. Watching those early scenes, he was frankly appalled.<\/p>\n
A clubber at the time, he had seen how Iggy\u2019s Lust for Life had become a club anthem. It wasn\u2019t really a very big song back then, but in clubs, people wouldn\u2019t go home until it was played. He knew it was perfect. Equally, as Bowie\u2019s Heroes wasn\u2019t available, he suggested Perfect Day, a \u201cspecial song\u201d for him and his partner at the time.<\/p>\n
It was his contacts that allowed him to bring in Blur, Pulp, Elastica and all the other bands du jour. He was the right man in the right place with, as you\u2019d expect, an A&R man\u2019s ear for great music.<\/p>\n
It is worth noting there is no Oasis track here. Liam and Noel assumed it was, in fact, a film about men of a certain age out spotting trains. Naturally, they wouldn\u2019t touch it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is Trainspotting the greatest film soundtrack ever? Think of scenes like Ewan McGregor\u2019s character Renton being chased (…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7328,93,61,60,270,278],"class_list":["post-540998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-film-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}