Porngroove: The funky, filthy story of sex on vinyl
You could easily have never watched an erotic movie in your life and still be able to hum an ad-libbed porno soundtrack. Rich in funk guitar, undulating basslines and cheesy organ solos, porn music is unmistakable. But how did classic erotic movie soundtracks come to sound the way they do?
Music has been an essential part of erotica from the beginning. Take Le Coucher de la Mariée as the perfect example. Released in 1896, the seven-minute silent erotic film implies the presence of music during its infamous striptease sequence.
The French film was screened in Paris shortly after the first public screening of a projection motion picture, making it not only one of the first erotic films but one of the first films full stop. Given that most silent films were screened with an accompanying pianist, it’s likely that even Le Coucher de la Mariée featured some music, though it’s hard to say what it would have sounded like.
Aware of how sound might galvanise the porn industry, the powers that be kept the necessary equipment away from pornographers. That’s why we have to fast-forward to the 1960s when the sexual revolution gave birth to a new wave of adult movie enthusiasts who piled into the erotic theatres springing up across America. Directors began to realise that there was a huge market for audio-visual pornography, which could be easily created using 35mm film.
How the funky sound of classic porn music was born
In the beginning, erotic movie soundtracks were patched together from preexisting sources; something of a mashup of psychedelic rock, lounge music, early funk, and folk. This gave birth to the classic “bow chikka wow wow” sound that defined the porn films of the late 1960s and ’70s. Such scores tended to feature Hammond organs, wah-wah guitar lines, funk-laden backbeats, and jazz-infused bass arrangements. One of the finest examples is Jean Pierre Mirouze’s score for Le Mariage Collectif, released in 1968.
One of the reasons these drum-heavy soundtracks were so popular was that a lot of amateur pornographers were making their films using Super 8 film. Heavy percussion tended to survive the bathtub-developing process favoured by home producers and so became a staple of the genre. It’s also worth noting that European film composers like Piero Umiliani, Gato Barbieri and even Ennio Morricone were already incorporating elements of popular funk, soul and psychedelia into their scores, and many of them ended up scoring the erotic films coming from Italy, West Germany and elsewhere.
In the 1970s, the first scripted sexually explicit film was released in American movie theatres. Unveiled in August 1970, Mona The Virgin Nymph ushered in the ‘Golden Age of Porn’, opening the floodgates for films like Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door, which were the first porn movies to feature specially-composed feature-length scores. Because the producers behind Deep Throat were searching for a wider audience for erotic films, they included a soundtrack featuring accessible bubblegum pop tracks, soft-rock, and show tunes. 1976’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Comedy, meanwhile, boasted its own specially-composed big-band score. Today, such scores are revered as works of art in their own right.
Though initially thrown together to paper over dodgy edits and awkward pauses, a lot of these old soundtracks have ended up ageing surprisingly well. What once sounded like throwaway background noise is now getting love from crate-diggers and collectors who see past the saucy context. These days, you’ll find whole records reissued on vinyl by boutique labels, garish sleeves and all, championed not for what they once underscored but for their mad brilliance – all slippery basslines, wobbly synths, and tunes that feel like they’ve been nicked from the backseat of a battered Vauxhall.
Part of the charm is how ramshackle it all is. These weren’t polished scores dreamed up in Abbey Road; they were cobbled together on the fly, with more bravado than budget and a fair bit of winging it. But that scrappy edge gives them bite. Stick one on now and it’s less lads-mag smut and more a cracked little time capsule; the sound of reel-to-reel hiss, someone necking a warm lager, and a bored bloke puffing a fag just off-camera.
