Nick Cave, Cillian Murphy and “Red right hand” for “Peaky Blinders”
In addition to being the most famous song in the repertoire of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, since 2013 “Red right hand” has also been the symbolic song of “Peaky Blinders”, so much so that it was inevitably also included in the new film which is the sequel to Steven Knight’s award-winning series. The piece, originally published by the Australian singer-songwriter and his band on the 1994 album “Let love in”, is however used in the feature film “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man”, available on Netflix since March 20th, in a new version.
The idea of returning to using “Red right hand” to accompany the story of Thomas Shelby and the peaky blinders, but in a new guise, came from the lead actor Cillian Murphy, who also plays the role of co-producer for the new film, together with the musical supervisors Anthony Genn and Martin Slattery. As Murphy himself told in a recent interview with Edith Bowman for the “Soundtracking” podcast, while working on the soundtrack of “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” (read more here), he and his colleagues realized that the original version of the famous song by Nick Cave didn’t work entirely in a key scene in which Steven Knight had always imagined inserting it.
“It was an interesting puzzle, because Steve had seen it coming from the beginning, and had kind of ‘kept it aside’ since the beginning of the series, up until this point in the movie,” Murphy told Bowman: “I remember talking on the phone to Tom Harper, the director of the movie, and he was telling me it wasn’t working. I was like, ‘Come on, it’s ‘Red right hand,’ it’s got to work!’ Then we all found ourselves watching the scene again, and it actually didn’t work. So the challenge became: how do we convince Nick Cave and Warren Ellis to re-record it, to make it part of the soundscape that Anthony and Martin are building, but also to differentiate it from the beginning? But when you have someone like Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, that kind of team, it’s doable. They just destroyed it, in a good way.” During the interview, during which he also explained why he thought Fontaines DC were the perfect band to write the original songs for the film, Cillian Murphy then revealed how they got in touch with the musicians and how they managed to convince them. “I then called Cave,” the actor said:
“It was an amazing phone call. It’s not often that I get to pick up the phone and call Nick Cave. He hadn’t read the script, but I explained the story to him and why the original version didn’t work. And he was excited to get back to that song, because yes, they play it live, but it hasn’t been a long time since they’ve re-examined it thoroughly. Then when we heard the new version, it all made sense. It has that weight, all that history, all that pain that the original version wouldn’t have had.”
The new version of “Red right hand” by Nick Cave for “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” was also explained by Cillian Murphy in a content for Netflix created together with Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC.
Speaking about the decision to have the Australian musician re-record the song for the film’s soundtrack, Murphy explained that they “deliberately” significantly delayed the song’s inclusion in the film, underlining how important it was for Cave to sing it “at his current age”, giving it a “broken and shattered” effect.
Chatten added: “When I watched the movie, and that moment came, I almost obsessively listened to the new details in his voice, to understand how much time had passed, not only for him, but for Tommy as well.” The actor continued: “And I think also the fact of holding it back, of not inserting the theme immediately, until he’s on the horse, but now rehearsed, really works.” At this point the Fontaines DC frontman underlined: “You see Tommy covered in mud and you feel like Nick, as if marked by age and life”.
