Music movies don’t get a lot respect — a lot of the older ones are mainly model extensions, and most of the new ones are prolonged advertisements. Nowadays, most biopics and “rockumentaries” are made a minimum of partly to introduce older artists to a brand new technology and increase their stream counts within the course of. Contemplating these constraints, in addition to these imposed by songwriters and artists in trade for using their work, it’s wonderful that the perfect music movies — suppose D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 Bob Dylan documentary, Don’t Look Again, and Martin Scorsese’s 1978 swan track for The Band, The Final Waltz, in addition to the perfect live performance movies — are nearly as good as they’re.
We now stay in a golden age of music documentaries — in addition to a glut. It’s by no means been extra sensible to make a cool documentary like What the Hell Occurred to Blood, Sweat & Tears? However we can also have reached Peak Documentary. Not each artist has an amazing story, and never each filmmaker can inform that story effectively. This grew to become apparent to me once I watched HBO’s new two-part Billy Joel: And So It Goes, in addition to the newish Turning into Led Zeppelin and Pavements, that are streaming on Netflix and MUBI, respectively.
Personally, I actually love Pavement, I really like Led Zeppelin and I like Billy Joel. (Pavement is probably the most constant of the three; Zeppelin soared the best; and I believe Joel’s Turnstiles and The Stranger are masterpieces, however his later albums undergo by comparability.) So I used to be stunned to search out that I preferred So It Goes probably the most by far — particularly since Joel was by no means as mysterious as Zeppelin or as effortlessly cool as Pavement. After seeing all three films, I spent just a few days listening to Joel’s albums, however I wasn’t tempted to placed on Pavement, regardless that I take heed to the band’s music way more usually.
I wasn’t alone on this. Within the three weeks because the first a part of the documentary premiered on HBO, Joel’s on-demand streaming within the U.S. is up greater than 24% in comparison with the three weeks earlier than its debut, in response to Luminate. That’s up from about 16% within the week the primary a part of the film got here out, indicating that curiosity in Joel’s music solely accelerated within the weeks following its premiere. Within the three weeks after the discharge of Turning into Led Zeppelin, the band’s on-demand streaming within the U.S. rose 17% in comparison with three weeks in January, and the increase is even greater in comparison with late 2024. (Anticipation for the film appeared to spice up streams earlier than its launch, which didn’t occur for Joel.) Even Pavement, whose music and movie are much less fashionable, noticed a 14% enhance within the three weeks after the discharge of Pavements in comparison with the primary three weeks in April.
This tracks how a lot I preferred the flicks. I discovered So It Goes extremely compelling. It’s not particularly modern — it switches between photographs of Joel sitting at his piano, telling his story and archival images and movies — however he’s an enticing storyteller. He appears to be like again at his previous with honesty and a sure self-deprecating humor: “I did a variety of my very own analysis for ‘Massive Shot,’” he says, after calling it “a hangover track.”
Elements of Joel’s story are a lot much less humorous. He struggled to discover a fashion that labored for him, and he appears to hold some wounds from childhood: His father, the son of Jewish refugees from Germany, left his household and returned to Europe. Joel finally discovered him, however they struggled to reconnect emotionally, and he vows to be a greater dad. The film implicitly makes a case for Joel because the inheritor to a sure songwriting custom — a pop auteur who brings rock instrumentation and perspective to traditional pop songwriting. It made me curious sufficient to hear once more to a few of his older albums. If I didn’t know his music, I believe it will have the identical impact.
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On the floor, a minimum of, Led Zeppelin looks as if a way more promising topic for a documentary. The band has few equals as a stay act, and the efficiency footage in Turning into Led Zeppelin, which tells the story of the group by the discharge of its second album, is simply beautiful. The movie neatly places Zeppelin in context — watch sufficient music documentaries and also you begin to suppose folks in the UK truly lived in black and white earlier than Beatlemania — and it’s exceptional simply how a lot the group turned up the amount on pop. The commentary from the bandmembers is way quieter, although — each actually and figuratively — as a result of they’re solely seen on digicam individually.
Turning into Led Zeppelin additionally doesn’t ship on the band’s legendary extra. A few of that occurred later, and neither the band’s exploits with groupies nor its tendency to borrow liberally from blues artists performs effectively immediately. The group’s story is fascinating, however there isn’t that a lot there that I didn’t know. The live performance footage is so important that it makes the remaining appear sluggish by comparability, and the band members don’t look again with the humor that Joel does. To cite one other Zeppelin movie, “Does anybody keep in mind laughter?”
After which I bought to Pavements, the film I preferred least, in regards to the act I really like most. It’s meant to be a rock-doc about rock-docs, in a method that a few of Pavement’s songs had been about songs — most famously “Lower Your Hair.” It’s about time somebody did this. However Pavements underwhelms as a result of it overdelivers. It’s a documentary in regards to the band interwoven with a “documentary” in regards to the present Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical, which performed for 2 nights in 2022; a “documentary” a couple of museum exhibit in regards to the band, which additionally existed; and a “documentary” a couple of nonexistent biopic. It’s loads.
Pavement deserves a documentary that punctures pop music pretensions, however this one has an excessive amount of happening without delay. Worse, for a band that oozed slacker allure, Pavements is simply too conceptual — extra polished jewel field than dusty trunk. One of many funnier traces comes from Butt-Head of Beavis & Butt-Head fame: “They should strive tougher!” Possibly. However the film tries method too onerous — and when it really works, the humor is so particular that it’s onerous to think about anybody who’s not aware of the band will perceive why they had been so vital to so many individuals.
I’d love to finish this with a grand idea on make music documentaries work, however I don’t have one. The closest I can get is that many listeners nonetheless need to know extra in regards to the individual behind the music. So It Goes works as a result of it delivers that. Turning into Led Zeppelin doesn’t, but it surely has sufficient unbelievable stay footage to curiosity anybody. Pavements doesn’t even strive, as a result of that was by no means the purpose of Pavement within the first place, and perhaps that’s superb. Some issues are simply simpler to promote than others.
