Eight memorable cameos by bands in films

When it comes to musical success, a cameo appearance in a hit film is a surefire way to reach new audiences. Here are eight guest appearances by bands in the movies, ranging from the apt to the utterly incongruous… For more, catch up with this week’s episode of Celluloid Jukebox.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English-language movie is a swinging depiction of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll in sixties London. Who better to make an appearance then, than blues rockers The Yardbirds? The film is rare in that it contains a performance from the short-lived Jeff Beck-Jimmy Page line-up of the band. Antonioni is alleged to have originally wanted The Who to appear in the movie, and so the director asked Beck to smash his instrument at the end of the band's gig, aping Who guitarist Pete Townshend.

Vocal trio The Three Degrees were the house band at the Copacabana, and so the obvious choice for a scene set in the legendary New York nightclub in William Friedkin’s police procedural thriller. Singer Sheila Ferguson said of the group's appearance, “We had two shows a night, so we had to get up at 10 in the morning to film all day and then do two shows that night. That’s a lot of work when you have to sing full out like we do.”

Sibling rock duo Sparks are on the record as saying their appearance in the middle of this disaster flick was the biggest mistake of their career. The third film to be presented in the marketing gimmick format ‘Sensurround’, Rollercoaster is, in Mark Kermode's words, "a terrible film". The Mael brothers played two songs in the movie, only stepping in after tartan-clad teen favourites the Bay City Rollers pulled out.

Tony Scott’s directorial debut opens with a menacing performance from Northampton post-punks Bauhaus in a shadowy New York nightspot. The band's rendition of their first single Bela Lugosi's Dead has ensured the film a place in the hearts of goths everywhere. And they’re not the only musicians to feature in the erotically charged chiller - Celluloid Jukebox favourite David Bowie stars alongside Catherine Deneuve, as a vampire who begins to age rapidly.

Director Wim Wenders' West Berlin-set masterpiece features live performances from two Antipodean bands - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Crime & The City Solution. Wenders described Cave and his cohorts as “this bunch of Australians who landed from a different planet[...] There was a hush when they showed up somewhere. They were really big. They were the biggest thing in Berlin." Cave would go on to provide songs for the film’s 1993 sequel Faraway, So Close!

Perhaps most famous on these shores for a tampon-throwing incident at Reading Festival, Seattle’s L7 make a cameo as rock band Camel Lips in trashmeister John Waters’ crime comedy Serial Mom. Personally asked to appear by Waters, the grunge rockers also wrote a new track for the movie, revealing, "John wanted us to write a song for the film and said, ‘All I care about is that the name of it is Gas Chamber’."

Britpop-era rock band Skunk Anansie make an unexpected appearance in Kathryn Bigelow’s dystopic sci-fi thriller, playing their song Selling Jesus at an end-of-the-millennium Los Angeles street party. Actress Juliette Lewis also sings live in the film, performing music originally recorded by PJ Harvey.

Celebrity offspring supergroup Wilson Phillips (featuring the daughters of Brian Wilson and John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas) reformed for an uncredited cameo in Kristen Wiig's raunchy 2011 comedy. The band's rendition of hit 1990 song Hold On led to a massive 600% surge in sales of their records.