MILE END AND NEEDLE DROPS: DANNY BOYLE ON BRITPOP AND THE MUSIC OF TRAINSPOTTING

Pitchfork: Britpop was an important part of the Trainspotting soundtrack: Blur, Pulp, Sleeper, Elastica. What role did music play in creating that film in 1996—what were you listening to? What were you energized by?

Danny Boyle: Everything. It’s one of the things the film’s about, in a way. Music was an autonomic function for me. I just knew everything about music; I didn’t even think about it. And then you get older, there’s obviously a tipping point where you don’t know everything about music, and somebody mentions a band and you go, “What? Who?” That’s the tragedy of getting older, I suppose, for someone who was as obsessed with music as I was.



Initially, certainly with the first couple of my films, people regarded my use of music as non-classical filmmaking—even though people like Scorsese were doing it. There was outrage that I was cutting everything like MTV, like a kind of pop video. But actually, I loved pop videos. Adored them. Thought they were a breath of fresh air and a great cultural moment. And these characters, especially when you read the book, they are pop culture. It’s part of the architecture of their lives, like it is for so many of us.

The whole archaic notion of highbrow/lowbrow.

Right, all that. The heartbeat of the film was this Underworld album, dubnobasswithmyheadman... We used one track from that album and a new track that they put out as an unsuccessful single, “Born Slippy,” which I found in an HMV store.

At the time, although we weren’t as aware of it as you’re aware now, Britpop was happening. It’s been emulsified as an occasion, in retrospect. But at the time, it didn’t feel like it. I remember Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn coming in to watch a rough cut of the film. Damon wasn’t sure about it; he was worried about the drugs side of it. But Jarvis said to him, “Oh, no, it’s like, really cool, man,” and sent us a few songs.



Pulp’s “Mile End” was new for the soundtrack, right?

It was, and I lived in Mile End. It was unbelievable; it was like synchronicity. I mean, I still live there. The area's been gentrified a bit now, like so many places, but at the time it was pretty rough. I was so proud of that.

So Damon Albarn, who at times had a bit more of a party reputation than Jarvis Cocker, was the one who had reservations about the content?

I mean, it was very disturbing at the time to watch it, because obviously it was a celebration of youth, really, of that time of life, in all its recklessness and carelessness, and obviously when you bring heroin into that equation, it’s quite hardcore. But [Albarn] was great, and he gave us this song, and I remember him saying, “I haven’t got a title for it.” And I said, “Oh, there’s an amazing phrase in Irvine [Welsh]’s book where he calls heroin users ‘closet romantics.’” They’re romantic people the drug affects most terribly, and they’re often, in Irvine’s experience—certainly as it’s expressed through the book—those that can’t even acknowledge they are romantic. And it kind of seals their fate, really, for their life. And so he called it “Closet Romantic.”

When you fit music to film, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work. But it was weird—everything we did seemed to work then. Obviously the film was made in that spirit of a time in your life but in reality, the characters span an almost unnatural length of time as young men—because their references are actually punk, which is my era, and kind of Britpop, which is more like the actors’ era. And there’s like 15 years between us. They couldn’t really have gone to see Iggy [Pop] in concert. That’s an amazing scene in the book and it leads to the obsession with “Lust for Life.” So they couldn’t really span all of that time, but of course it’s a movie, so you can compress time, extract time, avoid it.

We didn’t use any score music at all; it’s all what they call “needle drops.” Even though it’s a very emotional rollercoaster, there's no manipulative music, no almost-invisible score music which you use to manipulate emotions. It’s all purposeful and highly presented in terms of volume. Nothing is floated in subliminally. Everything's like, “Ping!” Here’s the song. It’s just as important as the dialogue. It’s just as important as the characters.