There's been a huge number of film biopics made about musicians in recent years but none come close to capturing the real genius behind the music like a well-made music documentary, says Chris Sullivan…
As good as films like Walk the Line and La Vie en Rose are, there's just no beating a good music documentary. They capture the real characters behind the music as well as the time, with all its attendent attitudes, fashions, politics and drugs, that it was made in. Honourable mentions go to The Flaming Lips' brilliant Fearless Freaks and The Brian Jonestown Massacre's Dig!, but the following are among the best ever made…
A Great Day In Harlem (1995)
A must for any serious black music aficionado this documentary by Jean Bach tells the story of one summer’s day in 1958 when the greatest jazz photo ever was taken. Amateur photographer Art Kane had spread word that he hoped to take a picture for a special edition of Esquire magazine to commemorate the golden age of jazz. He scheduled the shoot for 10am, when he knew most musicians would still be asleep, and yet everyone who was anyone showed up, including Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk. Pieced together from archive footage, interviews and live performances, this film is, as Whitney Balliet of the New Yorker wrote, 'A brilliant, funny, moving, altogether miraculous documentary'.
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959)
A stirring film that captures, very simply, the performances at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Bert Stern's film covers a weekend of brilliant, groundbreaking music and features peformances from, among others, Anita O’Day (elegant in a big hat and long gloves to cover her needle marks), Thelonious Monk, Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, Sonny Stitt, Mahalia Jackson and Dinah Washington – absurdly talented people giving it their all in front of a crowd of hep cats. Essential viewing for all music lovers.
Don’t Look Back (1967)
By covering Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England DA Pennebaker basically invented the on-tour rock documentary – and the scene in which Dylan illustrates his Subterranean Homesick Blues track with placards covered in lyrics preempted the pop video. What we see in the film is Dylan in his prime touring the UK with singer Joan Baez and pianist Alan Price, staying in drab hotels and ripping the guts out of a series of hapless journalists with his razor-sharp wit. A superb film that's been copied so often it might now appear clichéd when, in actual fact, it was trailblazing in its originality.
Woodstock (1970)
In the making of the story of the Greatest Rock Festival Ever Micheal Wadleigh and his fellow film-makers shot 120 miles of film on 16 cameras. They caught not just a series of live performances from Jimi Hendrix, Santana and Richie Havens, but also a moment in time. This festival on a small farm in upstate New York was the epoch of the counter-culture dream, as hundreds of thousands of people cohabited for three days. Forty per cent of the movie covers the audience, using a split screen to show them skinny-dipping, getting high, sleeping, eating and getting it on.
Gimme Shelter (1970)
David and Albert Maysles filmed the world’s greatest rock'n'roll band The Rolling Stones for 20 days as they travelled between concerts at Madison Square Gardens in New York and the Altamont racetrack in California. With the band resplendent in all their debauched glory this was always going to yield amazing results. But nothing prepared the film-makers, or the band, for the film's conclusion. Over 300,000 fans turned up to see the band at Altamont, where the Stones had employed Hells Angels to run security. The bikers ran amok, steaming into fans with baseball bats and eventually killing 18-year-old Meredith Hunter. This is the moment when the hippy dream died.
Soul Power (2008)
Not only did fight promoter Don King agree to combine three nights of concerts in Kinshasa, entitled Zaire 74, with the big fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, he also agreed to the event being filmed. Film-makers shot 125 hours of footage, only to see their work left in the vaults for over 25 years… until young fan Jeff Levy-Hinte rescued the footage and put it together. The story begins on the plane to Africa and rises to a crescendo when we see James Brown, Bill Withers, BB King, Celia Cruz and Sister Sledge giving it their all in front of a wildly appreciative African crowd. As Fred Wesley, leader of the JB’s, once told me: 'It was the most fun I ever had with my clothes on!'
The Filth and The Fury (2001)
It always helps if the person directing a retrospective documentary was actually there at the time. Julien Temple, being the only film-maker that Malcolm McLaren knew, was at hand from the very beginning of the Sex Pistols saga and tells their story meticulously. We see everything through the eyes of the band members: we see them swearing on TV, getting fired by one record company the day after they were signed, reaching Number One even though their record is banned, risking life and limb as they tour the US. It all ends with their eventual break-up and the arrest of Sid Vicious for allegedly murdering his girlfriend. This film has to be seen to be believed.
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)
It usually it helps if you like the music played in a documentary, but in this, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's story of a band that should have thrown in the towel long ago, it really doesn’t matter. What we see is a band of middle-aged guys who get on each other’s nerves, who are all neurotic, and who invite the directors to film them as they create an album from scratch. They are aided by therapist Phil Towle who seems to mend the rift between band members James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, and then goes a little loopy himself. It's a little like This is Spinal Tap, only for real.
Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
This wonderful film follows ethno-musicologist, guitarist and producer Ry Cooder and his son Joachim to Havana as they track down the musicians Cooder Snr had heard on a cassette in the 70s. Most of them, such as Compay Segundo (91 years old), pianist Ruben Gonzalez (80) and Ibrahim Ferrer (70), were members of the Buena Vista Social Club in the 50s and 60s but have long since retired. Cooder eventually coaxes them back to perform a series of successful shows. A fascinating film that takes the audience through the vibrant streets of Havana and into the homes of the musicians, showing all the joy and warmth of Cuba itself.
Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story (2007)
Narrated by Samuel L Jackson this is the story of one of the greatest record labels of all time. Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Stax brought us Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers. This film shows how the label became synonymous with the civil rights movement and black power, while the house band, Booker T and the MG’s, was comprised of black and white musicians at a time when they could play together but not eat in the same restaurants. Stax reached a high point in 1972 with the legendary Wattstax concert in LA, where the Reverend Jesse Jackson famously delivered his ‘I am – Somebody’ speech.
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