The Soundtrack to ‘The Impossible Dead’ by Ian Rankin
I always have music on when I’m writing. Nothing with lyrics though, otherwise I stop focusing on my own words and start listening to the singer and song instead.
Inspector Rebus was a music fan, too, though he’s from a different generation (born just after World War Two, while I didn’t pop into the world until 1960). But the stuff he listens to chimes with me – the Stones, Van Morrison, blues, Clapton, early Fleetwood Mac, Kinks and Mott the Hoople. For his retirement, his colleague Siobhan Clarke filled an ipod with tunes for him – The Who, John Martyn, Hawkwind, plus the artists mentioned above and a dozen others. Rebus being Rebus, he probably hadn’t bought anything made after 1976, which was why I needed Siobhan to be a fan of more up-to-date sounds – that way, I could sneak mentions into the books of bands I liked in the here and now. At one point, Siobhan asks Rebus if he’s listened to the Mogwai CD she gave him. ‘Good lyrics,’ he tells her, the joke being that Mogwai are an instrumental band. In other words, he obviously hasn’t listened, but doesn’t want her to know.
With Rebus retired, I brought another cop character into play. His name is Malcolm Fox, as featured in The Complaints and my new book, The Impossible Dead. A number of the Rebus novels take their titles from albums and songs, and The Impossible Dead is a play on ‘The Impossible Dream’ (the Sensational Alex Harvey Band version, please). One of Fox’s colleagues plays Alex Harvey on the car stereo as they drive towards their latest job, but otherwise this latest book features few musical references. Why? Because I didn’t want readers to see Fox as being Rebus-lite or Rebus with a different name. That’s why Fox doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and isn’t a music fan.
Of course, I soon realised my mistake – I should have gone the other way, and made Fox a musician. That way, he would still have been different from Rebus and I could still write about songs. Oh well, maybe he can start to learn.
But the lack of music on the page doesn’t mean music didn’t play a part in the writing. There are certain albums and performers that never let me down. When they are on my CD player, my writing flows. Boards of Canada is one. They play ambient electronica, and I probably listened to their album The Campfire Headphase every day during Fox’s latest adventure. Tangerine Dream are another group I depend on – this time round, I listened to their live album Ricochet, sometimes leaving it on repeat for a few hours. The music is really there to establish a ‘writing mood’ in my room and to block out external sounds. I never turn the volume up – it is just barely audible at all times.
Aphex Twin is another ambient must-have – I use his album Selected Ambient Works 85-92. And like Siobhan, I listen to a lot of Mogwai. These Glasgow-based ‘noise terrorists’ actually have their mellower moments, especially with that volume control turned most of the way down. For The Impossible Dead, I used their latest album, Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will’. Two more Scottish bands – Errors and Remember Remember – are useful to me, too. Melodic lo-fi instrumentals.
And if all else fails, there’s always Brian Eno. I’ve been listening to his stuff since the mid-seventies. As a student, I would fall asleep many nights to the sounds of Music for Airports on the cheap stereo system in my bedsit. If you’re feeling stressed, try it out. I reckon it should be available from pharmacies and played everywhere from hospitals to doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms. If I’m having a bad day, I’ll stretch out on the sofa in my office and let it float me elsewhere. If the writing is going well, it has probably been on the playlist at some point during the morning or afternoon.
In my younger days, I used to think I should match background music to the pace of whatever scene I was writing – Arvo Part for reflective moments; Jesus and Mary Chain for car chases. Maybe it worked; I don’t know. I certainly no longer feel the need to do things that way.
So that’s the soundtrack to The Impossible Dead. And unless anything better comes along, it’ll probably be the soundtrack to my next book, too.
