Cillian Murphy and Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten have explained Nick Cave‘s new version of ‘Red Right Hand’ for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.
- READ MORE: ‘Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man’ review: Tommy Shelby is back in business
The movie spin-off from the hit Netflix series hit the streaming service on Friday (March 20), with Murphy returning as the lead character Tommy Shelby, alongside Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth, Sophie Rundle, Barry Keoghan and Stephen Graham.
Last month, the soundtrack for the film was unveiled, with five new songs having been created especially for the movie.
Amy Taylor of Amyl & the Sniffers, Lankum, Girl In The Year Above, and Chatten, Carlos O’Connell, and Tom Coll from Fontaines D.C. all contributed songs to the soundtrack, while Cave recorded a new version of ‘Right Hand Man’ – his 1994 track that served as the theme to the original series.
Now, Murphy and Chatten have opened up about the decision to have Cave re-record the track for the film’s soundtrack.
In a new clip shared by Netflix, Murphy says they “very deliberately” delayed including the theme tune in the film right away, explaining that it was important that Cave sang it “at his age now”, giving the effect of it being “broken and shattered”.
Chatten added: “When I was watching the film, and that part came on, I was really hyper-listening to the new details of his voice, to discover how much time had passed, not only for him, but for Tommy.”
“And I think, to hold it back as well, to withhold the title track, the theme tune, until he’s up on the horse, but he’s battered, and it really works,” Murphy added, to which Chatten responded: “Seeing Tommy covered in mud and hearing Nick, like, covered in age marks of living.”
Chatten and Murphy have also spoken about Chatten’s song ‘Puppet’. During the conversation, Murphy recalled going to Fontaines’ intimate launch show for their 2024 album ‘Romance’, and says he remembered thinking the music sounded like it had been written for Peaky Blinders, which led to him and director Tom Harper approaching them about the possibility of creating original music for The Immortal Man.
Chatten replied: “It’s been a show all of us have been watching for a long time. We wanted to kind of do something that sounded inherently Peaky. It’s a songwriter’s dream, really.”
Speaking about ‘Puppet’, he added: “That was probably the one that was the most delicate, lyrically. The vocals are so present in the mix. Literally the wrong letter at the end of the word I felt could throw things off.”
Murphy has previously spoken about his love for Fontaines D.C., telling BBC Radio 1 in February: “There’s certain music that just lends itself to Peaky Blinders … the Fontaines music seems to work, it has that outlaw quality, that dangerous quality …. they’re incredible songs, so it just clicked for us.”
In February, The Immortal Man score composers Martin Slattery and Antony Genntell spoke to us about their indie all-star new soundtrack. “It’s got a lot of guts and the feeling of the human hand,” Genn said of the album, “brought to you by a lot of brilliant human hearts, minds and souls.”
During the series’ run, NME spoke to Murphy about how a song is selected for the show. “You just know when a song is ‘Peaky’,” he said. “The artists are outsiders. They have resisted the tyranny of the mainstream, shall we say?”
Last month, he also compiled a playlist of songs that define Peaky Blinders, including tracks by Black Sabbath and Leonard Cohen.
In NME‘s three-star review of the film, we said: “Perhaps it’s not as emotional as you might hope but this sombre final chapter of Peaky Blinders still wraps things up as tightly as a burial shroud. And for that, we doff our razor-lined caps.”
