Stoned is a film about Brian Jones, founding member of The Rolling Stones. Odd, then, that there's not a single Stones number on the soundtrack. Was it a wrangle over royalties or a deliberate act on the part of the director? The inclusion of so many cover versions (as well as original versions of songs the Stones covered) suggests the former. The album is an odd tangle of classic 60s tracks, Stones covers and crappy score. David Arnold, the man responsible for scoring
Independence Day,
Godzilla and
Tomorrow Never Dies, seems to have had no idea what to do when faced with something other than an action movie. His solution? Horribly overblown strings, same as always.
If hearing The Bees covering the Stones isn't really your thing, you'd do well to steer clear, as they do so no fewer than four times here. Fortunately they're more than capable, and while they don't go anywhere particularly interesting with the tracks they've been given, they at least do them justice. Also on offer are Kula Shaker's cover of
Ballad of a Thin Man (tiresome) and the 22-20s'
Devil in Me (good fun). Jazz/folk/RnB performer Haley Glennie-Smith turns in a version of
Come on in My Kitchen which is liable to win her a fair few new fans, myself included.
The cover versions are the main reason why anyone would want to buy this album, as anyone with even a passing interest in the Stones almost certainly owns classic 60s fare like Traffic's
Paper Sun and The Small Faces'
Lazy Sunday. The score material is barely worth mentioning, with the exception of
Brian's Joint. It's just as guilty of cello-abuse as Arnold's other work, in a weep-now-gentle-viewer kind of way, but it's overlaid with so many other sounds and ideas that it actually stands out as an interesting piece of music in its own right.
The film apparently sets Jefferson Airplane's
White Rabbit to an acid trip, an idea so horribly obvious that it's put me right off going to see the thing. Pretend that this isn't a soundtrack but a really short 60s best-of that got in a fight with a Rolling Stones cover album, though, and it stands up well enough.
Stoned – Music from the Film is out now on
Warner.
