Hello, I'm Christy Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1987, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

A castaway is one of the most stylish, distinctive, and controversial directors in the world of cinema.

He first made his name at the BBC with a series of film biographies,

some like the ones about Algar, Delis, and Rosetti were unforgettable.

Since then, he's established his reputation as a feature filmmaker with work like Women in Love, The Music Lovers, The Boyfriend, The Devils, Tommy, All to the States, and his latest film, Gothic.

Here's Ken Russell.

Ken, it's quite obvious just looking at the body of your work that music has had a very large influence on your life.

Yes, I think ever since I discovered classical music, that was a great door opening, but I was always fond of popular music.

I mean, radio music, I was brought up in the 30s born in 27, and so I was a sort of radio kid.

And how important is music to you? Is that your favourite pastime? Listen to it.

Yes, I think it is. Whether I'm in a train, with a headset, or walking the hills, or a headset, or playing high-five, and a norm as 12 foot speakers, and blasting everyone out of the room.

Yes, it is very much a part of my life.

It interests me, I said, to try and find out just how people assess the eight records that they're going to take to the album.

In your case, have you taken your eight favourite records?

Well, no, because I thought about it, first of all, I compiled a list of eight, you know, all-time favourites, and they tended to be slightly nostelgic and had overtones about them, and I felt wouldn't necessarily make life on a desert island interesting,

as I brought a sort of fairly cheerful pieces along. I'm sure one would need cheering up if it was really a desert island most of the time.

Right, let's have the first choice of record then.

Well, the first one is something's coming from West Side Story, and I've chosen it because it's got tremendous uplift and hope and optimism in it,

and I remember the musical West Side Story came out when I was not making much of a go of life, and if you think, rather bleak, I was a photographer not earning much money over the young family growing up and sort of broke,

and this musical came out and this number sort of cheered me up a lot and sort of gave me hope for the future, and I think on my desert island, I'd always hope maybe there's a boat just around the corner just over the horizon.

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