How Questlove uncovered those culture-shifting moments in his ‘SNL' music doc

Los Angeles Times

3 days ago

Like the DJ he is, Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson is highly adept at keeping a lot of things spinning.
Before the pandemic, he juggled '14 to 16 jobs,' most notably as the drummer and focal performer for the Roots, the house band for 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.' But since then, Thompson says he's stopped using 'work, and overworking, as an excuse not to do the life work.' He discovered he likes naps and going to the movies with his girlfriend. And trimming his résumé. 'Now I'm sitting at six [jobs]. My goal is by the end of this year … that I get down to four.'
One of those will continue to be as an Oscar-winning filmmaker, thanks to his 2021 documentary debut, 'Summer of Soul.' The prolific artist already dropped two new docs this year. 'Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music' is a compendium of culture-shaking highlights and behind-the-scenes revelations from 'Saturday Night Live,' while 'Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)' explores funk pioneer Sly Stone's 1970s descent from the top of the charts into a druggy twilight zone, and its broader cultural implications.
Thompson is checking in over Zoom from a Los Angeles hotel room, visiting the city during a short 'Tonight Show' hiatus to spend some time with Stevie Wonder as he works on his next feature project, about 1970s R&B supergroup Earth, Wind & Fire. As he explains it, he's obsessed with the idea of 'penultimates,' the moment right before an artist's breakthrough. It was the key that helped Thompson resolve the task of compressing a half-century of archival 'SNL' footage into a two-hour history that's a lot more than a greatest-hits reel.
'Each story that's told starts with an obstacle … and kind of either getting over a fear of failure or [artists] getting over themselves, and then taking a step forward, doing it, only to realize that that's going to be a paradigm shift, game-changing moment,' he says. 'I can't imagine Eddie Murphy saying, 'No way I'm going to do James Brown, I'll look like a fool.' Or Jimmy Fallon being afraid to knock on Mick Jagger's door. Or, the reluctance of having John Belushi invite these people called slam dancers to a gig. Should we have Rage Against the Machine with Steve Forbes together? Like every story has a connecting resistance or fear. Hopefully, that's what I want people to learn.'
Thompson and fellow director Oz Rodriguez miraculously touch on dozens of the music-related moments — not just the celebrated (and controversial) live performances that became pivotal for everything from hip-hop to punk but sketches, guest appearances by stars and the cast's own formidable inventions like the Blues Brothers — while mining anecdotal gold from the NBC archives and interviews. The film leads off with a nod to 'SNL's' signature cold open with a seven-minute blowout of clips that mashes up artists in surprising juxtapositions, most sensationally a sequence that features Queen, Vanilla Ice, the Dave Matthews Band, Fine Young Cannibals and Michael Bolton.
'I wish the world could see our 'CSI' outline — literally, like a yarn — trying to figure it out,' Thompson says. 'For me, the rule of DJing is knowing five songs that go perfectly with the song you're playing right now.' The montage took 10 months to create and one more, according to the filmmaker, to convince 14 holdouts to be part of it. 'I had to physically go, iPhone in hand, and be like, 'Come on, you don't want to get left out of history now, do you?''
Thompson's fascination with Sly Stone began as a 2-year-old. 'I'm probably the one person who didn't salivate over the arrival of 'There's a Riot Goin' on,'' he says, referencing the 1971 bummer classic. 'I'm almost certain it's because 'Riot' was possibly my first memory in life.' It's a very traumatic one. He was getting a shampoo from his mother and sister when a container of bathroom cleanser spilled and some of it got into his eyes. 'I'm in screaming pain. Four people are trying to 'Clockwork Orange' my eyes out, and 'Just Like a Baby' by Sly and the Family Stone was playing in the background. Why is this the second song on that album? I'll never get it, like, it's just the scariest, most mournful haunting sound ever.'
Thompson made the documentary to explore those feelings and solve a riddle that the music posed. 'Soul music is releasing a demon that turns into a beautiful, cathartic exercise,' he says. 'We never just see it as 'I'm watching someone go through therapy.'' The process led to a personal revelation. 'My mom joked that, 'You say you're making this for Lauryn [Hill], and D'Angelo, and Frank Ocean and Kanye and whoever right now is sort of the modern version of Sly. You made that for you.' And when I thought about it, I was like, 'You're right.'
'Only time will tell,' he says 'if I had to make the Sly story to save my own life.'