Year 17, Day 198 - 7/17/25 - Movie #5,081
BEFORE: No John Lennon today, but Al Kooper carries over from "If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd". I figured he'd be good to use as a link here because he was one of the founding members of Blood, Sweat & Tears, but left the group before their second album was released. I remember this film screened at the theater where I work, but I can't remember if it was a screening for Tribeca Fest or DocFest. I've got to start keeping better notes about where I don't see movies....
THE PLOT: Grammy winners Blood, Sweat & Tears rose to stardom in 1970, faced clashes with the Nixon administration, a controversial Soviet tour, and a downfall after their Woodstock Festival high.
AFTER: Once again, I have to point out that 1970 was a very different time - the U.S. had a crazy, very corrupt President, and the country was deeply, deeply divided on just about every issue. One political faction was deeply wary of foreigners living in America and the other didn't trust the government at all, protested everything the people in power did and just wanted to go to concerts and take drugs and listen to counter-culture music and wonder if Socialists maybe had some good talking points. Wait a sec...
This film is a great demonstration that not only do things keep happening in cycles, but those people in the counter-culture grow up (eventually) and at some point they have to give up their dreams of stardom and get real jobs, then they'll spend the rest of their lives complaining about what could have been. I'm not going to say the guys from Blood Sweat & Tears are old, but they just want to talk about politics and how close they came to making it, and how somehow it's all the guvmint's fault. I can't wait until a few decades from now when we see documentaries about Trump talking smack about Taylor Swift while also having unproductive meetings with Kanye West in the Oval Office.
But in the case of Blood, Sweat & Tears, these guys may have been on to something - once again we're at that magical time where the Beatles had just called it quits, and the title of Best Band in the World was up for grabs - all they had to do was keep making great music, keep touring and not screw anything up. Well, guess what. They had this rather weird business manager who had just gotten out of prison, and he had some rather unique solutions to problem-solving, well at least he thought outside of the box. When the Nixon administration came down hard on foreigners, that affected the lead singer of their band, who was Canadian. His green card had expired, and if he were forced to go back to the Great White North, the band couldn't function in America (remember, this was pre-internet and pre-cell phone) so their creative-thinking manager contacted someone at the State Department and made a deal. David Clayton-Thomas could get a new green card if the band would go on a goodwill tour behind the Iron Curtain and show people in Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland the majesty of good ol' American rock & roll. Really Nixon should have sent them Elvis, who did come to the White House that year looking for work. Remember that they didn't have much rock in Eastern Europe, I think it might have made sense to start them off at the beginning, like you don't want to dive into a cold pool, you want to put a foot in first and acclimate to the temperature.
For the band (well, most of them), this seemed like a killer deal - they'd tap into a new market, maybe gain some new fans in another country, much like CCR playing the Royal Albert Hall, and they'd get to keep the new lead singer who they JUST started bonding with after showing Al Kooper the door, kicking him out of his own band. (They were right, though, Clayton-Thomas was a MUCH better singer when it came to being soulful.). Also they would be traveling with a film crew that would make a documentary about their concerts, and this could make up for the fact that BS&T were edited out of the "Woodstock" movie because their manager wanted extra money for their likenesses appearing in the 3-hour film of the 3-day concert. (Grateful Dead, Mountain and our old friends in CCR similarly priced themselves out of the market.)
What they didn't take into account was the fact that 50% of the country already didn't like that rock stars were young, long-haired hippies who were against the war in Vietnam, and now getting into bed with the Nixon administration, even for the right reasons, would turn the other 50% of people, the growing counter-culture, against them too. So that's, let's see, what's 50% plus another 50%, OK that's the whole country who now has issues with them - not a great place for the band to be. But hey, there's still that documentary that's going to be made, depicting them as great cultural ambassadors to Eastern Europe, and people will see how they spread the messages of peace, love, music and good vibes (or capitalism, military superiority and family values, take your pick) around the world. So once all that footage gets edited down, anything incriminating gets cut out and all those great, great songs hit America's earholes, everything's going to be fine. Yeah, about that, funny story but we're still waiting.
But they HAD to do it - it was either lose their lead singer or go on the tour, so the government basically blackmailed a rock band to go on tour. Romania just wasn't ready for them, but maybe Poland was - but nobody told the Europeans how to enjoy a rock concert, mostly the people just sat there and took in the music, then went back to their homes. OR sometimes they really got into it and nearly started a revolution, at which point the Socialist soldiers brought in attack dogs to control the crowd. Nobody told the band that their new fans would be attacked by dogs if they came to the concert, but you know what, the Romanians were kind of used to it, so it's maybe OK? (In Soviet Russia, dogs attack YOU...)
Later, the decision was made for the band to play in Las Vegas, but this unfortunately was before playing Vegas was cool - it was still the Vegas of the Rat Pack and the older crowd, and the young people finally turned completely against the band once they found out that their audience was full of old-school celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor. Choosing your gigs is important, and if you don't make the right choices your band could end up on the State Fair circuit like Johnny Cash.
Look, they'll always have Poland, and the fact that their album BEAT "Abbey Road" for the Grammy that year. AND they played Woodstock AND they're in the Rock Hall of Fame AND they got a great story out of it. So things could have been worse, things could always have been worse. And once again we see that while it's hard to get to the top, it's even harder to stay there, or as they sang in "Spinning Wheel", what goes up must come down.
Directed by John Scheinfeld (director/producer of "The U.S. vs. John Lennon")
Also starring Bobby Colomby (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), David Clayton-Thomas (last seen in "Clive Davis; The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Jim Fielder, Steve Katz, Fred Lipsius, Donn Cambern, Tina Cunningham, Clive Davis (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), David Felton, Daniel Klein, Danielle Lussier, TIm Naftali,
with archive footage of Louis Armstrong (last seen in "Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon"), James Caan (last seen in "Faye"), Nicolae Ceausescu, Winston Churchill (last seen in "Join or Die"), Sean Connery (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Dizzy Gillespie (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), Larry Goldblatt, Dick Halligan, Abbie Hoffman (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Jerry Hyman (last seen in "Friends with Benefits"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "I Am MLK Jr."), Nikita Khruschchev (last seen in "The Fog of War"), Henry Kissinger (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Artie Kornfeld, Michael Lang (last seen in "We Blew It"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "Remastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black"), Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (last seen in "I Am MLK Jr."), Peter Sellers (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Lew Soloff, Harry Truman (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Martin Wenick, Andy Williams (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Chuck Winfield, Ira Wolfert, and the voice of Casey Kasem (last heard in "The Bee Gees; How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?")
RATING: 6 out of 10 line-up changes (and that was just in 1972 - seriously, the band is still somehow touring and there have been 165 band members over the years)
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