Quentin Tarantino’s favourite songs from the 1960s
America’s greatest living auteur, Quentin Tarantino, is a true cinema savant. From his early childhood, an obsession with the silver screen has guided his every move. Since emerging as a screenwriter and director in the early 1990s, Tarantino’s distinctive style has never ceased to entertain and owes its allure to an unconventional baptism in a California video rental store.
At age 22, Tarantino secured his first full-time job at Video Archives, a store in Manhattan Beach, California. As explained in several interviews, he was already a cinephile, but the job allowed him free reign on a vast movie catalogue – in essence, this store was Tarantino’s university. After expending his pool of inspiration, the young movie nerd got cracking on some early screenplays.
In a past interview, Tarantino discussed the importance of music when he’s creating a new movie. “One of the things I do when I am starting a movie,” he said, “When I’m writing a movie or when I have an idea for a film is, I go through my record collection and just start playing songs, trying to find the personality of the movie, find the spirit of the movie. Then, ‘boom,’ eventually I’ll hit one, two or three songs, or one song in particular, ‘Oh, this will be a great opening credit song.'”
With movies set in the 1800s right up to the modern day, Tarantino takes heed of the aesthetic but throws in the odd curveball to reinforce his quirkiness. “To me, the opening credits are very important because that’s the only good time that most movies give themselves,” he continued. “A cool credit sequence and the music that plays in front of it, or note played, or any music ‘whatever you decide to do’ that sets the tone for the movie that’s important for you.”
“So I’m always trying to find what the right opening or closing credit should be early on when I’m just even thinking about the story,” Tarantino concluded. “Once I find it, that really kind of triggers me into what the personality of the piece should be, what the rhythm of this piece should be.”
As anyone who has seen Tarantino’s movies will attest, the man has quite the musical taste. Whether it’s the Reservoir Dogs scene where Micheal Madsen’s Mr Blonde cuts a police officer’s ear off to the beat of Stealer’s Wheel’s ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’, or John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing to ‘You Never Can Tell’ by Chuck Berry in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino always knows how to engage his audience with nostalgic classics.
Below, we’ve compiled some of Tarantino’s most beloved songs from the 1960s, many of which can be found within his bulletproof oeuvre. Of course, as a music and movie fanatic, we can expect Tarantino’s favourites to constantly change, but these tap into a childhood nostalgia that’s hard to wear out.
Quentin Tarantino’s favourite songs:
- ‘Bang Bang – My Baby Shot Me Down’ – Nancy Sinatra
- ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’ – Dusty Springfield
- ‘You Never Can Tell’ – Chuck Berry
- ‘Twisted Nerve’ – Bernard Hermann
- ‘Bustin’ Surfboards’ – The Tornadoes
- ‘Green Hornet’ – Al Hirt
- ‘Flowers On the Wall’ – The Salter Brothers
- ‘Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)’ – The Delfonics
- ‘Spooky’ – Dusty Springfield
- ‘Little Green Bag’ – George Baker Selection
- ‘Hold Tight!’ – Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich
- ‘Surf Rider’ – The Lively Ones
- ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ – Buddy Guy
- ‘The Love You Save (May Be Your Own)’ – Joe Tex
- ‘There Won’t Be Many Coming Home’ – Roy Orbison
- ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’ – Neil Diamond
- ‘Baby It’s You’ – Smith
- ‘Out of Limits’ – The Marketts
- I Ain’t Marching Any More – Phil Ochs
- The Great Escape Original Soundtrack – Elmer Bernstein
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