A murderous Paul McCartney on a stabbing spree. An Australian fist-pumping metal anthem transforms into encouraging a teen girl to become a surfing free bird.
David Bowie’s 70s glam rock Suffragette City, inspired by the urban violence of The Velvet Underground and Anthony Burgess‘ A Clockwork Orange novel, finds a home in a sleepy Perth town.
These were some ideas tossed about for the impressive soundtrack to Last Days Of The Space Age, a Disney+ Australian drama-comedy which premieres today (October 2).
The eight-part series, produced by Princess Pictures, is set in a coastal Perth town circa 1979/1980 and follows three families going through their ups and downs.
The soundtrack draws on a wide variety of styles, ranging from Australian radio hits (Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, LRB, The Angels, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs, Ferrets, John Paul Young) to space age (a couple of David Bowies) to pop (ABBA), disco (Donna Summer, Chic, Village People, Bee Gees) to alt-rock (Perth band The Manikins), to crooners (Barry Crocker).
The choices were mostly made by music supervisor Allegra Caldwell, set-up director Bharat Nalluri (Boy Swallows Universe), and multi-award-winning composer Caitlin Yeo, who composed the score.
Also playing a role was creator, scriptwriter and co-producer David Chidlow. Making his debut film L’Histoire de Nos Petites Morts in 2012, his credits include War Rooms and Men Of Steel.
“Music, for me, is a huge part of life,” he says. “I don’t play it, which is my great life regret. But I listen to it all the time, ridiculously so. Every kind of music.”
Turned Up
Like most screenwriters, Chidlow turns up the music when writing. Some have pride of place. The Beatles’ Abbey Road was the first record he bought, aged 11. Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut came as he was getting politically active. “The anger and the sadness spoke to me.” It also spoke to him about his grandfather, who had strong socialist leanings.
Years later, when he co-wrote Diz For Prez, an off-Broadway play about US jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s 1964 campaign to run for President, he became seriously turned onto jazz.
“Roger Waters, Paul McCartney and (jazz sax player) Charlie Parker were in particular part of the journey. I love playing them when I’m setting a scene or a mood or a spiral or a question. It’s a huge part of writing for me.”
But he warns, never get attached to your original choices. “The scene might die for not having enough money, or they might not want the track used. You have to be very careful.”
One song that failed to make the final cut was The Beatles’ Michelle, penned by McCartney. “There’s a line where he goes, ‘Michelle, I’m going to get you’. But the version on my vinyl copy of the Beatles Ballads compilation kept skipping.
“It went, ‘I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna get you’. So McCartney, as a serial killer, inspired a scene where a teenager is absolutely riffing over it. But in the end, we couldn’t get the track.”
Hailing from Northern England, he wanted a bit of Joy Division. Living on the surf coast outside Melbourne, he was keen on Australian Crawl’s Reckless for a scene where a character had to make a choice that could tear her clan apart.
In both instances, he chuckles, he got told off because both songs didn’t tally with the film’s timeline. “I kept saying, ‘No one will notice!’ But of course, that’s the first thing they will do. I do it all the time (with other peoples’ movies)!”
When Chidlow started work on an early version of the script twenty years ago, he had Ed Kuepper’s Sleepy Head from 1993’s Serene Machine album in his mind for the finale. The lyrics about uncertain finality made sense:
If you scratch your world to pieces
You’ll see the stains and all the creases
That are hidden away
With your sweet life at an all time low
No sweet-talkers with gems for eyes
To show the way.
But in the end, it was decided that the epic symphonia of a deep cut of ABBA’s Arrival was a better sense.
Family Rifts
Over its eight episodes, Last Days Of The Space Age covers family rifts, financial problems, a joyride gone wrong, ghosts emerging from the past, dealing with deep-seated secrets, and a family for whom the threat of prejudice proves the flashpoint for monumental change.
All this plays to the background of the 150th anniversary of Perth, the threat of the state plunging into the dark because of a power strike, a beauty pageant contest where the USSR’s entry is under strife for Russia’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, and American space station Skylab scatters debris across 150 km of WA.
At the start of the series, husband and wife Tony (Jesse Spencer) and Judy (Radha Mitchell) Bissett are driving in their Holden Kingswood. Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra is blaring out of the radio.
Xanadu sets the time, blaring out of radio and cassettes down the beaches and reaching No. 2 in Australia. It also signifies a place where everything lights up, and the future is bright.
Except in this case, both Tony and Judy are working for the local power plant. Tony is one of the factory workers who’ve been on strike for weeks for better pay, and Judy is working in administrative services for the factory owner.
Their eldest daughter, Tilly, idolises Neil Armstrong, the first person on the moon. Chidlow expands: “She’s grown up in the space age and now wants to become an astronaut. It’s at that point where childhood dreams are smashing into adult realities. It’s the end of an age, and for her, it’s the end of the space age.”
On her first voyage to the moon, Tilly wants to take her best friend, Jono. Except Jono’s immigrant parents, who run a dim sum eatery, want him to become a surgeon.
Tilly’s sister Mia is dismissive of school or achieving anything. She wants to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather, a free spirit who runs his own surfboard store, and considered a local hero.
Mia’s focus in life is surfing and scressing the local lads won’t share the waves with her. In one scene, her grandfather is taking her to fix her board so she can get back in the waves. The song delivering an uncharacteristic poignant moment is the macho defiant attack of Rose Tattoo’s Rock And Roll Outlaw.
Chidlow sums up: “It’s about living a life where she is true to herself. If Rock And Roll Outlaw isn’t about being true to yourself, I don’t know what is.”
Last Days Of The Space Age premieres on Disney+ today.
