Rolling Stone Australia — June 2017

Ju ne, 2017

R&R

SOUNDTRACK

2

30 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com

‘Surrender’

By including this

1978 Cheap Trick

classic, Gunn repays

a favour to the band,

which let him use

“If You Want My

Love” in his 2011

indie filmSuper

for nearly nothing.

‘Guardians
Inferno’
This comedic origi-
nal, co-written by
Gunn and sung
by David Hasselhoff ,
is meant as a sort
of Guardians take
on Meco’s disco
Star Wars theme.

‘Southern

Nights’

Glen Campbell’s

groovy 1977 version

of Allen Toussaint’s

song was a child-

hood favourite of

Gunn’s: “It’s a little

bitofadifferentfla-

vour for the movie.”

‘Brandy (You’re

a Fine Girl)’

Gunn has long

adored Looking

Glass’ cheeseball

1972 smash, which

plays a key emo-

tional role in the new

movie, appearing in

the very first scene.

‘Father and

Son’

Gunn was inspired

to use this 1970 Cat

Stevens ballad after

hearing Howard

Stern attempt

to perform it on

acoustic guitar on

his show.

FiveHighlightsFrom‘AwesomeMixVol.2’

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © MARVEL STUDIOS; RICHARD CREAMER/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES; GREG DOHERTY/GETTY IMAGES

W

hile director james
Gunn was fi nishing the 2014
sci-fi fi lm Guardians of the
Galaxy, he kept hearing one
bit of feedback from some Marvel Studios
employees. “Nobody,” he recalls them say-
ing, “is going to want to hear this music.”
Gunn had laced the movie with eight-
track-era gems – Redbone’s “Come and
Get Your Love”, Blue Swede’s “Hooked on
a Feeling” – but the sceptics insisted that
using, say, Nineties Britney jams would be
a smarter move.
From the moment he got the job,
though, Gunn was intent on lending some
grounded humanity to his oddball space
opera – where an acerbic space raccoon,
voiced by Bradley Cooper, is among the
leads – by setting key scenes against dusty,
incongruous pop songs. The conceit is that
the tunes come from an ancient Walkman
toted around by Chris Pratt’s Earth-bred
character, who owns just one cassette,
given to him by his mum on her death-
bed: the homemade “Awesome Mix Vol. 1”.
“They were songs that people had probably
heard but probably didn’t know the name
of,” says Gunn.
The awesomeness of that mixtape is
no longer in doubt. Guardians got criti-
cal raves for its wit and inventiveness,
and it grossed $773 million worldwide;
the soundtrack album hit Number One,
going platinum, with iTunes reviews full of
teens singing the glories of Seventies soft
rock. And, conveniently enough, the movie
ended with Pratt’s character, Peter Quill,
discovering that his late mum had left him
one more tape, “Awesome Mix Vol. 2”.
So music w ill be just as central to Guard-
ians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, due May 5th, with
its soundtrack album out now. This time,
Gunn had a bigger budget, which allowed

Bit Closer” – not to mention a true obscuri-

ty like 1976’s “Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang”,

by one-hit-wonder Silver – to the Marvel-

loving masses. “One of the most exciting

things,” he says, “was knowing I would be

making bands that may have been forgot-

ten suddenly be a topic of conversation.”

Along the way, he’s listened to the movie’s

songs over and over – but he doesn’t mind.

“The weird thing is, I’ve never gotten sick of

a Guardians song,” says Gunn, fresh from

hearing “Mr. Blue Sky” yet again while su-

pervising the fi lm’s sound mix. “Chris Pratt

listened to the first album hundreds of

times. He said the only song he got sick of

was ‘The Piña Colada Song’.”

him to include familiar songs from super-

star acts: George Harrison’s “My Sweet

Lord”, Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” (every

band member watched the scene that fea-

tures the song before giving approval) and

ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” – which scores what

Gunn calls “the most hugely insane shot

I’ve ever done”, early in the fi lm. “It’s the

perfect song to start the movie,” says Gunn,

“because it’s really joyous, but there’s a re-

ally dark underpinning to it.”

There are, again, plenty of deep cuts on

hand, and Gunn (who once played in a band

of his own, the Icons) relished the chance to

expose the likes of Sweet’s “Fox on the Run”

and Jay and the Americans’ “Come a Little

The Galaxy’s Hottest Mixtape

Inside the oddball Seventies classics of ‘Guardians of the

Galaxy Vol. 2’, the most anticipated soundtrack in years

BY BRIAN HIATT

SPACE JAMS

(1) Pratt,

Karen Gillan

(left) and Zoe

Saldana. (2)

Soundtrack

stars

Fleetwood

Mac and (3)

ELO’s Jeff

Lynne.

1

Hasselhoff

3