Trainspotting: The Stories Behind the Soundtrack

 

It is not overstating things to say that when Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting arrived in British cinemas in February 1996, it became a bona fide cultural moment.

Thirty years later, the film is still instantly recognisable. Part of that is down to the cast, Irvine Welsh’s characters and Boyle’s kinetic direction. But Trainspotting also arrived with an unusually complete visual and musical identity.

Its black-and-white character portraits, splashes of orange and stripped-back typography seemed to be everywhere. Mark Blamire and Rob O’Connor at Stylorouge developed the original poster concept using Lorenzo Agius’s photography, with Empire Design going on to develop the wider campaign.

The posters ended up on countless bedroom walls.

So did the soundtrack.

And that soundtrack was far more than a collection of fashionable songs cobbled together to make the film look cool.

 

 

It charted many of the musical obsessions of Renton and his so-called mates, jumping from Iggy Pop and Lou Reed through Brian Eno, New Order and Primal Scream to Britpop and the increasingly important dance scene.

Some of the songs were already classics.

Others would become classics partly because of Trainspotting.

Here are the stories behind them.

“Lust for Life” - Iggy Pop

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television…

There can be few opening scenes in British cinema as immediately recognisable.

Renton and Spud tear down Princes Street with security guards in pursuit, Ewan McGregor launches into the “Choose Life” monologue and then those galloping drums arrive.

It is difficult to hear the beginning of “Lust for Life” now without seeing a pair of battered trainers hammering along an Edinburgh pavement.

The song was already almost twenty years old when Boyle used it.

 

 

Iggy Pop and David Bowie wrote it during the extraordinary period when the pair were working closely together in Europe. Pop was rebuilding both his career and himself after the collapse of the Stooges and years of fairly heroic drug consumption, while Bowie was hardly living the life of a Trappist monk either.

“Lust for Life” became the title track of Pop’s second solo album of 1977, released only months after The Idiot.

Its use in Trainspotting is particularly clever because the song is so exuberant.

Renton is describing heroin addiction, unemployment, consumerism and his rejection of respectable life, but Boyle does not introduce him sitting miserably in a filthy flat. He has him sprinting through Edinburgh to one of the most infectious drumbeats ever recorded.

Irvine Welsh’s novel begins in altogether more sedentary surroundings.

Boyle starts at full tilt.

For my money, it is still one of the great movie-and-song combinations.

“Deep Blue Day” - Brian Eno

Yes! Ya fuckin’ dancer!

Few films could turn a man diving into an appalling pub toilet into something almost beautiful.

After Renton loses his opium suppositories in the appropriately named “Worst Toilet in Scotland”, desperation gets the better of him. He plunges in after them and suddenly the filthy bowl opens into clear blue water.

The music is Brian Eno’s “Deep Blue Day”.

It is such an absurd contrast that it works perfectly.

The track originally came from Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, created by Brian Eno with his brother Roger and Daniel Lanois for Al Reinert’s documentary For All Mankind.

 

 

The music was written around NASA footage of the Apollo missions.

So Boyle took a dreamy ambient piece associated with astronauts and the vastness of space and used it for Renton swimming through a lavatory in search of drugs.

That sentence alone probably tells you quite a lot about Trainspotting.

“Trainspotting” - Primal Scream

The downside of coming off junk was that I knew I would have to mix with my friends again in a state of full consciousness.

Primal Scream were an obvious band to have somewhere on the soundtrack.

They were Scottish, they had already made the journey from indie rock through psychedelia into dance music, and Screamadelica had become one of the defining British albums of the early 1990s.

The title track’s origin was rather less calculated than you might imagine.

Bobby Gillespie later recalled that the band already had an untitled instrumental when they heard that Trainspotting was being made. They thought Primal Scream ought to be involved, got the track to Irvine Welsh and, after it was accepted, gave it the film’s title.

 

 

It accompanies Renton’s brief period away from heroin, when he discovers one of the drawbacks of being clean: having to spend time with his friends while fully conscious.

The track is repetitive, hypnotic and slightly threatening.

There is always the feeling that something unpleasant is just around the corner.

With Begbie among your friends, that is probably a reasonable assumption.

“Atomic” - Sleeper

And with that, Mark Renton had fallen in love.

Once Renton’s libido begins functioning again, the boys head out to a club in search of women.

This is where he first spots Diane, played by Kelly Macdonald, standing at the bar and expertly dispatching a procession of hopeful men before Renton decides to try his luck.

The song playing is Sleeper’s cover of Blondie’s “Atomic”.

Blondie reportedly declined permission for the original recording, so Sleeper supplied a new version instead.

It was a pretty fortuitous substitution.

 

 

Louise Wener and company were thoroughly of the moment. They had toured with Blur and were already part of the Britpop world into which Trainspotting landed.

Their version therefore takes a song from 1980 and makes it feel entirely at home in a 1996 club.

The original was always an unusual song anyway. Debbie Harry and Jimmy Destri were deliberately borrowing from spaghetti-western music, particularly Ennio Morricone.

That makes Renton and Diane’s first meeting even more appropriate.

It is not really seduction.

It is more of a stand-off.

“Temptation” - New Order

And as I sat watching the intimate and highly personal home video, stolen only hours earlier from one of my best friends, I realised that something important was missing from my life.

New Order make a lot of sense in Trainspotting because they connect several musical generations represented by the film.

Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris had emerged from Joy Division after the death of Ian Curtis, gradually moving away from post-punk towards electronic music and the dance floor.

“Temptation” arrived as a single in 1982 and has become one of their most enduring songs.

 

 

Confusingly, Trainspotting actually contains two completely different songs called “Temptation”. Heaven 17’s plays in the club before Sleeper’s “Atomic”, while New Order’s song becomes associated with Renton and Diane.

It is there the morning after their night together, as Renton discovers the rather alarming fact that Diane is still at school.

New Order make a lot of sense in Trainspotting. They belong to an earlier generation than the Britpop bands on the soundtrack, but their journey from post-punk towards electronic music helped create the club culture that followed.

The history is all mixed together.

Rather like Renton’s record collection probably was.

“Nightclubbing” - Iggy Pop

At or around this time, Spud, Sickboy, and I made a healthy, informed, democratic decision to get back on heroin as soon as possible.

Iggy Pop gets a second appearance, but “Nightclubbing” is a very different beast from “Lust for Life”.

It comes from The Idiot, Pop’s first solo album and another collaboration with Bowie.

Where “Lust for Life” charges forwards, “Nightclubbing” lurches along with a mechanical beat and Pop sounding as if he has seen absolutely everything a night out can offer and is not especially impressed by any of it.

 

 

Boyle uses it as Renton and the others abandon their brief flirtation with sobriety and head back to Mother Superior’s for heroin.

Initially, everybody is having a wonderful time.

Then the film reminds us what this life actually costs.

That tension runs through the whole soundtrack. Songs that can sound glamorous or euphoric away from the film become rather less comfortable when paired with what is happening on screen.

“Nightclubbing” is a cracking example.

“Sing” - Blur

No matter how much you stash, or how much you steal, you never have enough.

By 1996, Blur were one of the biggest bands in Britain.

But “Sing” comes from before Parklife, before The Great Escape and before the interminable Blur-versus-Oasis debate.

It appeared on their 1991 debut album Leisure and actually dates back to the period when the band were still finding their identity.

 

 

It is slow, melancholy and a long way from the cheekier Britpop version of Blur.

That makes it ideal for one of the film’s bleakest passages.

After the death of baby Dawn, there is no attempt to turn the scene into a grand emotional set piece. Everyone is simply numb, frightened and still trapped in the same awful world.

“Sing” sits underneath it without telling us how to feel.

Sometimes the quieter choices on this soundtrack are the best ones.

“Perfect Day” - Lou Reed

Would sir care for a starter? Some garlic bread, perhaps?

No thank you, I’ll proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.

If “Lust for Life” owns the opening of Trainspotting, then “Perfect Day” may be its most inspired use of an existing song.

Renton falls off the wagon, shoots up at Mother Superior’s and overdoses.

As he sinks into the grubby red carpet, Lou Reed begins singing one of the gentlest songs on the soundtrack.

It should not work.

It works brilliantly.

“Perfect Day” was released in 1972 alongside “Walk on the Wild Side”. Over the years, listeners have repeatedly interpreted it as being about heroin, not least because of Reed’s own history.

 

 

Reed dismissed that interpretation. He said the song was simply about spending a perfect day with someone he loved.

Trainspotting gave it another meaning anyway.

That is part of the power of putting existing music into films. The director does not get to rewrite the song, but a sufficiently strong scene can permanently alter what we see when we hear it.

After Trainspotting, “Perfect Day” enjoyed an extraordinary resurgence.

The BBC used it the following year for its famously lavish music promo featuring Lou Reed, David Bowie, Elton John, Bono, Tom Jones, Tammy Wynette, Shane MacGowan and what seemed like half the music industry.

The resulting single went to number one.

For a song released in 1972, it had quite a second act.

“Mile End” - Pulp

Yeah, the guy’s a psycho, but it’s true: He’s a mate n’all, so what can I do?

Renton eventually makes his escape to London and becomes an estate agent.

For a while, things almost appear to be going well.

Then Begbie turns up.

 

 

“Mile End” by Pulp is an inspired choice for Renton’s slightly grotty new existence. Jarvis Cocker based the song on his experience of living in a particularly grim east-London flat before Pulp became successful.

The lyrics describe a world of broken fittings, questionable plumbing and general urban misery.

Renton’s bedsit and the horrible properties he is trying to rent out fit right in.

What makes it funny rather than crushing is the music.

“Mile End” bounces cheerfully along while describing somewhere most sane people would leave immediately.

That mixture of squalor and humour is pure Trainspotting.

“For What You Dream Of” - Bedrock featuring KYO

Music is changing, drugs are changing, even men and women are changing. 1000 years from now, there’ll be no guys and no girls, just wankers. Sounds great to me!

By this point the soundtrack has moved decisively into club culture.

Bedrock was the partnership of John Digweed and Nick Muir. Digweed had been DJing since his teens, and the pair would later build Bedrock Records into an influential progressive-house label.

“For What You Dream Of” was their first single, originally released in 1993.

 

 

In Trainspotting, its rolling pulse accompanies the boys celebrating after Begbie wins on the horses.

For a few minutes, everyone seems almost happy.

Even Begbie.

Naturally, this cannot last.

The scene is also a useful reminder of how far the soundtrack has travelled since the opening.

Iggy Pop came from 1977.

New Order from the early 1980s.

Now we are in the contemporary club world of the mid-1990s.

The film does not simply have a soundtrack.

It has something resembling a musical timeline.

“2:1” - Elastica

It was my fuckin’ telly!

Elastica are one of those bands that immediately place you in Britain in the mid-1990s.

Led by Justine Frischmann, they took a lot from post-punk and New Wave and turned it into something sharp, cool and very Britpop without sounding remotely like Oasis.

Their self-titled debut album went straight to number one in 1995.

 

 

“2:1” is tucked away towards the end of it rather than being one of the obvious singles, but its wiry, slightly irritated energy suits Renton’s increasingly difficult London life nicely.

Sick Boy has now joined Begbie in his flat, sold Renton’s rented television and begun considering what else might fetch a few quid.

Renton has escaped heroin.

His friends are proving harder to shake.

“A Final Hit” - Leftfield

What no one told me was that when we bought the skag, some lucky punter would have to try it out.

Leftfield’s “A Final Hit” is particularly interesting because it was actually composed for the film.

Neil Barnes later recalled that Danny Boyle gave the band the scene complete with time codes so they could write around the dialogue and action.

That makes it different from most of the soundtrack.

 

 

Renton is testing the heroin that the group plans to sell in London. The music begins with a long, ominous note before settling into something woozier as they travel south to do the deal.

Barnes explained that the track needed to remain restrained because dialogue runs across the scene. A huge pounding dance track would have simply flattened everything around it.

Leftfield had already worked with Boyle on Shallow Grave, but here they were effectively scoring a sequence rather than supplying a pre-existing song.

You can hear the difference.

“Born Slippy .NUXX” - Underworld

Now I’ve justified this to myself in all sorts of ways: It wasn’t a big deal, just a minor betrayal, or, we’d outgrown each other, you know, that sort of thing. But let’s face it, I ripped them off… my so-called mates.

And then there is “Born Slippy .NUXX”.

If “Lust for Life” is the sound of Renton running into the film, this is the sound of him walking out of it.

The deal is done. The money is sitting in a bag. Everyone is asleep.

Renton takes it.

Underworld’s track begins to build.

“Born Slippy .NUXX” already existed before Trainspotting. It had appeared in 1995 as the vocal B-side to the instrumental “Born Slippy”, initially making little impact.

 

 

The film changed that.

Re-released in 1996, it reached number two in the UK charts and became one of the defining dance records of the decade.

Karl Hyde wrote the lyrics while struggling with alcoholism. He has described wandering around Soho after a huge night out, recording fragmented observations in a notebook. The famous “lager, lager, lager” refrain was not meant as a celebration of drinking at all.

That irony was largely lost on thousands of people who subsequently stood in clubs waving pints in the air and shouting it back at him.

Hyde has called it a cry for help.

Britain turned it into a drinking anthem.

And Trainspotting turned it into the sound of Renton’s escape.

A song about addiction attached to the ending of a film about addiction.

Perfect, really.

“Closet Romantic” - Damon Albarn

The truth is that I’m a bad person. But that’s going to change. I’m going to change.

After the enormous rush of “Born Slippy .NUXX”, the soundtrack finishes with something much sillier.

Damon Albarn wrote “Closet Romantic” specifically for Trainspotting.

Over a wonky little arrangement that sounds as though it was played on a crappy electronic keyboard from Argos, Albarn recites the titles of Sean Connery-era James Bond films.

It is a joke aimed straight at Sick Boy and his obsession with Connery.

I like it because Trainspotting refuses to finish on a giant statement.

Renton has stolen the money and promised himself that he is going to become a respectable member of society.

Maybe he means it.

Maybe he does not.

The film is sensible enough not to take his speech entirely at face value.

So instead of finishing with another anthem, we get Damon Albarn doing James Bond titles over bargain-bin lounge music.

That feels much more appropriate.

Thirty years later

A great soundtrack can do something rather strange to songs.

Most of the music on Trainspotting was not written for the film.

Iggy Pop did not have Renton running down Princes Street in mind when he recorded “Lust for Life”.

Lou Reed did not write “Perfect Day” for a heroin overdose.

Underworld certainly did not know that “Born Slippy .NUXX” would accompany one of the most famous endings in British cinema.

But once those songs were put against those images, something stuck.

Thirty years later, the opening drums of “Lust for Life” can still put Renton back on Princes Street. “Perfect Day” still carries a hint of grubby red carpet. And once “Born Slippy” starts building, I am half-expecting to see Ewan McGregor walking towards us with a bag full of money.

The poster campaign has aged in much the same way.

 

 

Those black-and-white portraits, the orange blocks and the soundtrack now seem to belong to the same thing.

You can see one without hearing the other.

You can hear one without seeing the film.

But either way, it does not take long before you are back in Trainspotting.