Why rock fans can't get enough of classic music documentaries
Netflix alone has films about Wham!, James Blunt, Elvis Presley, Quincy Jones and the making of the 1985 celebrity recording of the single 'We Are the World', while Apple TV's roster currently includes documentaries on Sparks, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow and The Stooges.
Coastal, filmed by Neil Young's long-term partner, Daryl Hannah, will be of considerable interest to Young's fans as well as acting as a curtain-raiser to his gigs at Glastonbury in June and at London's Hyde Park in July. Shot in arty black-and-white, it has footage of Young on stage and amiably chatting with his bus driver as he makes his way from gig to gig.
In a new interview on Young's website, the point is made to Hannah that, given that Young is a 'storied, mythologised figure' while also 'quite inscrutable', the off-the-cuff moments in the documentary are valuable.
'I think you're right', she responds. 'People do find him this mysterious, inscrutable figure. That's why I decide ultimately to include those moments, so people get to see what a sweet and open person he can be. You see more of his humanity and less of the myth'.
Writing in the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw notes that the film 'tests the fanbase loyalty to the limits by being pointlessly and uninterestingly shot in arthouse black-and-white (though it exasperatingly bleeds out into colour over the closing credits) and by including an awful lot of material on the tour bus which is – how to put this? – not very interesting'.
'Part concert film, part home-video-on-wheels - Neil and bus driver JD, perfectly happy nattering about nothing in particular like two old blokes on a road trip - it has the same warmth and chattiness as the gigs', said the reviewer in Mojo magazine. 'Hard to think of another live Neil Young movie where he seems both a little unsure of himself and so contented'.
Over the years, magazines and critics have devised lists of the greatest-ever music documentaries. It's not exactly an easy task, given the vast number of films that have been made about a dizzying range of subjects.
As the film critic Mark Kermode once explained when embarking on his own list, 'What I have tried to do is to chart an admittedly erratic course from early milestones such as Jazz on a Summer's Day to more modern offerings such as Dig! and Moonage Daydream to give some sense of the vast and unwieldy scope of the genre and its subjects – from low-budget obscurities to Imax-friendly blockbusters; from cool blues to frantic post-punk via unearthed Afro-Cuban history'.
Here are 13 great music documentaries worth tracking down (if you haven't already seen them).
* Gimme Shelter (1970), by cinema verite trailblazers Albert and David Masyles and Charlotte Zwerin, is a riveting look at the Rolling Stones' US tour of 1969 - the tour that ended in the infamous outdoor concert at Altamont Speedway, at which the band hired local Hells Angels to provide security. It didn't end well. Mick Jagger at one point asks the crowd: 'Who's fighting, and what for? We don't want to fight'. One man, Meredith Hunter, who drew a revolver, was stabbed to death by a Hells Angel. It was the end of the Sixties, in more ways than one.
* Moonage Daydream (2022), by Brett Morgen, was an immersive and mesmerising documentary about David Bowie. As A.O. Scott remarked in the New York Times, 'it's less a biography than a séance. Instead of plodding through the chronology of Bowie's life and career, Morgen conjures the singer's presence through an artful collage of concert footage and other archival material, including feature films and music videos'. Morgen's previous documentaries included Crossfire Hurricane, about the Stones.
* Woodstock (1970), Michael Wadleigh's Oscar-winning documentary of the August 1969 Woodstock festival, a counterculture landmark, features music by such acts as Crosby, Stills & Nash, Santana, Janis Joplin, Ten Years After, Jimi Hendrix and The Who, as a vast crowd descended on Max Yasgur's farm at Bethel, New York. Mick Richards's 2019 features documentary, Creating Woodstock, fleshes out the story. A two-disc 'Ultimate Collector's Edition' Blu-Ray set - Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music: The Director's Cut' - includes many never-seen-before performances from Joan Baez, Grateful Dead and others.
* The Beatles: Get Back (2022) is Peter Jackson's three-part documentary series, based on footage and audio recorded in January 1969. Variety magazine sums it up thus: "What's startling about 'Get Back' is that as you watch it, drinking in the moment-to-moment reality of what it was like for the Beatles as they toiled away on their second-to-last studio album, the film's accumulation of quirks and delights and boredom and exhilaration becomes more than fascinating; it becomes addictive". Also featured: the Fabs' rooftop concert in London's Savile Row.
* Laurel Canyon (2020), by Alison Ellwood, is an excellent two-part documentary series about the musicians who inhabited Laurel Canyon, 'a rustic canyon in the heart of LA' and made it a hotbed of musical creativity. Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt and Don Henley are among those interviewed.
* It Might Get Loud (Davis Guggenheim, 2009), showcases three guitar virtuosos - Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White - to scintillating effect as we trace the development of careers and their signature sounds. Uncut magazine: "It Might Get Loud is about the way the electric guitar and the amplifier combine to create a kind of superpower, transforming the player into a sonic god".
* Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders, 1999), is a brilliant retelling of how the American musician Ry Cooder assembled a diverse, mostly elderly, group of veteran Cuban musicians and steered them to global popularity. "Filmed in Amsterdam and New York, the concert scenes find the stage awash in such intense joy, camaraderie and nationalist pride that you become convinced that making music is a key to longevity and spiritual well-being", as the New York Times described it.
* Oil City Confidential (Julien Temple, 2010) is a celebration of R&B specialists Dr Feelgood - Wilko Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John B. Sparks, John Martin - and the distinctive Canvey Island environment from which they sprang.
* Muscle Shoals: The Greatest Recording Studio in the World (Greg Camalier, 2013) tells how a small city in Alabama became home to the Fame recording studios and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, which were established by Fame's former house band. Among those featured are Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge and Keith Richards.
* 20 Feet from Stardom (Morgan Neville, 2013), deservedly won an Oscar for its sympathetic look at the careers of notable backing singers such as Merry Clayton, who duetted with Jagger on the Stones song, Gimme Shelter. Archive footage and new interviews combine to thrilling effect.
Simple Minds: Everything is Possible (Joss Crowley, 2023) is a comprehensive look at the rise of Simple Minds, the Glasgow band who rose from art-rock beginnings to become the most successful Scottish group ever. Among the talking heads are band members as well as Bob Geldof, Bobby Gillespie and James Dean Bradfield.
Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland's Girl Bands (Blair Young, Carla J Easton, 2024) cleverly unfolds a story of Scottish pop music from the 1960s onwards through the recollections of those far-sighted women who helped make it; among them are Strawberry Switchblade, Sunset Gun, His Latest Flame and the Hedrons.
Big Gold Dream (Grant McPhee, 2015) is a fascinating, award-winning account of two hugely influential Scottish indie record labels - Edinburgh's FAST Product and Glasgow's Postcard Records. Bands featured include Fire Engines, Scars, the Rezillos and Aztec Camera. Two years later, Grant took up the story again in Teenage Superstars, featuring The Vaselines, BMX Bandits, The Pastels, The Soup Dragons, The Jesus and Mary Chain, amongst others. Recommended.
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