Artist: Abigail Mead and Nigel GouldingTitle: Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)
Year: 1987
Chart peak: 2
If you went to see Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam war movie Full Metal Jacket in 1987, on the soundtrack you would have heard a number of classic 60s cuts, among them "Chapel Of Love" by the Dixie Cups, "Wooly Bully" by Sam The Sham and the Pharoahs, and "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones. You would also have heard a number of haunting, specially-composed synth pieces by one Abigail Mead. You would not, however, have heard this track.
That's because "I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor" was neither sixties nostalgia, nor eerie atmospherics. Instead, Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding took the chants of brutal drill sergeant Hartman (played by R Lee Ermey) and mixed them with a catchy hip-hop beat and a few licks from guitarist Phil Palmer to create a montage not entirely unlike the sort of thing The Art Of Noise had been doing for the last few years.
Released to promote the movie, "I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor" raced to number two in the UK charts but strangely did nothing in the USA. The soundtrack LP was a rather disjointed affair, opening with the full 12" version of this not-actually-in-the-movie single, followed by the sixties classics (though "Paint It Black" is a glaring omission) and then the original synth score.
But just who was this musical maverick Abigail Mead? Actually, it was none other than a pseudonymous Vivien Kubrick, daughter of Stanley. The one-off nom de guerre (so to speak) was adapted and adopted from a former Kubrick family home, Abbot's Mead. She's still involved with running her late father's estate. I have not been able to disover Nigel Goulding's whereabouts.
Both, incidentally, made appearances as extras in the movie: Goulding as a recruit in the training camp and Kubrick a.k.a. Mead as a TV camerawoman.
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