by Paul Costello
In honour of this week’s release of Frank, Lenny Abrahamson’s film about a young musician who joins a band led by an eccentric frontman who always wears a papier-mâché head, I’m With Geek is going to Band Camp! Today, we’ve got two articles in which we’ll be looking over the films that try to capture the insane, intoxicating and turbulent world of being in a band.
This edition: Music Documentaries!
In honour of this week’s release of Frank, Lenny Abrahamson’s film about a young musician who joins a band led by an eccentric frontman who always wears a papier-mâché head, I’m With Geek is going to Band Camp! Today, we’ve got two articles in which we’ll be looking over the films that try to capture the insane, intoxicating and turbulent world of being in a band.
This edition: Music Documentaries!
If you want to try and capture the immediacy and manic energy of life in a band, then surely the best place to go is the music documentary. Generally speaking, these are the films where the musicians themselves have allowed the barrier that separates us from them to drop, letting us all bear witness to the backstage tantrums, the hedonistic heights and the troubled lives of our favourite artists. The results can vary wildly, and they can tell stories that may be miles away from the original intention of the filmmakers, or the preferences of the musicians themselves, but the best of them always capture something of who they are, for better or worse.
Metallica are just now, and have been pretty much since they hit their stride decades ago, one of the biggest bands ever. As such, it was only a matter of time before their story went in front of a camera, and the camera was that of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The film was 2004’s Some Kind of Monster. Hoping to make a film about the band that pulled no punches and hid no truths, Berlinger and Sinofsky’s film came to chart the band’s struggles to reassert itself after the departure of their bassist Jason Newsted, and frontman James Hetfield’s entry into rehab for alcoholism. The band struggle through these as initial barriers on the difficult road to creating St. Anger, their first album since 1997’s Reload, with all kinds of bickering and squabbling along the way. Speaking of bickering and squabbling…
Metallica are just now, and have been pretty much since they hit their stride decades ago, one of the biggest bands ever. As such, it was only a matter of time before their story went in front of a camera, and the camera was that of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The film was 2004’s Some Kind of Monster. Hoping to make a film about the band that pulled no punches and hid no truths, Berlinger and Sinofsky’s film came to chart the band’s struggles to reassert itself after the departure of their bassist Jason Newsted, and frontman James Hetfield’s entry into rehab for alcoholism. The band struggle through these as initial barriers on the difficult road to creating St. Anger, their first album since 1997’s Reload, with all kinds of bickering and squabbling along the way. Speaking of bickering and squabbling…
Dig! is an incredibly engaging documentary that pulls the rather interesting trick of having two bands as its focus, The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and presenting them to the world on film in such a way that you will come to feel utter contempt for one band, and sympathy for the other. From Ondi Timoner, the film is built from seven years worth of footage that tracks the developing careers of both bands, and the love/hate relationship between their respective frontmen Courtney Taylor-Taylor (Warhols) and Anton Newcombe (Jonestown). It’s a pretty savage rendering of two bands that at times paints them as incredibly petty and fickle, and it’s worth noting that band members on both sides have claimed the film creates conflict where there was none, but even if that is the case, it’s still a hell of an achievement to build such an fascinating story.
Generally noted as one of the greatest concert films of all time is Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, showcasing the Talking Heads as they played Hollywood's Pantages Theater in 1983 for their Speaking in Tongues tour. Keeping the cameras on the band for almost the entire duration (very little audience is actually seen onscreen), the concert starts with a lone David Byrne onstage and steadily builds with each successive song until each member is finally onstage by the sixth or seventh song. Demme does manage to capture every bit of the weirdness of the band by largely just letting them do what they do and keeping it all onscreen for the home audience to see. And the band’s gradual assembly over the course of the set list effectively creates a simple momentum that it is able to build on until Byrne breaks out his famous “big suit.” Yes, they’re quirky and off-kilter, by God this is genuinely great stuff.
Generally noted as one of the greatest concert films of all time is Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, showcasing the Talking Heads as they played Hollywood's Pantages Theater in 1983 for their Speaking in Tongues tour. Keeping the cameras on the band for almost the entire duration (very little audience is actually seen onscreen), the concert starts with a lone David Byrne onstage and steadily builds with each successive song until each member is finally onstage by the sixth or seventh song. Demme does manage to capture every bit of the weirdness of the band by largely just letting them do what they do and keeping it all onscreen for the home audience to see. And the band’s gradual assembly over the course of the set list effectively creates a simple momentum that it is able to build on until Byrne breaks out his famous “big suit.” Yes, they’re quirky and off-kilter, by God this is genuinely great stuff.
Perhaps it’s no real surprise that the Rolling Stones, one of the biggest bands to ever walk the Earth, have come before the documentarian’s lens on more than one occasion. They’ve seen a multitude of different directors approach their status in the world of music, and with varying slants. From the very first film, 1966’s Charlie is My Darling right through to 2012’s Crossfire Hurricane, there has always been something endlessly fascinating about the band to filmmakers and audiences alike (even Godard hit around with them for his 1968 film Sympathy for the Devil). However, there are perhaps two documentaries that showcase the greatest kind of contrast with regard to the Rolling Stones. The first is 1970’s Gimme Shelter, directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. In Gimme Shelter, the filmmakers document the final weeks of the Stones’ ill-fated 1969 US tour that culminated in the disastrous Altamont Free Concert, which saw members of the Hells Angels (who provided security for the concert) stab a teenager to death after he tried to invade the stage. It’s a grim portrait of the counterculture era as the decade came to a close, and a dark moment in the career of the Stones. By great contrast, 2008’s Shine a Light is an intoxicating and vivid portrait of the band at the other end of their career. By now long since confirmed as musical legends, director Martin Scorsese (who is also actually a credited camera operator on Gimme Shelter) pulls out all the stops to create a concert film that captures a band still at the peak of their popularity after decades, and performing alongside Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera. As a sort of double bill, Gimme Shelter and Shine a Light are remarkably distinct from each other in almost every respect: one gritty, ugly and soaked with the cold air of something unsettling; the other a slick and polished concert film, featuring a band still capable to enrapturing an audience.
Scorsese is certainly no stranger to the music documentary on his own. Camera operator on Gimme Shelter, editor of Oscar-winning festival documentary Woodstock, and director of both Shine a Light and The Last Waltz. The Last Waltz is a special film in that it focuses on the final concert of The Band, a blues rock band whose farewell gig ended with a huge concert featuring dozens of special guests, including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, and many others. The film has gone on to become regarded as one of the greatest concert films of all time, capturing something unique: the willing end to a musical legacy.
Scorsese is certainly no stranger to the music documentary on his own. Camera operator on Gimme Shelter, editor of Oscar-winning festival documentary Woodstock, and director of both Shine a Light and The Last Waltz. The Last Waltz is a special film in that it focuses on the final concert of The Band, a blues rock band whose farewell gig ended with a huge concert featuring dozens of special guests, including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, and many others. The film has gone on to become regarded as one of the greatest concert films of all time, capturing something unique: the willing end to a musical legacy.
Another filmmaker who is a frequent chronicler of musicians and the bizarre world in which they exist is Julien Temple, whose films have spanned mockumentaries (The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle with The Sex Pistols), musicals (Absolute Beginnners with David Bowie and Sade) and documentaries (Glastonbury and Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten). However, for some of his best documentary work, it’s his 2000 film The Filth and the Fury that should be seen. This film returns its focus to The Sex Pistols, reconstructing events of the band’s rise to notoriety and eventual decline, told primarily through the recollections of the band members themselves. It’s a thunderous story, told with frankness, and an eye towards a greater social contextualisation that surrounded the events that makes the film’s primary focus.
Speaking of greater social contextualisation, back in 2003 the Dixie Chicks made comments during a live London gig that criticised the then-president George W. Bush and his policies. The resultant backlash against the musical trio, which lasted around three years, was subsequently documented in the 2006 film Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing. At the time the most successful female band in the history of the US, the comments made by lead singer Natalie Maines threw the band into a storm of hatred, threats and other serious ramifications, which became the biggest story in popular culture at the time. Shut Up and Sing puts the whole debacle as its focus, and serves as an interesting look at not only what the band means within culture, but how the women react when their fanbase suddenly turns on them. Overblown hysteria or legitimate political subversion? Take a look and see what you think.
Speaking of greater social contextualisation, back in 2003 the Dixie Chicks made comments during a live London gig that criticised the then-president George W. Bush and his policies. The resultant backlash against the musical trio, which lasted around three years, was subsequently documented in the 2006 film Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing. At the time the most successful female band in the history of the US, the comments made by lead singer Natalie Maines threw the band into a storm of hatred, threats and other serious ramifications, which became the biggest story in popular culture at the time. Shut Up and Sing puts the whole debacle as its focus, and serves as an interesting look at not only what the band means within culture, but how the women react when their fanbase suddenly turns on them. Overblown hysteria or legitimate political subversion? Take a look and see what you think.
Some documentaries find enough material to concern themselves with when looking not at a band, but a sole individual. Whilst other films will see the group members be a source of both aggravation and support for each other, it’s a different game when the centre of attention is alone in the spotlight. Look at The Devil and Daniel Johnston, the film that looks at the life of musician Daniel Johnston, from his childhood and moving up to the present day (by that point 2005). What makes Daniel Johnston such as interesting case study, and the film so intriguing, is that the film puts an emphasis on the musician’s difficulty with bipolar disorder, and how it eventually manifested itself in the idea that Daniel believed he was in fact possessed. It’s a frank and often very disturbing film, but director Jeff Feuerzeig attempts to maintain a sincere balance in his approach to how Johnston’s creativity feeds into and is perhaps exacerbated by his illness.
Another individual who struggled with demons of a different kind was Chet Baker, one of the great jazz trumpeters and singers, whose life was a haze of fame and drug addiction which haunted him for most of his career. This story was eventually told in Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost, a more artistically rendered film that sought to tell Baker’s story through combined footage of his early career as a young handsome jazz musician of the 1950s juxtaposed against footage of Baker in the late 1980s, his face and figure a haggard shell of its former self, ravaged by years of abuse. Two things that remain so haunting about Weber’s film: 1) The film was released to festivals a matter of months after his death in 1988, marking it especially poignant; and 2) Even in his declined state shown in the footage of his older self, his distinctive voice was almost untouched by all he’d put himself through. An eerie and affecting film.
Another individual who struggled with demons of a different kind was Chet Baker, one of the great jazz trumpeters and singers, whose life was a haze of fame and drug addiction which haunted him for most of his career. This story was eventually told in Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost, a more artistically rendered film that sought to tell Baker’s story through combined footage of his early career as a young handsome jazz musician of the 1950s juxtaposed against footage of Baker in the late 1980s, his face and figure a haggard shell of its former self, ravaged by years of abuse. Two things that remain so haunting about Weber’s film: 1) The film was released to festivals a matter of months after his death in 1988, marking it especially poignant; and 2) Even in his declined state shown in the footage of his older self, his distinctive voice was almost untouched by all he’d put himself through. An eerie and affecting film.
Then there are the documentaries about the bands that never really made it, the bands that, for one reason or another, always sat just outside of becoming what many would now say the thing they should have been all along. For example, there’s 2008’s Anvil!: The Story of Anvil, which rather sums up quite nicely what the film is about. Anvil are a Canadian heavy metal band whose influence on countless musicians, from Slash to Lemmy to Lars Ulrich, but whose own careers never got to the next step that so many others were able to make. However, far from accepting their fate, the band refuse to let go of their dreams and still play and tour, waiting for their chance to join the pantheon of the rock gods they rubbed shoulders with back in the day. Sacha Gervasi’s film could so easily be something rather sad, made uncomfortable by the Quixotic efforts of members to make it, but the unbridled hope and enthusiasm is something that does manage to make this film incredibly charming, and rather oddly uplifting for it.
In a similar vein, 2012’s A Band Called Death charts the story of the 1970s rock band Death, their stunted attempts to find their footing and the subsequent popularity they received decades after the group first recorded music. Death were a band of three musician brothers hailing from Detroit who started out as a funk outfit, before evolving into the punk band named Death. The raw nature of their music and the uncompromising nature of the band’s primary creative force, eldest brother David, who refused to change the band’s name to something more acceptable, meant that they just couldn’t get airplay and that their dream of stardom was never to come to fruition. The film does touch on sadly familiar tropes within the story of musicians who didn’t make it (frustration, depression, alcoholism, death), but the people telling the story are so open and loving of each other that they are genuinely able to find a measure of peace and harmony with their story.
There really are music documentaries available for every type of story and occasion, from the drug-addled ego-fests to the portraits of troubled souls, from the uneasy influence a band can have to the bittersweet tales of those that just missed out. The human drama of those people who try so hard to create music for the world is a thing that simply cannot be missed, and fortunately there have been many a filmmaker who have been able to point a camera at the right people at just the right time.
And just think, there are so many stories still out there to be told and discovered.
But wait… where’s Marley? Or Searching for Sugar Man? Or Loud Quiet Loud? What music documentaries deserve to be considered by those looking to immerse themselves in the genre? Answers on a comment card below.
In a similar vein, 2012’s A Band Called Death charts the story of the 1970s rock band Death, their stunted attempts to find their footing and the subsequent popularity they received decades after the group first recorded music. Death were a band of three musician brothers hailing from Detroit who started out as a funk outfit, before evolving into the punk band named Death. The raw nature of their music and the uncompromising nature of the band’s primary creative force, eldest brother David, who refused to change the band’s name to something more acceptable, meant that they just couldn’t get airplay and that their dream of stardom was never to come to fruition. The film does touch on sadly familiar tropes within the story of musicians who didn’t make it (frustration, depression, alcoholism, death), but the people telling the story are so open and loving of each other that they are genuinely able to find a measure of peace and harmony with their story.
There really are music documentaries available for every type of story and occasion, from the drug-addled ego-fests to the portraits of troubled souls, from the uneasy influence a band can have to the bittersweet tales of those that just missed out. The human drama of those people who try so hard to create music for the world is a thing that simply cannot be missed, and fortunately there have been many a filmmaker who have been able to point a camera at the right people at just the right time.
And just think, there are so many stories still out there to be told and discovered.
But wait… where’s Marley? Or Searching for Sugar Man? Or Loud Quiet Loud? What music documentaries deserve to be considered by those looking to immerse themselves in the genre? Answers on a comment card below.
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