The band that wanted absolutely nothing to do with ‘Pulp Fiction’: “I don’t think it’s a good idea”
Since Reservoir Dogs, music has been a key weapon in Quentin Tarantino’s cinematic arsenal. The soundtracks to his movies are almost as iconic as the films themselves, but it’s fair to say that Pulp Fiction remains on a pedestal of its own.
After all, the audio accompaniment to the game-changing crime thriller sold over three million copies in the United States and almost seven million worldwide, and for many, it remains the definitive Tarantino soundtrack. It gave a raft of old songs modern audiences had never heard before a new lease of life, and each deep cut is perfectly matched to its scene, but one unforgettable moment was almost very different.
Before he became a name unto himself and one of Hollywood’s most autonomous auteurs, Tarantino didn’t always write his scripts with specific songs in mind. He can do that now, because he’s got the reputation and clout to ensure he’ll be able to get the required clearances approved, but Pulp Fiction was a game of trial and error.
In much the same way as Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ will forever be intertwined with Reservoir Dogs‘ ear-slicing interrogation, The Revels’ ‘Comanche’ will always be associated with the harrowing basement-set scene where Marsellus Wallace and Butch Coolidge fall afoul of Zed and his twisted cohorts.
It was completely understandable that the artists responsible for Tarantino’s first-choice song weren’t entirely on board with the prospect of having one of their most famous tracks playing over the background of a graphic sexual assault, even if the writer and director thought it would be hilarious.
The filmmaker was adamant that The Knack’s ‘My Sharona’ had what he called “a really good sodomy beat to it,” which is an odd way to sum it up. It’s probably not what the band had in mind when they penned the enduring earworm, with Tarantino thinking the juxtaposition between the upbeat song and the events being depicted onscreen made it “just too funny not to use.”
When he tried to set the wheels in motion, The Knack shut him down. As bassist Prescott Niles explained, it wasn’t something they wanted their music to be remembered for. “Tarantino wanted to use ‘My Sharona’ in his movie, Pulp Fiction,” he confirmed. “Nobody knew what it would be but the scene he wanted to use it in was the hillbilly scene when somebody’s being raped.”
“I was like, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he admitted. “No, no, no. People would have that in their minds.” Instead, the band agreed to let the song be used in Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, which was released eight months before Pulp Fiction and ensured their song was at least featured in a 1994 movie.
Tarantino may have been rejected, but with the benefit of hindsight, he thought it was the right call: “It would have been too cutely comic,” he suggested of having the basement scene soundtracked by ‘My Sharona’. “I like using stuff for comic effect, but I don’t want it to be har, har, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know?”
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