00:00I'm a total music nerd, I'm obsessed and I have been really involved in the music in
00:06Peaky for a long, long time and we're just so lucky because everybody wants to give us
00:11their music.
00:12We have this embarrassment of riches but you kind of just know when something is Peaky
00:16or something isn't Peaky.
00:17David Bowie said this brilliant thing once, he described his music as avoiding the tyranny
00:22of the mainstream which is kind of an interesting way to put it given he was such a huge artist
00:27but I kind of understand what he means and I think a lot of the music that we use, the
00:31artists feel like kind of outsiders or rebels or like truth tellers, you know what I mean?
00:38A song I listen to to get into character.
00:41For the movie, I have this song, a song by Tom York called The Eraser.
00:46It's the atmosphere of the song but there's also there's a lyric in it which is the more you try
00:51to
00:52erase me the more that I appear and that felt to me very much like Tommy Shelby like you can't
00:57get rid of it.
00:59Sometimes during the series we have employed like playing music through the speakers on set
01:05to kind of get us into it like a lot of those classic slow-mo peaky walks we would have
01:11done
01:11like with the whatever the tune was kind of on big speakers blasting because it helps you.
01:16I don't really need necessarily music to get into the walk anymore because we've been doing it for
01:22so long.
01:23It's nice to play music on set, everyone loves it, the crew loves it you know.
01:26I remember we played Zeppelin one year and it was amazing but they've never given us
01:31that music at this point. A song from the series I love.
01:38If you are the dealer let me out of the game.
01:42Over this course of the series we've been incredibly blessed because these kind of iconic artists like
01:48David Bowie and Leonard Cohen have gifted us their music and actually kind of asked for their music
01:56to be in the show. You know Leonard Cohen one of the greatest lyricists and poets that ever lived and
02:03Steve Knight is a massive fan.
02:04If you are the healer I'm broken and lame. If thine is the glory mine must be the shame.
02:13And this tune you want it darker feels like it's like just the essence of Peaky Blinders and Tommy
02:19Shelby kind of distilled into it into a track. The lyrics are amazing and he's got this deep deep deep
02:24baritone and he's like he's almost speaks singing the the lyrics in the way that the kind of late era
02:31Cohen does. And I mean it's just pure poetry but it's so dark and so brilliant. A song from Birmingham.
02:45We have Black Sabbath in the show that tune War Pigs and we lost poor old Ozzy Osbourne.
02:52It's just a phenomenal blistering piece of music.
03:04I think you could draw some line between Tommy Shelby and Ozzy Osbourne if you so wished.
03:16It kind of rebels both of them. It's a very anti-war song. Yeah.
03:23His views very much shifted on war and the establishment. He was formed in the trenches
03:30and underground in Flanders and I think that it began to make him question everything. So he's clearly
03:36not a pacifist but I do believe that he has not much time for authority and hierarchy and the class
03:44system. A song for Polly. I nearly picked a song by PJ Harvey because PJ Harvey I mean they share
03:52a name
03:52and the character and the songwriter. She lent her music to us for series two and Flood did the music
04:09for that series. It's one of my favorite series for music.
04:17But I decided in the end to pick Sinead O'Connor because she was such a punk and a rebel
04:22and she
04:22spoke truth to power and I picked that song and didn't care because it's such a classic and it's so
04:29energetic and I feel like Holly Gray had that same ferocity and fearlessness as a woman that Sinead
04:35O'Connor embodied. My favorite Bowie song in this context. David Bowie was a very early advocate of
04:42the TV show. He loved it from from the start when many people didn't. David Bowie who was just consumed
04:48culture as we know. He read everything, watched everything, listened to everything and he loved
04:52the show. I worked with him briefly in the year before he died and we spoke about it and he
04:59told
05:00me how much he loved it and then I sent him the cap that I wear in series one with
05:04the razor blade
05:05in it and everything and he sent me back a picture of him wearing it which I treasure.
05:17We found out after he died that he really wanted us to use songs from Blackstar in the show and
05:24we
05:24were all like speechless and just kind of overwhelmed and it was just beyond moved and then we tried to
05:29use them in a fitting way and I think that it really works. A song that represents Tommy's
05:35post-war trauma would probably be in the Bleak Midwinter is a poem. It's very much a choral hymn
05:41now as well when you kind of look at it through the prism of what like these soldiers in the
05:45trenches
05:46in France in like 1914 it's kind of so bleak and apocalyptic. There's one quote from it actually.
05:53Is it right to say that heaven cannot hold God nor the earth sustain and what about heaven and earth
05:58fleeing away when he comes to rain. Doesn't sound like a Christmas hymn to me but that's why I think
06:05they adopted it because it's so bleak and dark and and like massive. It's just beautiful.
06:12A rebel song or a folk song. So Steve Knight had specifically requested that the series end
06:19with that Bob Dylan tune, All the Tired Horses. We couldn't get the Dylan version but that was
06:26actually a blessing because um we got Lisa O'Neill to do a version of it.
06:42It's one of the most remarkable cover versions I think you'll ever hear. It's so full of soul and
06:48pain and yearning and honesty and she completely kind of reinvented the song and made it her own.
06:54Couldn't have been a better sort of last piece of music for the TV show as he rides off.
07:08Yes, still one of my favorite pieces on the whole show.
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