In a couple of days I’m heading into the woods for a long-awaited gathering with a group of guy friends, a boy’s weekend that has been an annual event for almost two decades. (Last year’s was cancelled due to the pandemic; this year, everyone’s packing a home test kit.) There will be a specialty cocktail. There will be oysters flown in from the West Coast. There will be meat; oh, yes, there will be meat.
And instead of a drum circle there will be a screening of a rock ‘n’ roll documentary, as there is every year. If the host has anything to say about it — and why not, it’s his place — that film would be “The Last Waltz,” the all-star 1978 farewell to The Band directed by a young Martin Scorsese and a movie that my friend believes, not without reason, is the pinnacle of the form. In fact, a “Last Waltz” viewing was ritually observed for a number of years until some of us began to carp, and the field has since broadened to include “The T.A.M.I. Show” (1964) and “New York Doll” (2005), a hilarious and heartbreaking documentary about Arthur “Killer” Kane, who played bass for the legendary New York Dolls, fell out a window, and ended up working for the Church of Latter Day Saints.
This year I’m torn, because there’s a lotta good stuff out there: Edgar Wright’s “The Sparks Brothers,” the new Velvet Underground documentary from Todd Haynes, the mind-blowing 1969 time-capsule “Summer of Soul.” So help me out: Imagine you’re curating a weekend retreat and tell me the one essential rock movie — concert film, documentary, bio-pic, whatever — that everyone needs to see. I’ll take a Top Three if you’re having trouble deciding. And, yes, you can still pick “The Last Waltz.” That would make my friend very happy.
Maybe still a smidge early for canonization (though not in my heart) but I found the recent Rolling Thunder Revue documentary to be a fascinating idea-generator (and yielded a very long Bright Wall/Dark Room essay for that reason) given all the deliberate falsification and fabulation baked into the cake. If the guests had any level of interest in Dylan I imagine you could probably dissect it for an entire weekend. And those remastered Renaldo & Clara concert scenes are enough to give anyone the vapors.
I really did enjoy that. I had never even heard more than a song or two by the talking heads, but left the theater actually able to remember a bunch of them. With that in mind, I eagerly watched the more recent David Byrne movie (can't remember the name) and was very dissapinted with it.
2003 movie of Grateful Dead Canadian railway trip across Canada with Janis Joplin. Phish , the band and buddy guy. Live film of the tour including jams on the trip
Summer of Soul hands down. A major piece of evidence that our entertainment culture is so white centered. While Woodstock has been raised to the rock and roll heavens by fans and the media, a hugely successful concert happening about the same in Harlem has not. This documentary tries to correct the imbalance - an impossible challenge, perhaps, but it does a tremendous job trying. The performances are amazing!!!
The 3 that immediately leap to mind are the classics "No Direction Home," "The Last Waltz" and "A Hard Day's Night." But I'll assume you guys have seen all of them many many times. How about an absolutely breathtaking film about a woman for a change -- "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"? And what an amazing woman she still is!!!
You won't regret it. And what a voice! So sad that it was silenced too soon, but in spite of her illness she is still vibrant and incredibly inspiring.
I always have to mention The Phantom Of The Paradise! The fact that it has an amazing rock soundtrack by Paul Williams that has the Juicy Fruits start off as the Beach Boys and end as a glam metal band. AND it was released the year BEFORE Rocky Horror!
Stop Making Sense! Saw the premiere in Florence (just stumbled on it during vacation), and the band were all there, as well as Demme and Roger Corman! The next day we were eating lunch in a restaurant and they all walked in. Later saw it at the Harvard Square, and people were dancing in the aisles.
Also great: Twenty Feet from Stardom, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and the doc about the great recording engineer Tom Dowd.
“Hard Day’s Night,” definitely. But don’t forget Hal Ashby’s excellent Rolling Stones concert doc, “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” While a bit overlong, it’s a brilliant summary of both the irresistible power and the absurdity of that band. And makes a fitting farewell to the great Charlie Watts.
An admittedly perverse choice—but nevertheless maybe my favorite rock ‘n roll documentary—would be Gimme Shelter.
But for a nonstop good time, I think it’s impossible to beat Summer of Soul. Admittedly helps that I absolutely adore the music in it, but I haven’t been that happy leaving the movie theater in many years.
I like the Last Waltz...to me the high point is the one song that wasn't in the actual concert, The Weight, with the Band with the Staples Singers. Mavis is SO incredible on that. Summer of Soul was great. I think 20 feet from stardom may be the best documentary (a documentary being a different thing than a concert movie). I really enjoy Monteray Pop, because of the INCREDBILE performance of Otis Redding, who topped everything, inlcuding Ravi Shanker. Also had Jim Hendrix burning a guitar and Pete Townsend smashing one. The Otis set was made into a seperate film....and like I said: it's incredible. Bio epics I like are Ray, and What's Love Got To Do With It. Respect is good. And of course: Walk hard: The Dewey Cox Story! I really enjoyed Yesterday. And getting away from rock, two movies that so totally nail the joy of making music are: Brassed Off (I LOVE that film) and The Visitor, with Richard Jenkins. And the absolute all time greatest music video ever made, bar none, is the fantastic, M is For Man, Music, Mozart, by Composer Louis Andriessen and filmmaker Peter Greenway. Oh, is that ever good, but is it rock? no....
By the way: for reasons I don't understand, I attempted to watch It Might Get Loud, a documentary about The Edge, Jimmy Page, and Jack White. Oh, how I despised that movie. I realized the edge can't actually really play, that Jack White is a total whanker (well, I already knew that) and a lost some respect for Jimmy Page. I tortured myself with 2/3rds of that one before fleeing the theater. Another I left only half way through was one about Metallica....i thought it would be bigger and life, instead it was a bunch of petty little men fighing with each other. Yuck.
Among my own small circle of pallies, including some veteran rock and rollers of some legitimacy, we have been bandying this question about for 30 or more years, and it’s still in flux.
Let’s stay away from fictional rock/music films, or biopics, cuz that’s a whole other thing. And, by the way, the best rock/music soundtrack films (Marty Scorsese, Wes Anderson, PT Anderson, Spike Lee, Kenneth Anger, Dennis Hopper, among others, Stand Up!) is a further topic to be explored.
There is no doubt, that the three 2021 Rock Docs that Ty referred to, Summer of Soul, Sparks Brothers, and Hayne’s VU, raised the bar, and may, after some reflection, all enter the cannon, maybe even the Top Ten. (And let’s not forget the much anticipated Peter Jackson’s soon-to-be unleashed Get Back). But for now, we will look to the past.
3) The cineaste in me sez it’s D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (‘67), which set the tone, and bent the edges for all that would come. But, nope, the rocker in me picks 2002’s The MC5: A True Testimonial. Still sinfully unreleased, it captures the incendiary time it is set in, the goose bumping esprit de corps of a blue collar, regional band, and the rattling, spirited, one-of-kind sound and scene that the MC5 fermented. A far more guileless and straightforward version of that special taste of Detroit rock than Jim Jarmusch’s more vaunted Stooges Doc, 2016’s Gimmie Danger.
2) Gimmie Shelter (‘70). No matter what reverberations it caused, and despite the unpredictably popular success of 1970’s Woodstock, the next-up Gimmie Shelter gutted us baby boomers, and was a Doc that had both great live footage, and connective sequences, but pretty much became (circumstances and the changing tenor of the times helped) a film that holds a portentous sway—what was, what it should have been, and what it became. My circle of post-adolescent friends saw this repeatedly on the midnight movie circuit, and we went multiple times intending to view the then incandescent power of The Stones, and each time we were knocked back down into an indecipherable black hole, flower power already dissipating, forced to question our own instinctual pursuit of pure rock and roll pleasure and contemplate something grayer, more societal, more real.
1) The Last Waltz (‘78). Ain’t no doubt about it, it remains the bellwether of pure Rock Docs. Sumptuously filmed, treated (maybe for the first time) like a big-time burnished Hollywood release, song selections and shot selections put on screen with an artistry no one was prepared for. Now, with the passage of time, and our knowledge of the eventual fates of the vividly captured Band members, and their eventual in-house tensions, resentments, and bad endings, it gets special points by serving as a Rorsach test above and around the band and music depicted, allowing the viewer to play Pop Cult detective, seeing (or not) coming seeds of dissent. Bonus points for film buffs: I always have theorized (maybe I forced this line of thinking), that the parallels of Robert DeNiro’s Johnny Boy and Harvey Keital’s Michael from my still-fave Scorsese film, 1973’s Mean Streets, were grafted onto the Danko/Robertson on-screen relationship.
Finally, a last comment. What a shame so many Rock Docs were made on the short dime, maybe prematurely, without the access, budget, or, gulp, even the directorial talent than the new ones seemingly endlessly emerging. (Steve Marriot, Bert Berns, XTC, etc). They, and a whole plethora of others, need redos. And, if you’ve got a decent Scott Walker Doc, a Daniel Johnston Doc, then where are the much needed Docs about John Cale, the Yardbirds, Bonzo Dog Band, the Fugs, Patti Smith, Television, Willy DeVille, and so many, many more?
Scott, you've opened up a whole sidebar to the discussion: Who HASN'T had a doc made about them that deserves one? Cale for sure. Would love a Television doc but good luck getting those guys in the same room without killing each other.
My vote goes to “Tom Petty: running down a dream” directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The way we learn how Petty pushed himself on record companies to get a deal is classic as are the concert footage.
And then there's The Commitments, which may be the most honest, funny, energetic, and realistic fictional depiction of the rise and fall of a band. I like that it shows the music as true working class music and doesn't have any pretensions about making a profound statement about the "significance of rock."
Now that you've hooked us with the question, you've got to let us know what you guys finally watched. And while you're at it, include a critical review of the food and drink! (Ditto Dr Cupcake below re the source of West Coast oysters!)
Now that I've recovered: We ended up watching "Monterey Pop" -- first time I'd seen it in years, and it holds up well, even the extended Ravi Shankar bliss-out at the end -- and a fine upcoming documentary on gospel quartets (The Dixie Hummingbirds, et al) called "How They Got Over" that I had a preview link for. (The host is a gospel nut.) The oysters were from Island Creek/Duxbury MA this year -- I misspoke: The friend who brings them in is from Portland OR but the bivalves aren't. Thanks for asking!
Late to this party but if you emphasize both "Rock & Roll" and "Film" it seems to me that A Hard Day's Night is originally, indispensable, and must be #1.
SUMMER OF SOUL was very cool (as we used to say). Blown away by David Ruffin's voice, Oh Happy Day performance, Mahalia and Mavis, and above all Nina Simone's stunning performance.
I’m very late to the gathering ‘cause I’m a new subscriber but…. Seriously, The Decline of Western Civilization parts 1, 2, and 3 are amazing- it’s Penelope Spheeris for gawd sake!
Wait, there's a Little Feat movie?
A Hard Day's Night -- great film not only a great rock & roll flick
Maybe still a smidge early for canonization (though not in my heart) but I found the recent Rolling Thunder Revue documentary to be a fascinating idea-generator (and yielded a very long Bright Wall/Dark Room essay for that reason) given all the deliberate falsification and fabulation baked into the cake. If the guests had any level of interest in Dylan I imagine you could probably dissect it for an entire weekend. And those remastered Renaldo & Clara concert scenes are enough to give anyone the vapors.
Stop Making Sense. No other rock documentary compares in terms of imaginatively conceiving and executing the filming of a concert.
I really did enjoy that. I had never even heard more than a song or two by the talking heads, but left the theater actually able to remember a bunch of them. With that in mind, I eagerly watched the more recent David Byrne movie (can't remember the name) and was very dissapinted with it.
The Last Waltz all the way. There is no other
Some Kind of Monster. Long, but so worth the investment!
Festival Express. Hands down 💯 Stop making sense
Huh, Festival Express is a new one on me.
2003 movie of Grateful Dead Canadian railway trip across Canada with Janis Joplin. Phish , the band and buddy guy. Live film of the tour including jams on the trip
I started watching that film & fizzled. I’ve tried so hard to be Grateful Dead fan. Just can’t get there.
Summer of Soul hands down. A major piece of evidence that our entertainment culture is so white centered. While Woodstock has been raised to the rock and roll heavens by fans and the media, a hugely successful concert happening about the same in Harlem has not. This documentary tries to correct the imbalance - an impossible challenge, perhaps, but it does a tremendous job trying. The performances are amazing!!!
Sly's seat was FANTASTIC. As was Nina Simone.
I saw Mavis Staples show about 4 weeks ago. She is still fantastic.
The 3 that immediately leap to mind are the classics "No Direction Home," "The Last Waltz" and "A Hard Day's Night." But I'll assume you guys have seen all of them many many times. How about an absolutely breathtaking film about a woman for a change -- "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"? And what an amazing woman she still is!!!
That was a beautiful film!
I still haven't watched the Ronstadt doc (although I believe my friend has). Time to fix that.
Yes! You must. The music is great and the story is very moving.
You won't regret it. And what a voice! So sad that it was silenced too soon, but in spite of her illness she is still vibrant and incredibly inspiring.
Yes, she is a forever legend!
I love The Last Waltz but I would add Big Star’s Nothing Can Hurt Me and Revenge of the Mekons.
Love that Mekons doc. "They teach you how to be gracious and amusing losers."
Standing in the shadows of Motown
I forgot that one! Great documentary.
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart for its depiction of how the forces of commerce work to corrupt (or at lest warp) art in our society.
Yup...that would be on my list too.
This is Spinal Tap, Monterey Pop, and Stop Making Sense. I loved Summer of Soul, too.
Spinal Tap may well be the best rock movie.
'Nother vote for Demme's "Stop Making Sense."
I always have to mention The Phantom Of The Paradise! The fact that it has an amazing rock soundtrack by Paul Williams that has the Juicy Fruits start off as the Beach Boys and end as a glam metal band. AND it was released the year BEFORE Rocky Horror!
Best Rock & Roll soundtrack; over the top movie: Walter Hill -- Streets of Fire
Ooh, deep cut. Worth it for The Blasters alone.
Stop Making Sense! Saw the premiere in Florence (just stumbled on it during vacation), and the band were all there, as well as Demme and Roger Corman! The next day we were eating lunch in a restaurant and they all walked in. Later saw it at the Harvard Square, and people were dancing in the aisles.
Also great: Twenty Feet from Stardom, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and the doc about the great recording engineer Tom Dowd.
Also: American Utopia. Saw the live show and can't yet vouch for the film version, but it's Spike Lee and is supposed to be amazing.
Not fully a rock movie, but The Black Godfather is my everything.
Also: The Grateful Dead documentary series, Long Strange Trip, was pretty great.
“Hard Day’s Night,” definitely. But don’t forget Hal Ashby’s excellent Rolling Stones concert doc, “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” While a bit overlong, it’s a brilliant summary of both the irresistible power and the absurdity of that band. And makes a fitting farewell to the great Charlie Watts.
An admittedly perverse choice—but nevertheless maybe my favorite rock ‘n roll documentary—would be Gimme Shelter.
But for a nonstop good time, I think it’s impossible to beat Summer of Soul. Admittedly helps that I absolutely adore the music in it, but I haven’t been that happy leaving the movie theater in many years.
I like the Last Waltz...to me the high point is the one song that wasn't in the actual concert, The Weight, with the Band with the Staples Singers. Mavis is SO incredible on that. Summer of Soul was great. I think 20 feet from stardom may be the best documentary (a documentary being a different thing than a concert movie). I really enjoy Monteray Pop, because of the INCREDBILE performance of Otis Redding, who topped everything, inlcuding Ravi Shanker. Also had Jim Hendrix burning a guitar and Pete Townsend smashing one. The Otis set was made into a seperate film....and like I said: it's incredible. Bio epics I like are Ray, and What's Love Got To Do With It. Respect is good. And of course: Walk hard: The Dewey Cox Story! I really enjoyed Yesterday. And getting away from rock, two movies that so totally nail the joy of making music are: Brassed Off (I LOVE that film) and The Visitor, with Richard Jenkins. And the absolute all time greatest music video ever made, bar none, is the fantastic, M is For Man, Music, Mozart, by Composer Louis Andriessen and filmmaker Peter Greenway. Oh, is that ever good, but is it rock? no....
By the way: for reasons I don't understand, I attempted to watch It Might Get Loud, a documentary about The Edge, Jimmy Page, and Jack White. Oh, how I despised that movie. I realized the edge can't actually really play, that Jack White is a total whanker (well, I already knew that) and a lost some respect for Jimmy Page. I tortured myself with 2/3rds of that one before fleeing the theater. Another I left only half way through was one about Metallica....i thought it would be bigger and life, instead it was a bunch of petty little men fighing with each other. Yuck.
Among my own small circle of pallies, including some veteran rock and rollers of some legitimacy, we have been bandying this question about for 30 or more years, and it’s still in flux.
Let’s stay away from fictional rock/music films, or biopics, cuz that’s a whole other thing. And, by the way, the best rock/music soundtrack films (Marty Scorsese, Wes Anderson, PT Anderson, Spike Lee, Kenneth Anger, Dennis Hopper, among others, Stand Up!) is a further topic to be explored.
There is no doubt, that the three 2021 Rock Docs that Ty referred to, Summer of Soul, Sparks Brothers, and Hayne’s VU, raised the bar, and may, after some reflection, all enter the cannon, maybe even the Top Ten. (And let’s not forget the much anticipated Peter Jackson’s soon-to-be unleashed Get Back). But for now, we will look to the past.
3) The cineaste in me sez it’s D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (‘67), which set the tone, and bent the edges for all that would come. But, nope, the rocker in me picks 2002’s The MC5: A True Testimonial. Still sinfully unreleased, it captures the incendiary time it is set in, the goose bumping esprit de corps of a blue collar, regional band, and the rattling, spirited, one-of-kind sound and scene that the MC5 fermented. A far more guileless and straightforward version of that special taste of Detroit rock than Jim Jarmusch’s more vaunted Stooges Doc, 2016’s Gimmie Danger.
2) Gimmie Shelter (‘70). No matter what reverberations it caused, and despite the unpredictably popular success of 1970’s Woodstock, the next-up Gimmie Shelter gutted us baby boomers, and was a Doc that had both great live footage, and connective sequences, but pretty much became (circumstances and the changing tenor of the times helped) a film that holds a portentous sway—what was, what it should have been, and what it became. My circle of post-adolescent friends saw this repeatedly on the midnight movie circuit, and we went multiple times intending to view the then incandescent power of The Stones, and each time we were knocked back down into an indecipherable black hole, flower power already dissipating, forced to question our own instinctual pursuit of pure rock and roll pleasure and contemplate something grayer, more societal, more real.
1) The Last Waltz (‘78). Ain’t no doubt about it, it remains the bellwether of pure Rock Docs. Sumptuously filmed, treated (maybe for the first time) like a big-time burnished Hollywood release, song selections and shot selections put on screen with an artistry no one was prepared for. Now, with the passage of time, and our knowledge of the eventual fates of the vividly captured Band members, and their eventual in-house tensions, resentments, and bad endings, it gets special points by serving as a Rorsach test above and around the band and music depicted, allowing the viewer to play Pop Cult detective, seeing (or not) coming seeds of dissent. Bonus points for film buffs: I always have theorized (maybe I forced this line of thinking), that the parallels of Robert DeNiro’s Johnny Boy and Harvey Keital’s Michael from my still-fave Scorsese film, 1973’s Mean Streets, were grafted onto the Danko/Robertson on-screen relationship.
Finally, a last comment. What a shame so many Rock Docs were made on the short dime, maybe prematurely, without the access, budget, or, gulp, even the directorial talent than the new ones seemingly endlessly emerging. (Steve Marriot, Bert Berns, XTC, etc). They, and a whole plethora of others, need redos. And, if you’ve got a decent Scott Walker Doc, a Daniel Johnston Doc, then where are the much needed Docs about John Cale, the Yardbirds, Bonzo Dog Band, the Fugs, Patti Smith, Television, Willy DeVille, and so many, many more?
Scott, you've opened up a whole sidebar to the discussion: Who HASN'T had a doc made about them that deserves one? Cale for sure. Would love a Television doc but good luck getting those guys in the same room without killing each other.
Yikes, I forgot Pennebaker's Don't Look Back! That's my #1. You are spot on that he set the tone for all that would follow.
American Hot Wax - Jay Leno as Alan Freed's limo driver is topped only by the charged music of the '50s.
Honorable mention to Jailhouse Rock. Only because at the beginning Elvis speaks of heading out for the weekend with his friends. Topical?
My vote goes to “Tom Petty: running down a dream” directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The way we learn how Petty pushed himself on record companies to get a deal is classic as are the concert footage.
And then there's The Commitments, which may be the most honest, funny, energetic, and realistic fictional depiction of the rise and fall of a band. I like that it shows the music as true working class music and doesn't have any pretensions about making a profound statement about the "significance of rock."
For years I tried to see if that lead singer appeared in concert anywhere . . . but lost track of him. A fun movie!
From Where on the west coast do you get oysters shipped in? Where abouts is the retreat?
This is Spinal tap, Stop making sense. Summer of soul.
Now that you've hooked us with the question, you've got to let us know what you guys finally watched. And while you're at it, include a critical review of the food and drink! (Ditto Dr Cupcake below re the source of West Coast oysters!)
Now that I've recovered: We ended up watching "Monterey Pop" -- first time I'd seen it in years, and it holds up well, even the extended Ravi Shankar bliss-out at the end -- and a fine upcoming documentary on gospel quartets (The Dixie Hummingbirds, et al) called "How They Got Over" that I had a preview link for. (The host is a gospel nut.) The oysters were from Island Creek/Duxbury MA this year -- I misspoke: The friend who brings them in is from Portland OR but the bivalves aren't. Thanks for asking!
Late to this party but if you emphasize both "Rock & Roll" and "Film" it seems to me that A Hard Day's Night is originally, indispensable, and must be #1.
We are collectively showing our age with the bias for 60s/70s bands/films.
Agree with the brilliance and innovation of Stop Making Sense.
Agree with the cultural shame we should feel about Summer of Soul.
I want to throw out a more recent suggestion mostly for the heartbreak I felt: Amy
SUMMER OF SOUL was very cool (as we used to say). Blown away by David Ruffin's voice, Oh Happy Day performance, Mahalia and Mavis, and above all Nina Simone's stunning performance.
I’m very late to the gathering ‘cause I’m a new subscriber but…. Seriously, The Decline of Western Civilization parts 1, 2, and 3 are amazing- it’s Penelope Spheeris for gawd sake!