It was an unlikely job and equally unlikely song inspiration.

It was round the time I’d taken a break from being a solo recording artist and accidentally formed the band Wellingtron. Watch out for that story in another post… Anyway, I had some time off between jobs when the opportunity arose for work in Peter Jackson’s King Kong as an extra. I love movies and am a fan of his so it seemed like a great experience to be had and it paid pretty well.

They were filming the New York scenes. We arrived on an outdoor set with an amazingly realistic scale of model of 1930s New York, complete with period cars that we got to ride in. We worked 12 hour days for a week and then 12 hour nights for the second week. We were fully immersed in this realistic and magical wonderland, barely aware of the outside world. In case you’re wondering, yes I saw Jack Black!

The coolest part was watching the movie months later and seeing myself, on the big screen, standing in the queue in the soup kitchen scene! I remember stepping briefly aside of the queue for some reason. Perhaps that’s what caught the film editor’s or director’s eye and why they included that take?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. How did working on King Kong give birth to a song? It makes no sense but that’s what I liked about it. We were filming the classic scene where the giant ape is on top of the Empire State Building and the crowds are running away screaming. We did that all night until sunrise – running away and screaming!

But there was no model ape or anything for reference. It was acting of course, we had to pretend. So in my 4am delirium I imagined it was a robot stand-in and gave it a name – Robotron. A name I’d also given to a TV studio building that dominated our neighbourhood. Not very original within my own reference but whatever. In those moments, during a night of running away and screaming, I wrote the song Robotron, inspired by a fictional giant ape and TV studio. Random, I know, but that’s how I write my music – using whatever ideas come into my imagination that amuse me.

The track is on my third album, also named… Robotron. As a THANK YOU for being one of my subscribers I want to give you the song for free – no strings attached.

Download Robotron here.

If you like the track you might also consider checking out Far Out (coincidentally there’s an ape on the cover). It’s my latest album and full of tunes as random as the inspiration for Robotron.