Irvine Welsh says the opening scene of the film Trainspotting was inspired by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
The 1996 film adaptation of Welsh’s cult novel opens with Mark Renton, played by Ewan McGregor, being chased down Princes Street to the sound of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life.
Welsh, 66, who advised on Danny Boyle’s film, said he was inspired by the start of one of his favourite movies, Saturday Night Fever.
The disco classic stars Travolta as Brooklyn hardware shop worker Tony Manero, who escapes his working class life at night dancing at the local discotheque.
Welsh said Trainspotting tried to “replicate” the opening scene in the 1977 film, which shows Manero strutting towards the camera with a tin of paint to the soundtrack of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive”.
Welsh reveals his disco inspiration in the first episode in a new series of BBC Scotland’s The Big Scottish Book Club now available online.
He said: “I’m not normally associated with disco but I should be. Saturday Night Fever is one of my most favourite films of all time.
“That opening scene, that was what we wanted to replicate in the Trainspotting film because that just told you everything about him — New York, working class guy swinging a tin of paint, not born under punches but defiant against the odds.
“We wanted Edinburgh, working class guys, outlaws on the run from the police basically.
“I always loved Chic and Donna Summer. It was like such a guilty pleasure because I was so immersed in punk but I’d be in some disco pub all done up to the nines with disco togs, terrified in case any of my punk mates saw me.
“You can get away with that in London, you couldn’t get away with that up here [in Scotland].”
Welsh will be in Edinburgh this week to promote his new book Men in Love, which continues where his classic first novel Trainspotting left off.
Renton has bolted to Amsterdam with the money he stole from his friends including Daniel “Spud” Murphy, Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson and psycho Francis Begbie, amid the emerging acid house scene.
The book, “about love and optimism” is accompanied by a soundtrack album of the same name, by Irvine Welsh & the Sci Fi Soul Orchestra.
Welsh said the music will reveal more about the iconic characters.
He said: “Music’s inspired everything that everybody does really because it’s the first art form we engage with.
“I’m always writing songs and stories in my head and trying to get them both down at different times. I’ll run with one if it gets to a certain point.
“The book is about guys getting serious about romance for the first time. I don’t know if it was the right book for the soundtrack in a way but it’s about love and optimism — people do meet on dancefloors and there’s that sort of feel to it.
“Some of the tracks were created specifically for the characters. I start to find the characters through the music and it starts to put some flesh on the bones of the characters. It starts to inform you about them.
“Renton ran away to Amsterdam with the money and we find him in Amsterdam with the money. The drug scene has changed, it’s more of a recreational drug scene.
“They’re being basically swamped by this new culture of acid house that’s sweeping the country. Acid house is just disco on a budget.”
He added: “I think that now the world needs a bit of love so I’m interested in that time when people fall seriously in love for the first time and these guys are just about the right age to do that.”
