Trainspotting

In 2018, Irvine Welsh, the author behind 'Trainspotting' met up with Iggy Pop and Underworld to discuss their contributions to the Danny Boyle adaptions.

“I knew nothing about that business except that everybody wanted to buy it, but I liked Shallow Grave, and I thought the characters in the book would work well with that filmic energy. “When they got in touch to buy the rights to Trainspotting, I was living in Amsterdam, and Danny sent me his film,” Welsh remembered. Danny came back and said, ‘What the fuck, you were going to sell it to me!’ I said, ‘Oh, sorry gadge, I thought he was your guy! And then my mind was racing because when you are confronted with somebody who has a whole damn studio there in the hotel room in front of you and 30 finished pieces of very polished music, you don’t want to be the wimp that goes ‘uh, uhhh.’” Well, I know that shit tends to happen in the digital age with technology breaking all barriers down and collaborations once thought weird are now almost de rigueur, but no sense in lying: pretty damn good.” “I was at The Savoy just getting ready to play London and met with Rick [Smith], whom I liked as he was very polite, and that goes a long way with me. “You were at The Savoy and graciously said ‘Yeah’ because, you know, we both felt a strong connection to Trainspotting, and I turned up thinking I’ve got one chance here to convince this gentleman that we should work together on a piece of music,” Smith added. “Yeah, I put down the tray table and snorted the whole gram, and this beautiful tall, very dark stewardess was available, but then I started drinking: I had to take the edge off,” he replied. I thought, ‘Well, that sounds great, but I’m in the middle of a tour.’” “My performance is a big deal to me, but they had this song ‘Shotgun Mouthwash’ [a track by Underworld collaborator High Contrast that ended up as the opening track in T2 Trainspotting]. “In the ’90s, I did a novel, Trainspotting, about being fucked up, practically ghostwritten by Iggy and underscored by the beats of dance music,” he wrote. In 2018, a year after the successful release of the sequel movie, T2 Trainspotting, Iggy Pop, Irvine Welsh and Underworld (Karl Hyde and Rick Smith) met up at Iggy’s house in Miami for a chat over cream tea.