Once upon a time, one of many mediums that one may discover their favourite musical teams in was the flicks. The Beatles‘ A Hard Day’s Night, The Monkees‘ 1968 film Head, KISS‘ made-for-TV cult traditional KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, and extra. Band films gave followers an opportunity to see a distinct aspect of their heroes, ones that performed into their personas, usually comedic, or into the mythos of the band. Then the band film style withered away, with 2006’s Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny and the 2022 Foo Fighters movie Studio 666 solely two in current reminiscence that come instantly to thoughts. What occurred?
To recognize simply how impactful the band film was upon society, one has solely to take a look at the primary “true” rock and roll characteristic movie, 1956’s Rock Around the Clock. The movie, like most centered round bands, had the thinnest of plot strains. Two males find yourself in a small, backwoods city referred to as Strawberry Springs. Here they arrive throughout a ‘new kind of music with a distinct beat’, performed by part-time musicians who farm throughout the week: Bill Haley and His Comets, who recorded the tune (which hit the highest of the charts because of its look within the film Blackboard Jungle in 1955). One of the boys, Steve (Johnny Johnston), agrees to handle the band, ultimately touchdown them a spot in famed DJ Alan Freed‘s membership. That gig units off a meteoric rise to fame for the group, ending with an enormous present in Hollywood. The film was extremely profitable however triggered no finish of controversy on its launch. The New York Times in 1956 had a headline ‘Rock & Roll Called “Communicable Disease.'” In the South, the movie had the audacity to convey collectively an built-in teenage viewers when races not often, if ever, combined socially. In London, theater managers needed to cease the movie in an effort to inform the kids within the viewers to sit down again down. Other English and American cities and cities merely did not hassle, banning the movie outright.
The Beatles Owned the Band Movie… and The Monkees Should Have Let Them
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band that utilized the film medium to its full benefit is the band that owned the charts over the course of the Sixties: The Beatles. The 5 movies launched whereas the band was collectively differed, however every represented completely the place the band was artistically on the time. The first, A Hard Day’s Night, captured a fictional “day within the life” of the band on the peak of Beatlemania. The film performed to the band’s strengths, humor and expertise, whereas additionally having enjoyable with and increasing on the concept of Paul McCartney as “the lovable one”, Ringo Starr as “the humorous one”, and so forth. Their 1965 movie Help! was nonetheless humorous, however far more subdued, with music and movie being impacted by their marijuana use. The Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine leaned extra towards a creative imaginative and prescient, each far more experimental and psychedelic, an ideal parallel to what they have been releasing on the time. Let It Be caught the band on the finish, a documentary that was meant to indicate them working collectively on an album returning them to their roots, however as a substitute caught the fractured relationships that in the end noticed the Beatles disband.
The band film, because the Beatles would attest to, was efficient when used properly. The band film additionally, although, had the facility to take a band down. While the 1968 movie Head has been considered far more positively over time, on the time it was disastrous. The Monkees TV present bought the band (who famously weren’t even a band, to start with) as a Beatle-esque A Hard Day’s Night-era group of fun-loving lads caught up in wacky, weekly hi-jinks. This wasn’t the group that appeared in Head. The movie was nothing remotely just like the TV present. It was the group in an existential, meta sequence of multiple-genre vignettes, continuously coming to comprehend every thing of their lives is scripted. Including their suicide try on the finish. Sorry, not fairly the top – the top has them in a deep aquarium. There was nothing for his or her followers to attach with the group they knew, assuming the followers have been even sufficiently old to see the movie. The movie’s soundtrack solely reached #45 on the charts, the primary of their albums to not hit the Top 5, whereas the one Porpoise Song did not crack the Top 40. The Monkees disbanded shortly after, killed by the movie they helped to create.
Video Killed the Radio Star… and the Band Movie
The Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties noticed the idea of the band film develop. KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park was pure advertising for the band, turning the members into superheroes as a crossover promotion with their Marvel comedian guide. Alan Parker‘s 1982 mind-trip Pink Floyd – The Wall, based mostly on the 1979 album from Pink Floyd (and display written by Floyd’s personal Roger Waters), was a creative extension of the band’s work, a visible illustration of the existentialist traditional. Two of essentially the most extremely acclaimed live performance movies have been launched throughout this time: Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Waltz, the movie that captured The Band‘s farewell live performance in 1976; and Jonathan Demme‘s 1984 Talking Heads‘ live performance movie Stop Making Sense. Then the band film that skewered the band film, 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap.
The launch of MTV on August 1, 1981, successfully kicked off the sluggish demise of the band film. Fans did not should go to the movie show to see their favourite bands, they only needed to activate their TV. The artist turned each musician and actor, and the music video shortly turned a extra polished, refined medium, with works like John Landis‘ touchstone Michael Jackson’s Thriller video blurring the strains between movie and MTV. The new actuality meant music turned extra of a enterprise than a creative imaginative and prescient, with artists rigorously being crafted for mainstream success, a la The New Kids on the Block. It quickly turned taboo to do something that may impression an artist’s backside line, so the band film turned simply as company because the music. As time wore on, the music itself was changing into too fractured to enchantment to wider audiences. There wasn’t a Beatles that everybody loved. Now there was rap, hip-hop, emo rap, pop, rock, heavy steel, thrash steel, grownup up to date, and extra. This all led to the place we discover ourselves immediately, the place music tastes are siloed by algorithms, and artists push for live-streaming live shows (Taylor Swift‘s savvy transfer to have her Eras Tour streamed by followers by way of TikTookay is a wonderful instance).
The reality is, Studio 666 is probably going the final of its variety, a band film that includes a band, the Foo Fighters, that has no qualms about poking enjoyable at themselves. It was as soon as a style that proved so controversial that folks have been warned about what may occur to their teenagers in the event that they watched. A style that caught artists at their artistic bests, and typically their worsts. It is now an outlier, a relic from a distinct time. But there’s all the time the hope of an encore.