Shaun de Waal
CD OFTHEWEEK
The Million Dollar Hotel (UNI/Interscope) is the soundtrack to the forthcoming Wim Wenders film of that name, based on a story by U2 singer Bono and inspired by a real hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Bono is also the moving force behind the soundtrack.
First off, there’s a song with lyrics by Salman Rushdie, named after and drawing on his recent rock’n’roll novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet. He makes a good lyricist. U2 provides the tune and the backing, as well as a couple of other numbers on the CD. Most of the music, though, is made by the MDH Band, which includes Bono, Daniel Lanois (U2’s one-time producer, and more recently responsible for the brilliant production of Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind), and all-round good-ideas-man Brian Eno (also a sometime U2 producer).
The MDH Band gives a minimal backing to Lou Reed’s classic Satellite of Love, here performed by Milla Jovovich, one of the film’s stars, ranging from whisper to shriek. It is an exquisitely lovely version of the song.
Even more lovely, if that is possible, is Bono and Daniel Lanois’s Falling at Your Feet, a gently lilting love song that sounds like a lost Velvet Underground track; the Velvets in velvet mood, that is.
There are other versions of Satellite of Love later on, as well as some jazzy instrumentals by the likes of Brad Mehldau, Jon Hassell and Bill Frisell. They are so perfect for such a soundtrack that one begins to half-imagine the scenes to which they may belong.
And then the CD comes to a crashing close with Tito Larriva’s retread of The Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK, now applied to the United States, which scans better. It’s also in Spanish, and it’s quite exhilarating.
I hope the movie is this good.