Performers

by Irvine Welsh

American studio Warner Bros, wishing to tap into the burgeoning youth market, financed the production in their misguided belief that they were buying into a film depicting the optimism and energy of swinging London; a new A Hard’s Day’s Night (1964), complete with an accompanying album from the film's star, the biggest rock star on the planet, Mick Jagger. Instead what they were handed was a heady cocktail of hallucinogenic mushrooms, sex – homosexual and three-way – violence, amalgamated identities and artistic references to Jorge Luis Borges, Magritte and Francis Bacon. Their star, Mick Jagger, failed to appear until nearly an hour into the film and only sung one song on the subsequent ground-breaking soundtrack by Jack Nitzsche.

Performance was born out of that fervor and an understanding that we did not want to make a Hollywood movie.