Radiohead’s Thom Yorke turned down the chance to create the ‘Fight Club’ soundtrack
In another rock and roll tale of what could have been, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke once turned down the opportunity to create a score for the now-iconic cult film Fight Club.
The movie, which was directed by David Fincher and starred the likes of Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter and Jared Leto, went to achieve critical acclaim and is now regarded by many as one of the greatest films of the 1990s and of all time.
“A depressed man (Edward Norton) suffering from insomnia meets a strange soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and soon finds himself living in his squalid house after his perfect apartment is destroyed,” the official film synopsis reads. “The two bored men form an underground club with strict rules and fight other men who are fed up with their mundane lives. Their perfect partnership frays when Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a fellow support group crasher, attracts Tyler’s attention.”
Fight Club premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 1999, the very same location that held the world premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s horror remake Suspiria — the movie that marked Yorke’s first attempt at writing a film score.
While Suspiria marked a new direction for Yorke, it isn’t the first time he had been approached to create music to accompany a feature film. Sitting down with BBC 6 Music on the day he released his new song ‘Has Ended’, Yorke discussed his past opportunities: “Things sort of come into my office, but they haven’t really got to me,” Yorke began.
“The one I remember is one from years ago after we’d finished ‘OK Computer’ and I was completely gaga,” he continued.
Yorke added: “They asked me to do Fight Club. They sent me the script and Ed and Brad Pitt wrote to me and said, ‘we really think you should do this’. I went ‘Nah, I can’t’. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to do it then, but every time I see the film I go ‘awww’.”
Reflecting on his state of mind at the time, Yorke added: “Got the email. Got the script,” he told The Guardian. “And I was just too fucked up in the head to do it.”
Yorke added: “I’d just come off tour. I was mentally incapable of even tying my shoes.”
Having seen Yorke reject the opportunity due to his overflowing stress levels, director Fincher instead turn his attention to the producing duo of the Dust Brothers. The producers, Michael Simpson and John King, built their reputations in the realm of hip-hop before working with Beastie Boys established them as major players. Branching out from their safe surroundings, the Dust Brothers kicked on during the 1990s, working with the likes of Beck, Mötley Crüe and Korn before Fincher and Fight Club came calling.
Discussing the project, Michael Simpson once explained the setup: “Fincher wanted to break new ground with everything about the movie, and a nontraditional score helped achieve that.”
In a separate interview, Simpson said of the collaboration: “Even though it was guided by the film, David Fincher was not hanging over our shoulders telling us what to do. He basically said, ‘Did you see The Graduate?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’. And he said, ‘You know how great the music is in that movie?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’. And Fincher says, ‘I want the music for Fight Club to be that great’. And that was the only direction I got from him. So that project was another project that was just a pure expression of my creativity without someone telling me what to do”.
