5 Real Musicians Who Played Fake Musicians
We’ve loved making movies about bands ever since bands became a thing that could be filmed, but your occasional Hard Day’s Night aside, we quickly learned that the universe is fair when it hands out talent and most musicians can’t act. It’s a lot harder for a musician to lip-sync someone else’s theatrical performance, so the problem is usually solved by real musicians recording songs for fake bands, and this is Hollywood, so it’s the best of the best. In fact, sometimes, the band behind the fake is better than Hollywood could ever dream up.
Josie and the Pussycats
Did the voice of Josie in the 2001 Archie comics adaptation sound familiar? If you’ve seen 10 Things I Hate About You or The Craft, it should have (and let’s face it, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all). It wasn’t Rachel Leigh Cook — it was Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo, a band that memorably appeared in both movies. Bif Naked and Matthew Sweet also performed backing vocals as honorary Pussycats, whose soundtrack album was produced by Babyface and written by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger (we’ll be seeing him again), the Go-Gos’ Jane Wiedlin and Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz. Not bad for a trio from Riverdale.
Almost Famous
Meanwhile, Russell Hammond’s “incendiary” guitar was actually Pearl Jam. Mike McCready played lead guitar for Stillwater’s songs, with Heart’s Nancy Wilson on rhythm guitar, which says more than we remember about Pearl Jam. Who out-guitars Nancy Wilson? She also wrote several of the songs, along with ‘70s legend Peter Frampton, which were sung by longtime Aerosmith producer Marti Frederickson. Under normal circumstances, that’s called a supergroup.
Singles
That wasn’t the first time Cameron Crowe turned to Pearl Jam to play his fictional band. In fact, it made a lot more sense for 1992’s Singles, a romantic-comedy set against the backdrop of the Seattle grunge movement. Matt Dillon’s character’s band, Citizen Dick, is actually made up of bassist Jeff Ament, guitarist Stone Gossard, and of course, singer Eddie Veddar. Yep, they’re basically just Pearl Jam.
That Thing You Do!
In reality, Tom Hanks was even more hands-on with the music of the Wonders that his character was in the movie. He wrote or co-wrote several songs on the soundtrack, though the actual chart-topping title track was written by the late, great Mr. Wayne’s Fountains, Adam Schlesinger. He also provided the group’s sweet harmonies alongside Mike Viola, a producer and writer for Panic! At the Disco, Ryan Adams and Mandy Moore who went on to write songs for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and…
Get Him to the Greek
The creation of Infant Sorrow seems to have involved Jason Segel wandering around a recording studio and asking whoever he bumped into for ideas. In addition to Viola, who is credited with writing lyrics for “Furry Walls” and “The Clap,” Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Smash Mouth’s Mitch Marine, Cal Barat of the Libertines and Judd Apatow all pitched in. The band itself consisted of Jane’s Addiction bassist Chris Chaney, Joey Waronker of Beck’s band and the Vandals drummer Josh Freese. To think they wasted all that talent on Russell Brand.