The Firm – Original Soundtrack

Release date: 21st September 2009

Format: CD & Digital Download

Label: Universal Music
Catalogue Number: 5321973

Loosely adapted from Alan Clarke’s 1989 classic TV film, Nick Love’s film is set earlier in the 80’s and retells a similar story to the original – but from a different character’s point of view. The film centres on Dom, a young wannabe football casual, who get drawn into the charismatic but dangerous world of the firm’s top boy, Bex.

Accepted for the fast mouth and sense of humour, Dom soon becomes one of the boys. But as Bex and his gang clash with rival firms across the country and the violence spirals out of control, Dom realises he wants out – until he learns it’s not that easy to simply walk away.

Humorous, heart-warming and set to a killer jazz funk and electro 80’s soundtrack, The Firm is a classic coming-of-age story set amongst one of England’s most feared and revered tribes.

The Firm soundtrack notes by Nick Love:

I think I’ve come to understand with the benefit of hindsight, that most people’s favourite era of music would be when they were in their adolescence; certainly for me, that’s when I was most open minded and malleable, not just musically but around fashion and many others things – I was at my most receptive to new ideas and movements.  And growing up in South East London in the eighties, the whole soul/jazz funk movement, which went hand in had with the rise of the football casuals, wasn’t going to pass me by.

That was some twenty five years ago - dates have becomes blurred, but certain memories are still pin sharp.  I remember popping my cherry (fucking awful experience – after I’d finished the girl asked if I’d even started) with I FOUND LOVIN’ by the THE FATBACK BAND in the background – I went to Champs, my first night club and on the way down the stairs off Deptford High Street, I could hear ‘DON’T STOP THE MUSIC’ by YARBROUGH AND PEOPLES pumping from inside the club and my heart was beating so fast with excitement I thought I would explode (or was that the sulphate?).  I sat around puffing 007 black and dropping microdots with my mates listening to MAN PARISH, AL NAAFIYSH, TYRONE BRUNSON, MALCOLM McLAREN, HERBIE HANCOCK and so many more.  I could go on forever boring you with anecdotes about my teenage years but it would be pointless.  The point is, the music.  It was everywhere.  It touched and affected every experience I had.  Everything I did, I related to a song, everywhere I went, I placed it with a tune.  And for me, it could only happen in my adolescence.

So when it came to making the firm – a film that I hoped would celebrate the 80s experience, the clothes, the music, the punch ups and the clubs, I knew I had to go back and mine my teenage memories for ideas and concepts.  It started with ‘DON’T STOP THE MUSIC’ by YARBROUGH AND PEOPLES – that was he first song I asked my brilliant music supervisor Lol, to hunt down for me.  Without that tune, there could be no film!  It was so important that when the young protagonist Dom and his mate are going on a big night out, that they were greeted by that song at the jaws of the club – because for me it would place an audience, anyone who’s gone out to a club with all the excitement and arrogance that only young peacocks can have, right back into that feeling of going out – feeling like the world was yours and you were unstoppable.

After that we chased down DONNA SUMMER ‘I FEEL LOVE’ because it was and still is, totally fucking anthemic – first recorded in the late 70s, it still sounds pin sharp and crystal clear thirty years on, without any tweaks or re-recordings.  I can’t count the amount of dreary weddings or parties I’ve been at, where ‘I FEEL LOVE’ comes on to replace the fucking ‘Birdie Song’ and suddenly the whole place erupts.  Genius music.  And there are many more tunes I needed – ‘COMPUTER LOVE’ by ZAPP AND ROGERS – I’m sure I had my hands down a few girls’ alans, whilst listening to ZAPP back in the day.  And we haven’t even got onto THE JAM yet.  There simply is no better music to place you back into a time and place like THE JAM – Weller truly understood what it was to be a young man, angry, fired up and on the cusp of a revolution, and ‘A TOWN CALLED MALICE’ bursts with attitude and hunger, capturing that spirit brilliantly – and watching our protagonist get dressed up in his casual clothes then get on an Inter City 125 with THE JAM playing over it, felt like it could jog memories for young people or people who were young once, from council estates to country estates, that wanted to be part of a tribe.

I’m rambling because this music fucking excites me.  Emotions excite me, because that’s what film is at its core.  Without stirring an emotion what’s the point?  And The Firm soundtrack is all about stirring up emotions – jogging memories, stoking the teenage fires and feeling the emotion of being young and up for it.  It was the most exciting period of my life (although directing films is pretty great too) and I had to record it before my memory faded into a middle-age fudge.  The 80s was the decade where new technology fused with great passionate song writing and classic anthems were created.  Soul boys and soul girls, I hope this soundtrack makes you smile as much as me.

Nick Love

PS. I haven’t even mentioned KOOL AND THE GANG yet…

Track Listing