The songs Bill Nighy wants played at his funeral
If we were to conduct a poll to decide on the most “rock ‘n’ roll” actor, I imagine Bill Nighy would comfortably surface in the top ten. Having appeared in several smaller roles, Nighy broke through in 2003 as the comically stereotypical ageing rockstar, Billy Mack, in Richard Curtis’ festive rom-com Love Actually. Having won the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ BAFTA for the role, job offers then made like an avalanche to Nighy’s front door.
By 2009, Nighy was well on his way to becoming a national treasure. The year gave Nighy a chance to reprise his inner rockstar, as he had debuted in Love Actually. In another Richard Curtis direction, Nighy portrayed the effortlessly suave Quentin, the captain of The Boat that Rocked.
In his rockstar headspace, Nighy has always looked most at home, and there’s simple reasoning for this: acting wasn’t his dream job. Speaking with Simon Mayo of BBC Radio 2 in 2016, Nighy revealed that his first passion in life is music. “Are you happier talking about music than acting?” Mayo asked. “Oh yeah, much, much happier! I never know what to say about acting, really,” Nighy replied. “I mean, I’ve got a couple of things I say, but that’s only to be sociable. I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Music is much more close to my heart.”
Revealing that Nighy had once briefly fronted a band in his youth, Mayo asked whether he had an overriding dream to be the singer of a major rock group like the Rolling Stones. “There was a time when I thought perhaps, you know, ‘Yeah yeah!’” Nighy said. “And I, like everybody else, wanted to be in a band, and I did give it a shot, but then acting kind of took over, and I got lost in that. But I don’t think that’s a great loss to the music world.”
Mayo: “You would have quite liked to have been Keith [Richards] though?”
“Yeah, I wanted to be in the Rolling Stones, that’s for sure,” Nighy replied. “But my hair went strange after puberty. (…) I kind of had a white afro through my early 20s, which was catastrophic at the time and disqualified me, obviously, from being a member of the Rolling Stones.”
In 2022, Nighy, always keen to talk music, took part in NME’s ‘Soundtrack of My Life’ column. Tuning into his love for The Rolling Stones, Nighy was asked to pick out a song that reminded him of the late Stones drummer Charlie Watts.
“I met him once in Bond Street, London. I had a suit on, and somebody behind me called out my name, and I turned around, and it was Charlie Watts,” Nighy recalled having picked out ‘Monkey Man’ for his song choice. “There are very few people in the world that completely stop me in my tracks, and Charlie Watts is one of them. I was instantly, profoundly flattered that he knew my name and that he’d said it. Anyway, he was immaculately dressed in a bespoke suit. He reached forward and felt the lapel of my jacket, and he said: ‘You’re an actor, you’re supposed to be skint.’ And I said, ‘well you know, things looked up’ – and he said, ‘well, glad to hear it’. Then he got in the car, and he drove away.”
Later in the feature, Nighy was asked to pick out a soundtrack for the mourners at his funeral. Usually, interviewees are used for one track, but Nighy was granted two choices.
“Can I have two? I’ve already been buried to ‘Into My Arms’ by Nick Cave in a film called About Time, which is hard to beat. I hope Richard [Curtis, the director] won’t mind me saying, but there were other options for that slot. One of them was ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)’ by Stevie Wonder, which just made me laugh. The coffin was supposed to be coming in, and Stevie would be singing ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ which was quite funny. But I wanted Richard to go with Nick Cave. And he did. I did meet Nick backstage at something once, and he was very charming. I’m a huge, huge fan.”
Listen to Nick Cave’s beautifully mournful 1997 ballad, ‘Into My Arms’, below.
