Why Quentin Tarantino needed Stealers Wheel for ‘Reservoir Dogs’
It’s one of the most disconcerting and jarring contrasts in all of contemporary cinema: as the crazed Mr. Blonde prepares to go to work disfiguring a kidnapped cop, the jaunty tones of Stealers Wheel’s 1973 hit single ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ comes to the fore. As ghastly as it is to see a deranged crook cut a man’s ear off, you can’t help but feel a bit giddy at the needle drop. For whatever reason, Quentin Tarantino just had to have that song soundtrack his first truly notorious scene on film.
Reservoir Dogs had its fair share of classic soundtrack additions, from George Baker Selection’s ‘Little Green Bag’ accompanying the opening slo-mo shot of the gang to Blue Swede’s ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ blaring out of their car. But it was ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ that made the biggest impression, with most music fans unable to hear the song the same way again after its inclusion in the movie.
Initially formed in Scotland by singer-songwriters Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty, Stealers Wheel had already seen Rafferty depart by the time ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ hit the top ten in both the US and UK. It would be the band’s only top ten hit, and although Rafferty returned following the song’s success, Stealers Wheel was largely a forgotten one-hit wonder by the early 1990s, especially after Rafferty made a name for himself as a solo artist.
So, what made Tarantino revisit the song for the torture scene? His reputation and a human Rolodex of film knowledge also extended over to music, so Tarantino clearly had some familiarity with the song. As the director himself explained years after the fact, ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ just happened to strike the right chord for the scene.
“That was one of those things where I thought [the song] would work really well, and [during] auditions, I told the actors that I wanted them to do the torture scene, and I’m gonna use ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’,” Tarantino explained to Rolling Stone in 2009, “but they could pick anything they wanted, they didn’t have to use that song.”
“And a couple people picked another one, but almost everyone came in with ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’, and they were saying that they tried to come up with something else, but that’s the one,” Tarantino added. “The first time somebody actually did the torture scene to that song, the guy didn’t even have a great audition, but it was like watching the movie. I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is gonna be awesome!'”
Check out the Reservoir Dogs scene with ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ down below.
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