Five times musicians turned down Hollywood directors
Having your song used in a film is almost always a universally positive thing for a band or artist, and getting the opportunity to have your song exposed to a much wider audience through its use in a major movie can often be a huge turning point in an artist’s career. In a sense, the Hollywood needle drop of a song in an iconic scene is a traditional way of allowing a song to go viral, and if the popularity of the film takes off, the song and trajectory of the artist is likely to do the same.
While many of the artists on this list might not need the exposure from being in a Hollywood film or simply set their asking price too high for the producers to obtain the rights, others can object to being part of a film for other, more personal reasons. If a film doesn’t align with an artist’s beliefs, then there’s little chance that they’ll green-light its use and would refuse association with the movie in any way.
Submitting a song for use in a film, only for it to be rejected down the line by producers is far more common than artists being the ones to deny the filmmakers, since the filmmakers are the ones who are ultimately allowed to be picky if a track doesn’t fit with the images they’ve shot. However, despite Queen having recorded the theme song for Flash Gordon and The Rolling Stones allowing the use of ‘Gimme Shelter’ in Martin Scorcese’s The Departed, or ‘I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction)’ in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, you’d think they’re not the fussy sorts who would do as such.
Think again – below is a list of five times artists have snubbed Hollywood films and denied them the use of their music, either due to legal battles, personal disputes, or simply being too interested in other projects.
Five times musicians turned down Hollywood directors:
The Rolling Stones – ‘Under My Thumb’ in Moulin Rouge!
When director Baz Luhrmann was making Moulin Rouge!, the final entry into his Red Curtain Trilogy in 2001, he was keen on the idea of mixing Broadway show tunes, contemporary pop music and classic rock, recontextualising songs to fit with the narrative and backdrop of the Parisian cabaret where the film is set. Many massive names such as the Beatles, David Bowie and Elton John had their work used as part of the blockbuster, but there was one giant act that Luhrmann was eager to be able to incorporate in the soundtrack that seemed like a glaring omission when compared to the star-studded roster he had managed to accumulate.
‘Under My Thumb’ was the track that Luhrmann so desperately wanted, and he would have used it as a theme sung by the story’s villain, Duke. Considering the controversial subject matter of the song, which tells the story of a man who brags about controlling his partner into submission, it felt like a perfect fit for the narrative of the story, and this particular character, but his quest to have the song approved for use in the film would remain elusive. The film’s music supervisor, Anton Monsted, claims that he had pursued the rights to use the song from early on in the film’s production. “That was always an idea that was in early drafts of the script and the lyrics just worked beautifully, but we couldn’t come to terms on the rights deal to license the song,” he claimed.
Frank Sinatra – ‘My Way’ in Goodfellas
Of all the Hollywood films about the mob, Martin Scorsese’s 1990 smash success Goodfellas remains one of the most impressive to deal with the subject, amassing six Academy Award nominations, including a victory for Joe Pesci as ‘Best Supporting Actor’. The film’s closing credits were soundtracked by the dreadful Sid Vicious cover of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’, but it wasn’t always meant to be the former Sex Pistols bassist’s interpretation that viewers were meant to hear as they departed cinemas.
According to Scorsese’s long-time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, in an interview with Empire, it was originally meant to be Old Blue Eyes’ version that made the final cut, but he had a rather serious objection to having his song used in the film. “Sinatra would never let Marty use his music,” Schoonmaker explained. “Why didn’t he let us? Because he didn’t want to be associated with the Mafia.” The irony of all of this was that Sinatra did in fact have connections with various crime families, and the FBI had been keeping a file on him since the 1940s, only to publicly release documents following his death in 1998.
Led Zeppelin – ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in Almost Famous
Suppose you’re going to write a film about a young boy who gets the opportunity of a lifetime to write for a globally recognised music publication. In that case, you’re going to want to be able to obtain the rights to some of rock music’s most esteemed names to use in the soundtrack, right? While Almost Famous director, producer and writer Cameron Crowe was lucky enough to get Led Zeppelin to agree to having multiple songs of theirs used in the film, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was not one of them.
“I wasn’t too upset, because Led Zeppelin had already given us four songs at a nice price,” Crowe revealed to Coming Soon in 2011, “but they said, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ we’re not going to give to anybody.” As generous as the band might have been to allow the film to use the other songs, not allowing them to use ‘Stairway to Heaven’ derailed an entire scene that they had already shot to work with the track. Crowe’s workaround was simple – include the scene as a DVD extra with the instruction to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ at a certain point to get the full effect of what the film initially aimed to achieve.
Prince – ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Director Kevin Smith has always been a vocal fan of Prince, calling his music “the soundtrack to my life” in a social media post following the artist’s death in 2016. The Clerks filmmaker was attempting to get Prince to agree to let him use ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ in his latest project, the stoner comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and when Prince allegedly called him back after having pressed his representatives for an answer, Smith must have thought he’d hit the jackpot.
However, Prince had called him to discuss two other matters – religion and filming a documentary at his Paisley Park residence around the Rainbow Children album listening party. “What I want you to shoot is people’s reactions to the music,” Prince allegedly instructed the director, “then talk to them about religion, and lead that into race, and by the end of the week I want to change the world.” Smith’s response, which he shared on a podcast appearance, outlined the absurdity of the situation. “I was thinking, ‘I’m in the middle of making a dick and fart joke movie, man!’” As for the rights to the song, it was a resounding ‘no’.
Queen – ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ in Rocky III
Sylvester Stallone always knew that ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ wasn’t going to be used in the final cut of the third entry in his Rocky film franchise, and the song that was used in its place ultimately went on to become synonymous with the film and achieve great success as a result. Having used the song as a placeholder when cutting together footage to send to Jim Peterik, the guitarist in the band Survivor, he couldn’t have been more pleased to know that Stallone wanted him to record a track to replace it as the theme song.
“I remember asking Stallone why he just didn’t use that song for the movie,” Peterik recalled, “and he said it was because they couldn’t get the publishing rights for it. At that point, I just said, ‘Thank you, Queen!’” With ‘Eye of the Tiger’ being born as a result four days later, Survivor can count themselves lucky that Queen were reluctant to have their music used in the pugilistic picture, as the song went on to become their best-selling song.
