According to members of Trainspotting’s film crew, Oasis turned down the opportunity to feature on the soundtrack to the seminal 1996 film because Noel Gallagher presumed the film was about actual trainspotters rather than a black comedy about escapist, economically crippled heroin addicts living in Edinburgh.
At a press question and answer session reported by the Telegraph, Trainspotting’s producer, Andrew Macdonald, and costume designer, Rachel Fleming, explained why Oasis failed to contribute to the soundtrack.
“Danny [Boyle, who directed the film] is from near Manchester and he was very keen to have Noel Gallagher do something but there was a reason why he didn’t do it,” Macdonald said.
“He came to the launch party in Cannes, but I don’t know why he didn’t do a piece of music.”
Fleming went on to add: “I met Noel at a thing the other week and he said to me: ‘I would have done something, but honestly I thought it was about trainspotters. I didn’t know.’ That’s what he actually said.”
The score to Boyle’s 1996 film championed British music’s Britpop boom and included songs by the likes of New Order, Blur, Pulp, and Underworld as well as classics by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.
The film produced two best-selling soundtrack albums: the first a collection of songs featured in the film, and the second including a number of songs that were either left out from the final version or had inspired the filmmakers.
Next year will see the release of a much-anticipated sequel. T2 will star the original film’s line-up of Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle, and follows their lives 20 years on.
