My Life As A Porn Star

Apparently, if you ask practically any session musician, he will tell you that at one time or another he has contributed, either knowingly or unknowingly, to a porn movie soundtrack.

I'm not talking about all the heavy breathing and, 'Take me now, Mr Prendergast...' type of banter, but the drear music that (I'm told) accompanies such a cinematic event.

Now, I have to confess, that even my humble session activities have not escaped the film industry's shady back streets - but I didn't find out that my earnest guitar wranglings had been so used until years afterwards. All I knew was that the session concerned had seriously strange overtones…

At the time, I was working on and off for a studio somewhere in Britain (Essex, actually) and occasionally we were asked to provide a bit of music here and there for video or radio. It was generally nothing too spectacular - maybe 30 seconds of anonymous background music in a certain style, that's all. But this session was different; the guy who commissioned the music was extremely vague as to what the film was about, for a start. He told us that he made corporate films for various companies all over the world and this one in particular was for a hotel chain in Australia. Fair enough. They have hotels in Australia, I know, and so there was nothing too suspicious about that…

So he told us that he wanted 15 minutes (!) of music with a sort of 'Crocodile Dundee' type of vibe going on - lots of didgeridoo droning and Aboriginal drums, gradually building in tension. Tension? Must be a weird hotel chain. Oh, and then there's the fast section towards the end... Fast bit? Well, yes; apparently somewhere near the end of the 'corporate film about an Australian hotel chain' there was a car chase. Oh, really?

We asked if we could see a script - 15 minutes of shooting in the dark (sorry) without any sense of musical direction  was a bit of a tall order, after all. But we were told, no; no script. Well, could we see any footage, just to get an idea of how the music could tie in with the visuals? Again; no.

So drums, didgeridoo gradually building up to a car chase? OK. Now I sense that there is already some considerable giggling at the back because I've already told you what the music was really wanted for, but in those days, a job was a job and we just, erm, got stuck in.

We got together some samples of ethnic percussion, found a synthesiser setting which sounded a bit like a didgeridoo and set the whole thing up. I played what I can only describe as some entirely out of place guitar on the top using a blue Stratocaster (ironic, eh?) which ended up sounding a little like Dire Straits had got lost in the Australian Outback - and afterwards I drove home.

My compelling vision is the keyboard player (who was late for a prior engagement as the session had over-run) trying to get himself ready for a night out with a toothbrush lodged in his mouth whilst the music reached its inevitable climax (sorry again).

On the day, all we thought was; weird. It was a long time afterwards when it was revealed somehow that the businessman who had employed us that day had what we could call 'an arrangement' with some local ladies who fancied earning a bit of extra housekeeping.

And, before you ask, no; I haven't seen it…