“He overdosed and was saved by an adrenalin shot”: How Urge Overkill went from being Steve Albini’s pet project to year-long parties and accidentally re-enacting that famous scene from Pulp Fiction

Urge Overkill and imagery from Pulp Fiction

In the summer of 1994, the three members of Urge Overkill were flown from their adopted home town of Chicago to Hollywood to watch a movie. Footing the bill was the upstart film company Miramax. Miramax’s largesse extended to hiring out a cinema for the sole use of the band’s three principals: guitarists/vocalists Nash Kato and Ed ‘The King’ Roeser and drummer Blackie Onassis. 

The film they had come to see was one on which Miramax had pinned all their hopes that year, as it was the eagerly anticipated second by wunderkind writer-director Quentin Tarantino. To soundtrack a key scene in his crime epic Pulp Fiction, Tarantino had chosen a track Urge Overkill had recorded two years earlier – a Neil Diamond cover, no less.