Pulp Fiction: The Stories Behind the Soundtrack

We have already talked about Quentin Tarantino a fair bit on the blog so I’d like to take a different approach to Pulp Fiction. Just as the artwork of Uma Thurman smoking on a bed was one of the most iconic movie posters of the ‘90s, the eclectic selection of tunes that Tarantino assembled for the soundtrack was one of the must-have CDs of the decade. Let’s take a look at that track list and the story behind the songs.

“Misirlou” by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones

“Misirlou” is the music pick that perhaps sums up Tarantino’s whole magpie career, and it has become almost as synonymous with the director and his films as “Funeral March of a Marionette” did with Hitchcock.

There’s a lot going on in the track with its twangy surf-rock riffs, manic shredding, cascading piano runs, wailing horns, and excited hollers. Here was pure, unadulterated, nostalgic rock ‘n’ roll energy, and it perfectly encapsulated the sunny retro vibe of Pulp Fiction.

Surf rock was a relatively new concept when Lebanese-American Dick Dale, born Richard Monsour in Boston, and his band the Del-Tones released the track in April 1962. His earlier song “Let’s Go Trippin’,” which hit the charts seven months earlier, was the first commonly accepted example of the subgenre.

The core of “Misirlou” was far older, however. Although the tune instantly conjures up Californian sunshine and rolling waves, it was derived from an old folk song from the eastern Mediterranean. The first known recorded version was in Greek from 1927 and the original is far slower and more romantic. Other iterations followed as it became popular with Arab-American, Armenian-American, and Greek-American immigrants who settled on the west coast of the United States, including a Top 10 Billboard hit for Jan August in 1946.

With his background, Dale incorporated many eastern motifs in his music, and he recalled his uncle playing “Misirlou” when he was a kid. For his version, however, he cranked up the tempo, cut loose with his stratocaster, and turned it into an infectiously in-your-face tune that, unfathomably, failed to make the singles chart on first release.

“Jungle Boogie” by Kool & the Gang

As if opening with “Misirlou” wasn’t exciting enough, Tarantino had an even more audacious trick in store. Half way through the tune, we hear an unseen radio dial twiddling and we cut into a stone-cold funk classic instead: Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie.’ This segues into our introduction to Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), two besuited hitmen shooting the breeze about hash bars in Amsterdam and menu items in fast food chains in France.

Kool & the Gang were an outfit founded in New Jersey by Robert “Kool” Bell and his friends in 1964 originally called the Jazziacs. A few more names followed before they settled on Kool & the Gang, and they only had moderate success until they started incorporating new disco trends into their funk stylings.

Their new direction started paying off in 1973 when their track “Funky Stuff” became a Top 5 R&B hit. Drummer George Brown recalls how they were doodling around with a new tune but couldn’t quite land the title. They had the far less catchy “Jungle Jim” in mind before saxophonist Dennis Thomas reasoned that since everyone on the dancefloor in those days were boogying, it should be called “Jungle Boogie.”

The still slaps toward with its strident funk rhythms, hi-hat beat, and growling vocals, and the combo of “Funky Stuff,” “Jungle Boogie,” and “Hollywood Swinging” was the start of a hugely successful period for the band. “Jungle Boogie” was a hit, reaching #1 in the R&B charts and #4 in the pop charts.

“Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green

After Vincent and Jules gun down some low-level hoodlums to recover a mysterious briefcase for their boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), we get to meet the big man himself – although at this stage we don’t get to see his face. It’s the start of the segment “Vincent Vega & Marsellus Wallace’s Wife” and we open in an empty club with Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), an ageing boxer, taking a bribe from Wallace to throw a fight.

The track playing in the background is a more familiar tune than the first two, Al Green’s silky-smooth “Let’s Stay Together.” The singer who would later become known as “The Reverend” started out in the mid-60s but only achieved middling success as he tried to emulate the vocals of more established stars like Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, and James Brown.

That all changed when he entered the studio in 1971 to record “Let’s Stay Together,” which would become the title track of his 1972 album. To that point, his biggest hit had been “Tired of Being Alone,” but even that classic had failed to crack the Top 10 in the pop charts.

The album’s producer, Willie Mitchell, wanted the singer to take a new direction. It was an arduous process, however, taking over 100 hours to record the song. The singer finally got it when Mitchell gave him the advice: “I want you to sing like Al Green.”

Once he’d nailed that mellow and sensual vocal, they had their opening track and the album broke the Top 10 Billboard pop chart and was the first of six to hit number one in the soul charts. As for the single, “Let’s Stay Together” topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard R&B chart. It is now widely regarded as one of the greatest songs of all time and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Its presence in the scene is ironic, such a heartfelt declaration of devotion used as the under-handed business of match-rigging takes place. But then Butch accepting the bribe is his pledge to Marsellus, accepting that they will stay together… even as their illicit transaction careens into surreal territory later in the movie.

“Bustin’ Surfboards” by The Tornadoes

After our detour into honey-dripping ‘70s soul, we’re back with surf rock as Vincent stops off to buy some junk from his dealer Lance (Eric Stoltz) ahead of his big date (“not a date”) with Marsellus Wallace’s wife. The scene opens with Lance’s wife Jody (Rosanna Arquette) extolling the virtues of body piercing while “Bustin’ Surfboards” plays in the background.

This is more of a laid back tune than the opening salvo of “Misirlou,” with the usual reverb-heavy guitar riffs, whammy bar excursions, and ambling drum beat accompanied by the relaxing sound of waves lapping against the shore.

Unlike Dick Dale, the Tornadoes were natives of California and the entire track basks in that sunkissed west coast vibe. Formed by brothers Gerald and Norman Sanders with their cousin Jesse and friend Leonard Delaney, the cover image from the 1964 LP “Bustin’ Surfboards” shows the boys chilling on the beach with their instruments along with two girls wearing demure early ‘60s swimsuits. The album was described by Goldmine magazine as “the rarest of holy grails for hodaddies and surf bunnies alike.”

The title track was one of the first surf rock instrumentals to receive airtime on the radio when it was released as a single in October 1962. It wasn’t a huge hit, however, peaking at #102 in the charts. The band failed to build on their moderate success, despite “Bustin’ Surfboards” becoming a mainstay of the SoCal surf scene. They split in the late ‘60s before reforming again for a surf rock reunion concert in 1993 alongside Dick Dale, The Surfaris, and others.

“Lonesome Town” by Ricky Nelson

Perhaps emulating the non-linear structure of Pulp Fiction, this is where the track listing on the album falls out of whack with how the songs drop in the film. Here we are with Vincent and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) as they take their seats in a converted classic convertible at Jack Rabbit Slim’s, one of those movie joints like Rick’s in Casablanca that you just wish existed in real life. While they’re placing their order with a Buddy Holly look-a-like waiter (Steve Buscemi in a cameo after he was unable to commit to playing Jimmy), Ricky Nelson is crooning “Lonesome Town.”

Nelson started his career in entertainment as a child star in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, a popular radio sitcom featuring the real-life Nelson family, in 1949. The show transitioned to TV in 1952, and young Ricky later made the leap to movies, most notably starring alongside John Wayne, Angie Dickinson, and Dean Martin in Rio Bravo (1959).

Acting was still very much a side gig as his main occupation as a recording artist made him a teen idol, and he had 53 songs chart on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1957 and 1973. Originally associated with pop and rockabilly, his career took a hit with the arrival of the Beatles and other British rock bands from across the pond, and he moved towards country music instead.

“Lonesome Town” was a soulful diversion for Nelson in 1958. It peaked at #97, a far cry from the success of his double-A side “Travelin’ Man” (#1) and “Hello Mary Lou” (#9). The song was written by Baker Knight during a fallow period in his career, down in the dumps in Hollywood trying to make ends meet. He said that the lonesome town of the title was Los Angeles, and he was later diagnosed with agoraphobia.

These factors perhaps explain the blues of the song’s narrator, although Baker originally envisioned it as a calypso number for Nelson until one of the star’s backing vocalists suggested it would work better as a slower guitar number.

“Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield

Skipping back a scene, Vincent arrives at Mr and Mrs Wallace’s plush pad to pick her up for their night out. Having shot up at Lance’s, Vincent is pleasantly smacked up as he enters, watched by an unseen Mia on the CCTV monitor. Dusty Springfield’s sultry vocals fill the soundtrack, and the song’s lyrics about the sweet but illicit relationship between a young girl and a preacher’s son correlates with the forbidden chemistry that instantly forms between Vince and Mia. “I had that scene in my head for five or six years,” Tarantino said, “and it was always scored to ‘Son of a Preacher Man.’”

Originally named Mary O’Brien, the Hampstead-born British singer’s music career began as part of a girl group called the Lana Sisters. She joined her brother Dion as a country duo, reinventing herself as Dusty Springfield, before embarking on a solo career with the irresistible “I Only Want to be With You” in 1963. The track was an international hit and Springfield performed it on the first ever episode of Top of the Pops. Her TV appearances crystalised the look that the public would forever associate with the singer, with her glorious thatch of peroxide blonde hair and heavy mascara.

Within a few years, she had become a face of the Swinging London scene and modelled herself as a serious soul artist capable of rubbing shoulders with the likes of the Supremes and Martha and the Vandellas. Jerry Wexler, producer of her stateside album Dusty in Memphis, later described her as “the incarnation of white soul, if there is such a thing.”

One of the singles from the album, “Son of a Preacher Man,” was originally written for Aretha Franklin, but the soul diva turned it down. As the daughter of a preacher, she felt it was disrespectful. Springfield made it her own instead, and the song reached #9 in the UK singles chart and #10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1968. This perhaps made Franklin see the light and she recorded her own version the following year, released as a B-side to her hit “Call Me.”

Despite the international success of the song, Springfield’s career took a major downturn as she struggled with drugs and alcohol and faded into the musical wilderness. She wouldn’t have another hit until she teamed up with the Pet Shop Boys in 1987 for “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” which peaked at #2 in the UK and US. It was a glorious comeback and she was embraced as a camp icon by the gay community.

“Bullwinkle Part II” by The Centurians

Back to surf rock again as we get close-ups of Vincent shooting heroin cross-cut with him blissed out, driving his convertible against a rear-projection as he goes to pick up Mia. “Bullwinkle Part II” has a different vibe to it, however. Released as a single by The Centurians in 1962 from their album Surfer’s Pajama Party, the track has a darker and more nocturnal atmosphere thanks to the growling bass and moody sax solo. It fits the seamy scene and its sinister edge foreshadows what comes later when Mia almost fatally mistakes Vince’s stash of smack for cocaine.

Tarantino was keen to stress that the pick was chosen to score the scene rather than diegetic music. Many of the songs on the soundtrack are playing on the radio or from other sources within the world of the film, but that isn’t the case with “Bullwinkle Part II.” The director described the tune as “[sounding] like rock & roll spaghetti western music.” And we all know how much QT loves his spaghetti westerns.

Incidentally, the Centurians later changed their name to the correctly-spelled the Centurions. The band reunited in 1995 after the success of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack and released an album called "Bullwinkle Part III".

“You Never Can Tell” by Chuck Berry

So begins Pulp Fiction’s famous dance number as Vince and Mia take to the dance floor and cement their bond. Each pulls out a variety of hand-jive moves, calling back to John Travolta’s earlier career boom as the superstar of musical films like Saturday Night Fever and Grease. As always with Tarantino, the song is a flawless pick and really gives the scene an infectious energy, although Chuck Berry’s exuberant tale of teenage sweethearts has a somewhat iffy backstory.

In the 1950s, Berry had established himself as one of the founders of rock ‘n’ roll with hits like “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” and “Johnny B. Goode,” influencing the likes of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. His life took an unsavoury turn in 1959, however, when he was arrested under the Mann Act for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines for “immoral purposes.”

Berry’s story was that he had brought the Mexican girl to St. Louis with the offer of employment at his nightclub. After she was fired three weeks later, she gave a different account to the police, leading to the singer’s conviction in 1960 to five years in jail and a $5000 fine.

Berry appealed and got a re-trial in 1961, but he still ended up spending 20 months in the slammer. They say that sometimes an artist’s best work is written behind bars, and Berry wrote several more hits including “You Never Can Tell” during his period of incarceration.

Tarantino later said that Berry referring to the teenage couple as “Pierre” and “Mademoiselle” gave the scene a flavour of the French New Wave, which makes sense. The director is a fan of the period and his production company’s name, A Band Apart, derives its name from Jean Luc-Godard’s Bande à part. The film features a classic dance scene in a cafe that influenced Vince and Mia’s prize-winning moves.

“Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” by Urge Overkill

Sparks fly between Mia and Vince when they return from their victorious night at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. A highly charged moment of silence is dispelled when Mia decides to lighten the mood, cueing up some music on her magnificently old-school reel-to-reel stereo. Vince heads to the bathroom to give himself a pep talk about loyalty to one’s boss while Mia dances in the front room. The tune is “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” by alt-rock outfit Urge Overkill.

The song was originally written and performed by Neil Diamond on his 1967 album Just For You, and it reached #10 in the US Billboard singles chart in the same year. Diamond’s version is a softer and more yearning ballad. Urge Overkill, formed in 1985 at Northwestern University by Nash Kato and Eddie Roeser, don’t go crazy with it but their cover is more driving and dynamic. It perhaps isn’t the kind of track you might expect from a band who once opened for Nirvana, but the song featured on their 1992 album Stull.

Tarantino considered several songs for the scene, but the story goes that he discovered a second-hand copy of the album while flipping through vinyl at a record shop in England. The band’s cover was a revelation: “All of a sudden, this is it. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this is the song Mia has to dance to by herself. I played it to Uma; Uma flipped.”

Neil Diamond wasn’t quite as enthused at first. He was worried that using his song in the film might have a similar effect to how “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel became intrinsically linked with the ear-slicing dance in Reservoir Dogs. Eventually, he gave his blessing and Tarantino got his tune.

“If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)” by Maria McKee

This heartfelt ballad is something of an outlier on the soundtrack as it is the only original song featured in the film. It is also a pretty easy one to miss, too, barely heard in the background when Butch and Marsellus brawl their way into a pawn shop owned by redneck sex offender Maynard. The guy can’t believe his luck as he captures both and calls his buddy Zed for some fun and games in the basement.

Maria McKee’s music career began in 1982 when she co-founded country rock band Lone Justice, an outfit that formed part of LA’s cowpunk scene in the ‘80s. They supported U2 on tour and Dolly Parton called McKee “the greatest girl singer any band could ever have.”

McKee found more mainstream success when she penned “A Good Heart,” Feargal Sharkey’s 1985 hit that topped the charts in the UK and several other countries. She also had form when it came to movie tunes, writing and performing “Show Me Heaven” from the Days of Thunder soundtrack. The song also reached #1 in Britain as well as Belgium, Netherlands, and Norway.

Tarantino selected “If Love is a Red Dress” because he was a fan of McKee’s music. He said when discussing the scene: “When you take songs and put them in a sequence in a movie right, it's about as cinematic a thing as you can do. You're really doing what movies do better than any other art form. . . When you hit it right, the effect is you can never really hear that song again without thinking about that image from the movie.

“Comanche” by The Revels

Marsellus and Butch awake in the basement lair of Maynard’s pawnshop, tied to wooden chairs with ball gags in their mouths. The mysterious Zed arrives, and we also meet another denizen of their world - a sex slave in all-leather bondage gear called The Gimp. Now the captors have a choice to make, but for what? Marsellus is about to find out as the rednecks drag him into another room and close the door,  which is when “Comanche” kicks in.

Tarantino originally wanted “My Sharona” by the Knack for the scene because it “has a really good sodomy beat, if you think about it. I could set the time by that and it just seemed so funny to me.” The band rejected the idea, however, so he switched back to surf rock.

You can get a rough idea how that original pick might have worked in the scene in this Youtube video, although no doubt it would have been edited differently. It would have been okay but I think “Comanche” is the better choice. The harsh buzz of the sax throughout the jangly instrumental really gives the scene a sense of nerve-grating danger and urgency as Butch frees himself, kills the Gimp, and is about to make his escape before his conscience makes him return to rescue his enemy.

The Revels were another surf rock outfit from California, although they got started earlier than many of the bands who made their name in the subgenre. “Comanche” was also used on the soundtrack for The Exiles, a 1961 documentary about the lives of young indigenous Americans who had left the reservation behind to scratch a living in Los Angeles.

“Flowers on the Wall” by The Statler Brothers

Skipping back in time again to before Marsellus and Butch’s unfortunate encounter with the pawn shop rapists, we join the boxer as he makes the hazardous journey back to his apartment to recover his father’s cherished gold watch. He has defied the crime boss by winning the fight and he knows he will be killed if he is caught, and sure enough Vincent is already there to rub him out. The hit-man has taken an ill-timed bathroom break, however, leaving his MAC-10 suppressed sub-machine gun on the kitchen counter. Butch mows down the assassin and makes his escape, singing along to a golden oldie on the car radio.

The track is “Flowers on the Wall,” a jaunty country ditty about a guy at a total loss after splitting with his girlfriend, and the bounciness of the song mirrors Butch’s elation as he feels like he’s on the home straight.

Despite its upbeat tone and happy banjos, the song’s lyrics are a clever chronicle of depression as the narrator describes the pointless activities he uses to kill time in a post-breakup vacuum. The song was released in 1965 and reached #4 on the US Billboard Hot 100, winning a Grammy Award the following year.

Although it didn’t top the charts like some of their other hits, “Flowers on the Wall” was one of the Statler Brothers most popular tunes. Only two of the country and gospel quartet were actually siblings and they took their name at random from a box of tissues. They once joked that they could have just as easily ended up called the Kleenex Brothers.

A year after the song made its appearance in Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis referenced it again in Die Hard with a Vengeance when John McLane laments that he is “working on a nice fat suspension, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo.”

“Surf Rider” by The Lively Ones

For the final scene we’re back where we came in as Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) stick up the diner. A change of perspective reveals that Vincent and Jules are also having breakfast at the same place that day and they’re on hand to thwart the robbery. Luckily for the criminal lovers, the miracle that Jules thinks saved his life earlier in the morning has convinced him to swear off violence and walk the earth “like Caine in Kung Fu.”

Having imparted his wisdom to a chastened Pumpkin, there is time for one more surf rock track as the boys head out to deliver the briefcase to Marsellus and the end credits roll. The inclusion of “Surf Rider” earned multiple platinum awards for the Ventures, a rock quartet best known for their instrumental “Walk, Don’t Run.” Which is a strange situation because the version of the tune in the movie is by the Lively Ones.

The surf rockers took the rhythms of “Surf Rider” from an earlier Ventures track called “Spudnik.” The Lively Ones had the decency to ask permission to riff on the song and the Ventures agreed. After “Surf Rider” became a hit in 1963, the Ventures then re-recorded “Spudnik” and also called it “Surf Rider.” Don Wilson, rhythm guitarist for the Ventures, later claimed that the accolades came as a surprise reminder that they’d written the tune back in the ‘60s.

Those are the stories behind the songs that make the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. There are several other tunes playing in the movie and four more were included as bonus tracks on the Collector’s Edition. Of those, perhaps the most notable are the silky “Strawberry Letter 23” by the Brothers Johnson and Link Wray’s all-time classic “Rumble.”

The first is heard briefly as Vince and Jules walk down a corridor to their early morning hit, and it would feature more prominently in Jackie Brown. The latter plays as Vince and Mia make their way to the table in Jack Rabbit Slims. As a side note, I have “Rumble” set as my ringtone, which has had an unforeseen effect: It’s an amazingly cool track, but now whenever I hear it I get the weird sensation that I’m just listening to my phone ringing!

So there you have it, a breakdown of the iconic Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Did you own the album? What are your favourite tunes? Let us know!