A LETTER FROM THE PRINCIPAL EDITOR
Paul J Lane
Editor & Creative Director
PSYCHO RHYTHMS FILM & MUSIC MAGAZINE
Dear Psycho Rhythms Readers,
I've often wondered whether we choose the paths we take in life, or whether certain moments, certain people and certain melodies quietly choose them for us.
For me, film and music have never been two separate worlds. They've always been part of the same story.
Long before I ever stood behind a camera, directed an actor or produced a song, I was simply a young boy fascinated by the magic of a cinema screen and the extraordinary power of music.
I grew up in a time when going to the cinema was an occasion, when a vinyl record could become the soundtrack to an entire chapter of your life, and when the anticipation of experiencing something new was often just as exciting as the experience itself. There was no mobile phones, no internet, just metaphorical carrier pigeons disguising themselves as Chinese whisperers.
I didn't know it then, but those early moments were shaping my future.
The flicker of a cinema projector, the atmosphere of London's West End, the sounds drifting out of pubs and music venues, and the wonderful, sometimes peculiar characters I encountered along the way all became part of my creative education.
Paul J Lane Creative Director
There was no grand plan to become a filmmaker or music producer. Life simply kept introducing me to stories worth telling and songs worth remembering. And somewhere along the way, I realised something rather beautiful.
We don't just remember the films we've watched or the songs we heard. We remember who we were when we experienced them.
That thought sits at the very heart of Psycho Rhythms Film & Music Magazine.
This Magazine is more than a collection of articles, interviews and reviews. It is a meeting place for memories, imagination, creativity and discovery. Somewhere we can celebrate the past without being afraid of the future.
A place where an established filmmaker can sit comfortably alongside an emerging actor, where a forgotten melody can find a new audience, and where somebody with a story to tell might just inspire somebody else to begin their own.
Because creativity doesn't have an age limit, and inspiration rarely asks for permission.
In the article that follows, I'm inviting you into a few chapters of my own life. From childhood visits to the cinema and the unforgettable atmosphere of Leicester Square, to the streets of Soho, the music venues of London and those extraordinary years when the worlds of film and music began to collide.
It's a personal journey, certainly, but I suspect some of you will recognise a little of yourselves along the way.
Perhaps you'll remember a cinema that no longer exists, a song you haven't heard in years, or a moment when you first realised that the world was much bigger than you'd imagined.
And perhaps, like me, you'll discover that those memories never really leave us.
They simply wait for the right music to start playing.
Thank you for being part of our growing creative community and for joining us on this journey.
After all, every great film needs a soundtrack. And every great song has a story.
With warmest wishes,
Paul J Lane
Psycho Rhythms Film & Music Magazine
Founder, World Revivalists Ltd
COMING UP NEXT...
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE SILVER SCREEN AND A SONG
Before the filmmaker came the filmgoer. Before the music producer came the young man discovering the sounds of London. A personal journey through cinemas, Soho, childhood memories and the experiences that helped shape a lifetime of storytelling.
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“Long before I ever called myself a filmmaker, I was already living the stories I would one day want to tell.”
The Queue That Started Everything
I want to take you back to 1978.
I was just a youngster growing up in near Beckenham, and there was something rather magical happening at our local cinema.
People were queuing all the way down Beckenham High Street, waiting to see a film. Not just a handful of people standing outside, but a proper queue stretching along the street.
Can you imagine that happening today?
The film was Grease, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, and the excitement surrounding it was extraordinary.
Going to the pictures wasn’t something you simply decided to do because you had a couple of hours to spare. It was an occasion. Something you looked forward to, something you talked about afterwards, and sometimes something that stayed with you for the rest of your life.
And Grease certainly stayed with me.
John Travolta had already set the world dancing with Saturday Night Fever, and suddenly everyone wanted to move like him.
I was no exception.
I even found myself attending John Travolta-inspired dance lessons, trying to capture some of those famous moves. There was something infectious about that whole period. The music, the dancing, the clothes, the characters and the sheer excitement of being young.
What fascinates me now, looking back as a film director, is how closely music and cinema were connected.
A film didn’t simply finish when the credits rolled. It followed you home. You bought the records, learned the dances, talked about the characters and wanted to experience it all over again.
Today, we have thousands of films available at the touch of a button. Yet I sometimes wonder whether, in gaining such extraordinary convenience, we’ve lost a little of the anticipation.
Because back in 1978, standing in that queue in Beckenham, I wasn’t simply waiting to watch a film. I was becoming part of a memory that would stay with me for nearly fifty years.
From Grease to Alien When the Cinema Became Part of the Movie
Not long afterwards, my relationship with the cinema was beginning to change.
I’d gone from the excitement of Grease, John Travolta and those wonderful musical numbers to something altogether different.
Alien.
Ridley Scott’s 1979 science-fiction horror masterpiece, starring Sigourney Weaver.
And this time, my experience wasn’t in a local cinema in Beckenham. It was in the heart of London’s West End, Leicester Square.
I remember walking into this enormous cinema, a place that seemed to have an atmosphere all of its own.
Now, here’s something that younger readers might find rather extraordinary.
You could smoke in the cinema. Yes, really. And people did.
The auditorium was absolutely enormous, and as I walked in, I remember seeing this extraordinary haze of cigarette smoke drifting through the light of the cinema projector.
It was almost theatrical.
The brilliant beam of light cutting through the smoke seemed to create its own special effect. You could actually see the atmosphere hanging in the air.
And when the film began, something rather remarkable happened.
That haze, the vastness of the auditorium, the darkness surrounding us and the enormous screen somehow became part of the film itself.
Here we were, watching this terrifying creature stalking the corridors of a spaceship, while the very cinema we were sitting in seemed to have acquired its own mysterious, smoky atmosphere.
It was almost as though the spaceship had extended beyond the screen and into the auditorium. I don’t think I’ve ever quite forgotten that sensation.
Of course, Alien was extraordinary for many reasons. The design, the lighting, the sound, the performances and that wonderful sense of dread.
But looking back, particularly as a film director, I realise just how important that experience was. You weren’t simply watching a story unfold. You were feeling it.
THE SAFEST CREATURE ON THE SPACESHIP
But here’s the funny thing.
With all the pandemonium taking place aboard the Nostromo, all the screaming, the running, the terror and this monstrous creature picking off the crew one by one, there was one character who fascinated me more than almost anybody else.
The wonderful little pussycat, Jonesy.
There was something so reassuring about the presence of that cat.
While everything around it was descending into absolute chaos, here was this innocent little animal, caught up in events it couldn’t possibly understand.
I found myself caring enormously about its safety.
And perhaps that’s one of the cleverest aspects of the film.
Because amid all the extraordinary special effects and terrifying imagery, Ridley Scott gives us something wonderfully simple and familiar.
A cat. (Played by 4 different cats actually).
And through Ripley’s determination to rescue Jonesy, we discover something deeply human about her character.
Suddenly, the horror isn’t just about who survives the alien. It’s about whether this little creature is going to make it home as well.
What a wonderfully clever piece of filmmaking.
THE ATMOSPHERE BEYOND THE SCREEN
Looking back, I think Alien taught me something that I wouldn’t fully appreciate until many years later, when I began directing films myself.
Atmosphere is not always something you can explain.
Sometimes it’s the lighting. Sometimes it’s the sound. Sometimes it’s what you don’t see.
And sometimes it’s the extraordinary coincidence of walking into a smoke-filled cinema and finding yourself transported into another world before the opening credits have even finished.
What I remember most isn’t simply the alien. It’s the cinema itself.
The scale, the smoke, the projector beam, the anticipation. And, of course, that wonderful cat.
If Grease taught me that cinema could make you want to dance, Alien taught me that cinema could make you feel as though you were actually inside the film.
And as a director, that is something I’ve never stopped thinking about.
Wardour Street My Education in Life, Music and the Movies
There was another period in my life that, looking back, probably had as much influence on my journey into filmmaking as anything I ever experienced sitting in a cinema.
And strangely enough, it began with a job in banking.
As a young man working in London, I would regularly make my way from Charing Cross towards my bank’s Berners Street branch, just off Oxford Street.
Part of that journey took me through Wardour Street, right through the heart of Soho.
Now, for a young lad finding his feet in the adult world, Soho was quite an education.
This was London in all its extraordinary contrasts.
Here I was, working in the respectable surroundings of the banking industry, yet walking through streets that seemed to belong to an entirely different universe.
Soho was colourful, mysterious, sometimes intimidating and always fascinating.
The red-light district was very much part of that landscape. For a young person taking those first tentative steps into adulthood, it was rather like diving into the deep end of an enormous ocean without knowing quite what was swimming beneath the surface. I mean, I knew what the species was deep within the ocean and admired from afar whilst still feeling grown up enough to be allowed to doggie paddle around it before I walked in to the bank as a perceived man of experience. The only problem was, I wasn't yet. A sheep in wolf's clothing I suspect.
But it was also a place bursting with creativity. And I was fascinated by all of it.
THE SOUNDTRACK TO MY YOUTH
By this time, music was becoming a hugely important part of my life.
I was beginning to perform live, finding my way around London’s clubs and pubs, experiencing the extraordinary excitement of standing in front of an audience.
Places like the Half Moon and the Rock Garden became part of that musical education.
There is something about performing live that no rehearsal room can ever quite prepare you for.
The noise, the audience, the anticipation, the possibility of everything going wonderfully right or spectacularly wrong.
It was another kind of theatre.
And without really appreciating it at the time, I was learning about performance, character, timing, emotion and the relationship between an entertainer and an audience.
All things that would become invaluable when I eventually stepped behind a film camera.
THE VIDEO SHOP MY UNOFFICIAL FILM SCHOOL
And then, of course, there was the video shop.
I had the extraordinary good fortune, as a youngster, to work somewhere that gave me access to an almost endless collection of films.
Imagine that.
For someone already fascinated by cinema, it was like being handed the keys to an enormous treasure chest.
I could watch practically anything I wanted.
Different genres, different directors, different styles of storytelling.
Horror, comedy, thrillers, drama, science fiction, romance.
I devoured them.
And what strikes me now is that I wasn’t studying filmmaking in any formal sense.
I wasn’t sitting in a classroom learning about camera angles, narrative structure or character development.
I was simply watching movies because I loved them.
But every film was teaching me something.
Even the bad ones. Perhaps especially the bad ones! and don't get me wrong, I've made a few in my time however from those experiences, I have become better, and more seasoned in my approach to filmmaking.
THREE WORLDS BECOMING ONE
Looking back, I can see three enormous influences gradually coming together.
The cinema gave me imagination. It showed me worlds beyond my own and demonstrated the extraordinary power of images, sound and storytelling.
Music gave me performance. It taught me about rhythm, emotion, audiences and the wonderful unpredictability of creating something in front of other people. After all, the best sound score is the one you don't notice, something that took me a while to get especially evolving from the world of music videos.
London gave me life. Those walks through Soho, the people I encountered, the contrasts between respectable banking life and the colourful world unfolding around me they were all part of my education.
The extraordinary thing is that I had absolutely no idea where any of it was leading.
I wasn’t consciously preparing to become a filmmaker.
I was simply living. Watching. Listening. Performing. Absorbing everything around me.
And perhaps that’s something we occasionally overlook when talking about filmmaking.
You can learn how to operate a camera. You can study lighting, editing and screenwriting.
But understanding people?
Understanding fear, excitement, ambition, disappointment, humour, love and the peculiar contradictions of human behaviour?
That education often takes place somewhere entirely different.
Sometimes it happens in a smoke-filled cinema. Sometimes in a music venue. Sometimes behind the counter of a video shop.
And sometimes it happens walking through Soho on your way to work.
I didn’t realise it then, but the streets of London, the music clubs, the video shop and those magnificent old cinemas were becoming my film school.
“I wasn’t studying to become a director. I was collecting the experiences that would eventually make me one.”
ENJOYED THE JOURNEY? THERE'S MUCH MORE TO DISCOVER.
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