The song Robert Downey Jr can’t bear listening to: “Certain records have a lot of ghosts”
Any great song is always about more than a catchy tune. It’s easy for someone to glaze over anything that comes on the radio as nothing but pretentious fluff, but sometimes a melody hits them at the exact right time and captures a feeling better than any other medium could hope to. Robert Downey Jr may have found the silver screen to be his calling, but he knew that music could have equal power behind it when looking back on his life in Hollywood.
Granted, it’s not like Downey doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to the musical side of things. He has had his fair share of singing moments in a handful of his projects, and when he’s not hyping up the musical ventures that his son has gone on, he’s kept in tune with what’s happening with newer acts like Sleaford Mods.
But looking through his filmography, Downey has always been informed by music whenever he puts on one of his performances. Christopher Nolan had talked extensively about how he had been given a spark of inspiration for Oppenheimer by listening to the Sting song ‘Russians’, and since Downey has been known as Tony Stark for the last decade of his career, it’s impossible to see him in that trademark Iron Man suit and not hear AC/DC playing in the background subconsciously.
Outside of some of his underrated classics like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, though, Downey’s other iconic persona came from his days in Less Than Zero. While the script may have been a little bit closer to reality than some people wanted to believe, Downey is still phenomenal in the film, including a truly gripping performance where he’s trying his best to get some kind of compassion from his father and being met with nothing.
The movie itself might be a tough watch for people who have a limited tolerance for drug use, but the soundtrack has some of the most incredible music of the late 1980s. No one in their right mind would have put Roy Orbison next to Slayer and Public Enemy on a soundtrack, but listening to how they all work off each other, Rick Rubin created the perfect musical journey for what the excess of the film is like. But for Downey, one of the most immersive songs during that period didn’t even make the soundtrack.
Given how hard he was battling demons at the time, Downey said that he has to make sure to steer clear of Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’ because of how many bad memories it brings up, saying, “There are certain records that have a lot of ghosts for me. Even now, I wonder if I put on [Billy Idol’s] ‘White Wedding’, would I head straight to The Viper Room?” And it’s not like he doesn’t have good reason to think that, either.
While Idol has become the cartoon version of what a punk rocker should be, hearing him make a song that was all about a woman being coerced by a man who’s looking to whisk her away sounds like something that could come out of one of Julian Wells’s friends in the context of the film. And looking at how excessive the 1980s could be, this is exactly the kind of dark soundtrack to nights that people don’t remember and regrets that people have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Although Downey has found a way to move past his old ways and become one of the finest actors of his generation, ‘White Wedding’ only serves to teach us a powerful lesson about what music can do. It can help give everyone a great memory bank of all the good times they had, but if they’re not careful, some of their favourite songs can end up leaving a few scars.
