“Choose Life” - The Trainspotting Soundtrack turns 30
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What is the significance of the Trainspotting soundtrack?
Musician and broadcaster Tom Dunn, good afternoon. Good afternoon to you, Brendan. And Tom, I know you're probably feeling a bit tired today. You've been celebrating with Taylor Swift all weekend, have you? Just got back. Yeah. Just got back, yeah. A week I'll never forget. Yeah, and you're not allowed to talk about it. No, sadly, an NDA, several NDAs actually. Okay. So, yeah. So, Tom, we talked about the Pretty in Pink soundtrack recently on its 40th birthday. So as promised, you're back today. We're going to jump 10 years on to another movie soundtrack that kind of defined a generation. So Trainspotting, 30 years old. God help us all. Just remind us first what the movie was for kids who haven't seen it.
It was all about a guy, 26 year old guy, Renton living with his parents. He's a drug addict. That's really the story of him. It's in Scotland. His friends are a bit dodgy too. When you go to him first, he's trying to get off and he's trying to kick it. It's not very successful. And then he meets a younger girl, draw a veil over that. It kind of gives him a bit of inspiration to try and get his act together. Every attempt to do that fails. It goes from scene to scene in his life. He tries to steal things in the supermarket, gets caught, very famous scene from that scene.
How does the context of the 1990s UK influence Trainspotting?
He goes to a scene where he's sick in a small toilet, which is one of the most famous haunting scenes ever. And all through the time, he's trying to get off it, failing to get off it. And these little scenes are unfolding. And it's an absolute, it's a white knuckle ride of these things. And the music is huge to it. And it's a bit bleak. There's no getting around the bleakness of it.
It's a very niche, it was a very niche transgressive kind of book to be made into a film but then that became like a huge success.
Yeah, you wouldn't have expected it. It was the very first book that Irving Welsh wrote and at the time people were saying he seems to have remarkable insights to what it's like to take drugs and and how these scenes unfold and what the kind of backdrop, the kind of people you meet and how grim it is. Certainly brought a lot to that. But you wouldn't have expected that. There's the fact that it's Danny Boyle's second movie. The entire budget for it is only one and a half million, which just seems like the coffee budget for most big movies these days. But what really changes everything for me is the soundtrack. The soundtrack just goes ahead of the movie.
Before we get to the soundtrack... Let's talk about the context that it came into, okay? So it was a heady time in the UK. So politically first, things were changing, weren't they?
New Labour, Blair is coming to power. He's very much about trying to keep the young people on side. He very famously portrays himself as a kind of an amateur guitar player. If things had gone differently, he could have been in a band. He could have been in one of those bands. A dad band like yourself. There was that. There was inviting Blur and Oasis into number 10. Yeah. And you got that real sense of the barriers were coming down. And one of our guys was in number 10.
Yeah. And Britpop was exploding as well. Exploding.
And I have to be honest, there's no exaggerating how... I'd have to use the word magical a time. That was it. Britpop was exploding. It was suede and blur and oasis and pulp and radio had a massive attack and bounce. The music quality was incredible.
And then around that... The UK was taking it back from grunge, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was. And the fact that it made cool Britannica was the phrase. The Union Jack was suddenly the coolest thing you could have. Yeah. That seems hard to believe now.
And to explain the cool Britannia thing, it was kind of beyond music. It was across all cultures and platforms.
It was like it was taking back the spirit of the 60s. Like in the 60s it had been Carnaby Street and the Beatles and the Stones and they ruled world culture. The Beatles had invaded America and made everything cool again for everyone. saved America, it felt like, cheered America up.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the significance of the Trainspotting soundtrack?
0:00–1:10
2
How does the context of the 1990s UK influence Trainspotting?
1:10–4:14
3
What themes are explored in the film Trainspotting?
4:14–6:36
4
How does music play a role in the storytelling of Trainspotting?
6:36–21:13
5
What impact did the soundtrack have on the film's success?
21:13–23:35