Rehab Riffs: The Director Who Writes His Own Metal Music

When you’re directing an 80s metal movie, you expect to license some killer music tracks. What I didn’t expect was that I’d end up writing several songs myself.

The process brought me back to my roots. As a teenager, I wrote rhymes and poetry; in college, I started a thrash metal show with my best friend called Malicious Intent on KU’s college radio station KJHK, and my host name was DJ Search and Destroy (or DJ SD). The show still exists to this day. 

That late-night experience blasting speed metal into the airwaves and writing free verse on commercial breaks came full circle decades later when I found myself on a plane to New York, scribbling out lyrics about psychedelics, death, dreams, and existential dread. Another song I wrote was inspired by philosophy, Blade Runner, and Philip K. Dick.

The songs I was writing had to feel like they could have been written in the haze of 1987. They had to feel authentically metal, the kind of tracks that could live inside the world of Greg’s Going to Rehab. 

It wasn’t the plan, but it was one of the most unexpectedly rewarding creative challenges of this production. Sometimes, the best parts of filmmaking happen when things don’t go according to plan.

- Chris Lawing

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