The Beatles: In the Life

Year 17, Day 200 - 7/19/25 - Movie #5,083

BEFORE: I know it's a Beatles weekend, and I'm just past the halfway point in the Doc Block, but I'm really getting burned out on documentaries. It's just too much, there's only so much a man can take. This is one of those horribly produced hour-long filler docs that ran on the Fuse Music channel or AXS-TV or one of those. I know I'm not going to like it, and more to the point, I'm not going to learn anything from it, which is the whole point. OK, I'm going to watch it, but really just to get rid of it. 

By this time next week, I'll be on another topic, with docs about independent animation if my chain holds up. That's kind of a different problem, because I lived in that world for a very long time, it's going to bring up some memories, good and bad. In fact I just got contacted by a company that's releasing one of the films I produced on BluRay, and they asked me to write some liner notes for the included booklet. Sure thing, I can do that, let me just see what I remember from the year 2003 (I do have stories on tap, it turns out). Let me say that as weird as it was to be part of animation production for 30 years, if I had spent even a year of my life working on hastily produced docs about rock music that were unauthorized by their subject matters, I probably would have blown my brains out, either figuratively or literally. 

All four Beatles carry over from "Beatles '64".  

THE PLOT: Shooting on to the scene in the early 60's, The Beatles took the world by storm - their fame was new, massive and continues to this day. 

AFTER: Continuing my thought train from yesterday - there came a time when the Beatles didn't want to be the Beatles any more. They wanted to keep making music, but they didn't want to tour any more and they also couldn't be in the same room without fighting with each other. Torn apart by money, lawsuits, their desires to have relationships outside the band, like everyone else in the countdown this year, they just couldn't stay on top for long, or for some reason they just didn't want to.  But what made them unique is that they'd already accomplished everything they set out to do, broken every sales and chart record, so they also didn't need to keep going. 

Each generation of fans came to them in their own time - for me I didn't really discover their music until college, as my roommate was a massive fan. Of course I'd heard their songs before, but I hadn't taken a deep dive into their records, not until the roommate was playing them around the clock. But this was 1986, and the Beatles had been dissolved for 16 years and Lennon had been dead for 6. So I never really experienced the break-up or the longing for the band to get back together, it was impossible. The best I could do was to catch up and move forward, so during college I went to two McCartney concerts at Giants Stadium, fortunately this tied in with Paul's desire to finally start doing some of the old Beatles songs again. I mean, yeah, both times he had new albums to promote but he was also playing the old stuff, and that was enough to draw thousands of fans back out to see him live. OK, so maybe some people were there to hear the songs from "Flowers in the Dirt" or "Off the Ground", but let's not kid ourselves, OK? 

A few years later, I went to see Ringo with his All-Starr Band when they played New York - OK, so it wasn't the line-up with Clarence Clemons and Nils Lofgren, it was the one with the guy from the Rascals, the bassist from The Who and the lead guy from Grand Funk Railroad, but that's all right, because I just wanted to say I'd seen another Beatle play - so I'm 2 for 4. 

I think the worst thing about a doc like this is that it actually presents us with WRONG information some of the time - the so-called music "expert" calls a song written by George Harrison as "Love to You" rather than "Love You To". That's a huge error. He also said that the White Album had "Hey Jude" on it, which is an even larger mistake. It's not there, go and check. It was released as a single (one of the longest ever) with "Revolution" on the B-side, and then they later released an album called "Hey Jude" in 1970, which also had songs like "Rain" and "Paperback Writer" on it, songs that were also singles or B-sides and had never been on LPs before. Didn't anyone CHECK what this guy blurted out? 

Nobody's going to learn anything from this doc, either, unless they just landed on the planet or have been in a coma since 1963. Maybe you heard that the Beatles played a rooftop concert in 1969 and it was the last thing they did together before they called it a day. Right after it they said, "Well, that's it lads, let's never get back together and play more music, not even if some producer from a Saturday Night sketch show offers us a million dollars." "Ok, that sounds like a great plan!"  But that's not what happened at all, because Ringo played drums on albums for John and George, these guys stayed friends and stayed in touch, they just couldn't work in a studio together for days on end without getting under each other's skin. It's very relatable if you think about it. 

They really should have ended this doc with one of those "Animal House" style "Where are They Now?" updates. Paul went on to form a moderately shitty band with one wife, who ended up pushing her vegetarian lifestyle on him, but she died and then he married a woman with one leg who was on "Dancing With the Stars" or something. George got into producing movies, first great movies with the guys from Monty Python and then for some reason a terrible one with Madonna and Sean Penn. There's a whole other documentary about HandMade Films, called "An Accidental Studio" and it's quite fascinating. Ringo married an actress and made some bad decisions, like appearing in the films "Caveman", "200 Motels" and "Lisztomania" but hey, that's love for you. Then he formed those All-Starr bands and kept on touring, so I guess once you're in the life, it's very hard to get out of it. 

I'll update you on John Lennon tomorrow - yeah, it's a bummer, I know. 

Directed by Matt Salmon

Also starring Sid Griffin (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Tony Calder, Jennifer Otter Bickerdike and the voice of John Darvall

with archive footage of Barbara Bach (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Chuck Berry (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Bob Dylan (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Pete Best, Brian Epstein (also last seen in "Beatles '64"), Yoko Ono (ditto), Elvis Presley (ditto), Brian Grazer, Edward Heath (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Ron Howard (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Michael Jackson (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), George Martin (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Linda McCartney (ditto), Roy Orbison (last seen in "Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Billy Preston (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Stuart Sutcliffe, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (last seen in "The Beach Boys")

RATING: 3 out of 10 Hamburg strip clubs

Beatles '64

Year 17, Day 199 - 7/18/25 - Movie #5,082

BEFORE: The real reason to keep going back to these moments in time is that we need to learn from them, right?  Whatever we can take away from re-watching the events from 1963-1964, after John F. Kennedy was killed by the military-industrial complex for botching the invasion of Cuba and the country was in deep sadness, that created the perfect emotional vacuum that Beatles music found a way to fill.  

I bring it up because the Ed Sullivan Theater is in the news again, as they've announced the end of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which took over from David Letterman at the Ed Sullivan Theater - the theater itself will probably continue in some fashion, and it's kind of great that a variety show has been broadcast from there consistently for the past 20 years. I watched Dave every night and then just carried over to Colbert, I hate to see things end, but as we've stated here recently, it's hard to get to the top and even harder to stay there. They say the show's ending for financial reasons, but it's just as likely that the corporate entertainment overlords thought that Colbert was too vocal about Trump's incompetence, and as we've also seen here lately, anything like that, written and performed by NYC liberals, ends up alienating half of the TV audience. Plus Paramount has a merger deal pending that needs approval from Washington DC, so, umm, well, you can do the math there. 

John F. Kennedy carries over from "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"

THE PLOT: Captures the band's electrifying 1964 U.S. debut amid fan frenzy. With rare behind-the-scenes footage, it chronicles their unprecedented rise to global superstardom after performing on The Ed Sullivan Show to over 73 million viewers. 

AFTER: Well, this is footage of the historical event that inspired ALL those other bands, from CCR to BS&T and hundreds of others. So I kind of had to go there, even though I've seen the Ed Sullivan footage probably hundreds of times, if not thousands. It's lost all impact for me, I don't really get anything out of watching the Beatles perform any more, for the same reason I can't really watch "Star Wars" movies any more, I've just seen it too often. But at least here it's mixed in with other stuff, not only live interviews with people who remember watching the Ed Sullivan broadcast, and what effect it had on them, but also footage of teen girls THEN, in 1964 they'd basically camped out by the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and just were not going anywhere, which created a problem, like how do we get the Beatles out of the hotel and across town to the Ed Sullivan show?  Also, how do we get all the celebrities that the Fab Four wants to meet up to their rooms. They seemed to be particularly interested in meeting the Ronettes, that's for sure. Well, it would really have been a sausage party without a few birds, if you know what I mean. 

Really, they came to America to meet girls, that's my theory. It was a long con, sure, and they each probably slept with hundreds of women over time, but they knew the resources we had in America - thousands and thousands of horny teen girls. You just had to get on TV and "shake it up baby" and then those girls would stand outside your hotel or try to break in and get up to your room because they desperately wanted to have sex with you. The number of girls (now women) who hit instant puberty after seeing the Fab Four on TV - or who had erotic dreams about them, even if they didn't really understand them, is staggering. All four Beatles eventually married American women, just think about that. But it was a process, sorting through them all to find the right ones, and it began with their trip to NYC.  

The Maysles were a couple of documentary filmmakers, and they were granted access to the Beatles so they could film them when they weren't performing, they seemed to like hanging out in the hotel suite and getting phone calls from the record company in the U.K. so they could discuss how the tour was going. This is also when Murray "The K", a notoriously annoying NYC disc jockey, started talking to them and immediately asking if they could record station IDs for 1010 WINS, even though the station hadn't yet received their copies of the Beatles records - but could they still record some intros for songs by other artists? Give me a break...

The healing of the nation with Beatles songs also had an unintended consequence of creating an entire generation of entitled teen girls - future Karens, if you will. Suddenly they all felt like THEY should be allowed to talk to the Beatles, touch the Beatles, deliver a petition to the Beatles, and they didn't care about hotel security or the thousands of other girls who were there to do the same, they all believed they would be the chosen ones. If you're looking for Ground Zero on where spoiled teen girl phenomenon started, this could be it. The documentary filmmakers seemed to delight in letting some of these girls think they could slip them in to the hotel, just so they could film these girls inside the hotel when security caught up with them and then had to throw them out. That's not cool, guys.  

Thinking about the four lads, you might wonder how people who were so close, who spent so much time together, on stage and traveling around, could get to a place where they couldn't be in the same room with each other, let alone perform together. It's really a question that answers itself, because they did THIS, and lived in hotel rooms and were crammed into cars together and shuffled in the back entrances for gigs, for 6 years straight, that's how they collectively got to that place where they just didn't want to do it any more.  Occasionally there was a girl who saw a Beatle, or even touched a Beatle, and then that just wasn't enough, she always wanted more, and that's why we have footage of girls throwing themselves up against the car the band was in, so there was an appalling lack of self-control, and the police were helpless to stop it. Hey, if a girl got run over by the Beatles' car, then they'd HAVE to stop and make sure she was OK, right? And in this direction, madness lies. 

What's even worse might be taking that footage from the Maysles and folding it in here, the Maysles had made at least one documentary themselves ("The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit", released in 1991) and if this doc doesn't use the footage from THAT doc directly, then it used the outtakes, which is somehow even worse. Guys, not everything the Beatles did was gold, so there's a lot of random hotel room conversations here that just go nowhere, man. This could have easily been edited down, only nobody seemed to have the time.  

OK, no worries, we've still got those testimonials from people who were there, like photographers and music executives, and one guy who flew to the U.K. and then hopped on a tramp steamer to Liverpool, just because he wanted to see where the Beatles grew up and first played. But since he didn't have a travel visa, he was not allowed to leave the boat, not until the Liverpool newspapers found out he was being "held captive", and even then, he was shanghaied back to the U.S. in steerage at the first chance. There's a happy ending of sorts, he grew up to become a record producer and Lennon hired him after he bumped into him and heard his story. 

We also hear from Sid Bernstein, the guy who was supposed to have booked the Beatles into Carnegie Hall, but the hall's management nixed the concert when they learned it was rock and roll, not chamber music.  Six months later, when the Beatles had really caught on, they apologized to Sid and allowed him to set up another concert with the Rolling Stones. But then they heard the Rolling Stones and invited Sid to never, ever, contact them again. C'est la vie. 

Smokey Robinson and Ronald Isley weigh in on how great it was that the Beatles wanted to cover the songs they wrote - I'm guessing they appreciated getting the royalty checks, too. Well, most white musicians like Pat Boone and Elvis Presley were stealing black music without paying for it, at least this was a step in the right direction. The Beatles' cover of "Twist and Shout" from the Isley Brothers and "You Really Got a Hold on Me"  from Smokey and the Miracles was a great thing for all involved, and then later on Smokey (and everyone else) would cover songs like "Yesterday" and put their own spins on them.  

David Lynch is interviewed here because he attended a Beatles concert in Washington DC, Ronnie Spector is interviewed because she took the Beatles up to Harlem for some BBQ, and nobody there bothered them or even recognized them. Very helpful. And Leonard Bernstein's daughter Jamie talks about breaking her parents' rule about no TV during dinner by stating this was a historic event, OK, she had a point and it's great that she was able to have this open dialogue with her parents instead of just throwing a tantrum. But then later she had erotic dreams about George Harrison kissing her on the cheek to celebrate her getting her first bra, so I wonder if letting her watch the Sullivan show did more harm than good. (There's also footage of Leonard himself saying that he was rather neutral on the Beatles, but perhaps the older people could learn something from the music of the youngsters - then he shows us that there are three beats in each measure of that Beatles song. Umm, yeah, thanks, Lenny. Not helpful.)

Really, the Beatles presented a sharp contrast to American society, if we treat them as a mirror of sorts a lot of people saw in them whatever they wanted to see. Muhammad Ali just wanted to be photographed with them lying down in a boxing ring so he could claim "I just knocked out the Beatles!" when we all know that probably wasn't true. Bob Hope mentioned the old band the Crickets, then the Beatles and just made a bad joke about pest control. Bob Hope got nasty in his old age. And Betty Friedan talked about them as vanguards of a new type of man, not the typical bull-headed strong caveman hunter prevalent in U.S. society, but people with long hair who had a softness, a femininity of sorts to them, and she was all for it. OK, Betty, but if you knew how many teen girls they were sleeping with, you might have changed your tune.  

From NYC, the Beatles went to Washington DC, then back up to NYC for the Carnegie Hall gig that got cancelled, and then apparently down to Miami for another Ed Sullivan broadcast. Well, they sure figured out American society quick, all roads lead to Florida, where all aging NY city Jews go to, it's like God's waiting room.  They liked Florida because the water was warm and it was mostly sunny, a far cry from Liverpool - and there were girls in bikinis which I'm willing to bet Liverpool didn't have either. The concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville was planned for a segregated audience, and the Beatles refused to play there unless the show got integrated. What a stroke of luck, though, that between the booking and the concert, the Civil Rights Act had been passed, and segregating a concert was against the law - I'm not saying that a lot of black people attended, but reportedly a few did, and props to the Beatles for sticking to their principles, Lennon said he'd rather cancel the show than play for a segregated audience. 

They also included footage here of Paul and Ringo visiting NYC many years later, I think they both got tours of a Beatles exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and while this is nice, it's also very very self-indulgent. This film was supposed to be about how regular people were affected by the Ed Sullivan broadcast and the Beatles touring America, we already KNOW how these events affected the Beatles, they got insanely rich and famous and also couldn't stand each other, so they really only stayed on top for 7 or 8 years before they went their separate ways.   

What they became, ironically, was the only band in the world that DIDN'T want to be the Beatles. Really, everybody else did and all those bands wanted to take their place, the theory being that all of that attention, all those record sales would go somewhere else after the Beatles stepped down, and well, that sort of happened and sort of didn't, but by the time all that money and attention trickled down to other recipients, though it was kind of filtered and diffused, if that makes sense. That's my take-away, at least. 

Directed by David Tedeschi (director of "Personality Crisis: One Night Only")

Also starring Paul McCartney (last seen in "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), Ringo Starr (ditto), Danny Bennett, Harry Benson, Jamie Bernstein, Vickie Brenna-Costa, Terence Trent D'Arby, Jack Douglas, Ronald Isley, Murray the “K” Kaufman, David Lynch (last seen in "Lucky"), Joe Queenan, Smokey Robinson (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Martin Scorsese (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Ronnie Spector (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Jane Tompkins

with archive footage of George Harrison (last seen in "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), John Lennon (last seen in "If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd"), Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Ted Kennedy (ditto), Leonard Bernstein (last seen in "Maestro"), Sid Bernstein, Pat Boone (also last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Elvis Presley (ditto), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Rick Dees, Brian Epstein (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Betty Friedan (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Bob Hope (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind"), Tom Snyder (ditto), Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "I Am MLK Jr."), Cynthia Lennon, Little Richard (last seen in "Little Richard: Never Too Late"), Yoko Ono (ditto), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Marshall McLuhan (last seen in "Drunk Stone Brilliant Dead")

RATING: 5 out of 10 cut-up hotel towels allegedly used by Beatles (but, you know, probably not)

What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?

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)

If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd

Year 17, Day 197 - 7/16/25 - Movie #5,080

BEFORE: This week is all about rock bands going on tour, umm, and the good and the bad about all that. Thankfully this is a rich tapestry of subject matter, so many docs have been made about this - it's not JUST about putting the band together and making records, we know the real money comes from getting out on the road and selling concert tickets and t-shirts. And if you're not recording the new album in a studio, you need to be out there on tour promoting the last album. C'est la vie. 

John Lennon carries over again from "Elton John: Never Too Late". I'm now past the halfway point for this year's Doc Block, so there's no clear winner yet for who's going to appear in the most films, either in-person or via archive footage. But Sally Field is now still leading for the year with 10 appearances after appearing in "Forrest Gump" footage in that terribly-made doc about Tom Hanks. Tied with Eddie Murphy for third place right now are Johnny Carson, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, who could all turn up some more in the 2nd half. Heck, so could Eddie Murphy, he gets around. 

THE PLOT: Explores the music and back story of the legendary American band - frontman Ronnie Van Zant's roots, work ethic and contradictory persona as well as the relationships between his friends and bandmates. 

AFTER: I'm not even that big of a Skynyrd fan, I do own their Greatest Hits album (do people still buy albums?) and that may be due to my long-time membership in the Columbia Record & Tape Club (does that still exist?) where I bought greatest hits albums from a LOT of bands - but not from Elton John, for some reason. I only have Elton's "Rare Masters" CD and also a collection of 16 covers he released from 1969/70. So, weirdly, I have recordings of Elton John covering two songs that CCR was known for - "Travelin' Band", "Up Around the Bend" and "Cottonfields".  The "Rare Masters" CD has the cover of "I Saw Her Standing There" that he and John Lennon played live in that Thanksgiving concert. I don't know what made me check my iTunes (does anyone else still use iTunes?). 

I'm pretty sure that Elton never covered Lynyrd Skynyrd, or vice versa - that would just be too weird. So maybe this is a bit of an odd turn I'm taking tonight, but the acts next to each other in the Doc Block don't need to be similar, or related, or even if they've never met each other, it doesn't matter - as long as John Lennon appears in yesterday's doc and also today's, then the chain remains unbroken. We're approaching a Beatles/John Lennon weekend, and that's a little weird because 300 movies ago, or last year around this same time, I was also using John Lennon as a link. Hey, John Lennon got around and met a lot of people in the music industry at various times. 

Anyway, the album I own is called "Skynyrd's Innards" and I don't listen to it very often, but I don't listen to any music very often these days. It's got "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird" on it, also "That Smell" and "Call Me the Breeze" and "Gimme Three Steps", really, what more do I need from that band? Oh, right, "What's Your Name", but that's there too. So no need for me to do any deeper dive, if I want to listen to Skynyrd, I'm covered. For southern rock I kind of prefer the Georgia Satellites, but they haven't made a new album for a while, I think Dan Baird went solo and the band broke up.  They only had three albums, but the third one was the best - by their second album they were already covering "Whole Lotta Shakin" from Jerry Lee Lewis and "Don't Pass Me By" by the Beatles, so people had pegged them as a one-hit wonder and didn't stick around for album #3, which was a shame. 

Skynyrd, right, sorry, got off track again. You're probably here for stories of the plane crash in 1977 where two band members and a back-up singer died, and put the whole band on hiatus for ten years. Well, sure, the doc's going to get there, but it's got to build up to it - I'm a bit surprised they don't lead off with the plane crash and then flash back for the whole history of the band, which is a technique I just learned the name of last night - "in media res". A conversation with a co-worker about the screenplay he wants to write let me to learn this, I'd been calling it the "splashpage" technique after comic books. Come to think of it, I think this doc DOES mention the plane crash straight away and then flashes back to the whole history of the band. So never mind, all is as it should be.  First we have to see how the band comes together, before we can understand how it falls apart. 

The Elton John doc did the same thing, we saw how Elton started out on solo piano and then he added a two-piece combo of a drummer and a bassist, and that worked well for a few years before they found out about regular guitars and added one of those. Most of those guys stayed with Elton for his whole career, I think maybe two passed away during his career, but the rest played at the Farewell Concert. Well, the Lynyrd Skynyrd band had a different fate in store, the core of the band played together at high school dances and such, but then after graduation (for those that did graduate, one just stopped going) they had to really expand the band line-up if they were going to make records and go on tour like the Beatles. 

The first line-up was Ronnie and Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, Larry Junstrom and Bob Burns, and the original bandname was My Backyard. Several line-up changes followed, their roadie Billy became their keyboard guy when he accidentally showed them he could play, and they added guitarist Ed King, who'd been in a real band before, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, but he was an L.A. and felt like he didn't belong. When Burns had a meltdown and left, he was replaced by drummer Artemis Pyle, who was a hippie vegetarian, and everyone else in the band felt he didn't belong. The band managed to be rather successful between 1973 and 1977, but as one band member put it, it's hard to get to the top, and even harder to stay there. 

We do finally learn the answer to where the band got their better name, for years people have wondered if it came from the novelty song "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" by Allan Sherman, which mentions a kid named Leonard Skinner who "got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner" - or did it come from a gym teacher that the band members had in high school?  Both answers are correct, because they were aware of that comedy record, but also had a P.E. teacher with the same name, Leonard Skinner, and wanted to make fun of him.  The teacher hassled the kids with long hair because there was a school policy against it, so this was their revenge. 

The band got signed by Al Kooper, who you may remember was depicted playing the organ at the start of "Like a Rolling Stone" in the studio with Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown". Al worked in the studio to produce their albums a certain way, but Al was also very afraid of Ronnie Van Zandt who was known for having temper tantrums after drinking.  The band went on tour in 1973, opening up for The Who, promoting their album Quadrophenia - and if you think Keith Moon from the Who was famous for trashing hotel rooms, the guys from Skynyrd apparently put him to shame.  A few just wanted to relax after a concert, but most of these Southern bros just wanted to party - so alcohol, drugs, groupies, you know the drill.  

A few ironies happened before the plane crash - Allen Collins and Garry Rossington both had bad car accidents over Labor Day weekend in 1976, and this is what inspired the band's song "That Smell", a cautionary tale about drug abuse and how bad it is to drive stoned. So Van Zant and other band members were actually trying to cut down on the band's substance abuse, because they'd seen how dangerous it could be. Then there were more line-up changes, Van Zant had yelled at Ed King one too many times (because of guitar strings breaking, but if you believe Ed King's story, that happened because his roadie had been partying for days with other band members) so Ed left the band, and was replaced by Steve Gaines, who just showed up to play replacement guitar at the next concert and, well, passed the audition.  Second drummer Rickey Medlocke wanted to transition from drums to guitar, and when there were no openings in that department, also left the band (Again this is a year before the crash - Ed and Rickey left, and Steve joined at perhaps the worst possible time. But hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?) 

Their plane had been having problems - but it was always, "Well, we'll get to the next stop, then we'll really have someone take a look at the plane." Probably in all of aviation history nothing good has ever come after saying something like that. And after their performance on October 20, 1977 in Greenville, South Carolina, they needed to get on the plane because they had a concert in Baton Rouge the following night.  So the choices were to either cancel the concert and get the plane fixed, or go ahead with the flight, and so the concert got cancelled anyway. At least if they'd stopped for plane maintenance three band members might not have died and the rest wouldn't have been injured. So the next time your flight is delayed because they're doing some maintenance on the plane, just think how your situation could be so much worse. 

It's a horrible, horrible thing, six people died and others were injured and took months, years to recover. It was probably little solace that the band had released their fifth album three days before, and the publicity from the crash moved the album to number 5 on the Billboard 200. The band literally dis-banded without their lead singer and founding member, and didn't come back together until 1987, with Johnny Van Zandt replacing his older brother and Ed King came back to join the crash survivors, and Rickey finally got to play guitar instead of drums. The reformed band was only supposed to do a tribute tour, but then made a new album in 1991, which caused all kinds of legal problems, because there was some kind of legal agreement with Ronnie and Steve's widows that nobody could use the band name for profit, so as a settlement they were allowed to collect 30% of the band's income going forward, theoretically what their husbands would have earned if there were no plane crash. 

The band is still touring now, I think, but all the original members have passed away at various times, I mean, I guess people still want to hear the songs live but I wonder how many of the fans are aware of the band's history and realize they're looking at nothing but replacements. Maybe they know and they don't care. Fans did complain when the band stopped displaying the Confederate flag, so that should give you some idea what the politics are of Skynyrd fans - southern and conservative. I bet they also don't know that the band use to record songs in favor of gun control, and some of them were hippies or vegetarians. But hey, at least some of them were genuine Florida swamp people, unlike those San Francisco kids in Creedence Clearwater Revival, who only pretended to be. 

There is a longer documentary about Lynyrd Skynyrd, but I'm not that sure about the linking, and so I'm going to table that one, maybe next year, we'll see. I'm probably covered on the subject. 

Directed by Stephen Kijak (director of "Sid & Judy" and "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed")

Also starring Bob Burns, Larry Junstrom, Edward King (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Al Kooper (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Rickey Medlocke, Artimus Pyle, Gary Rossington, Johnny Van Zant, Michael Cartellone, Carol Chase, Keith Christopher, Randall Cooper, Charlie Daniels (last seen in "Dare to Be Different"), Dwain Easley, Kevin Elson, Bill Fehrs, Brantley Gilbert, Devon Gilfillian, Leslie Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson, Peter Keys, Dale Krantz-Rossington, Mark Matejka, Rodney Mills, Mike Rounsaville, Samuel Torres-Duque, Judy Van Zant Jenness, Alan Walden, 

with archive footage of Ronnie Van Zant (also last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Allen Collins (ditto), JoJo Billingsley, Walter Cronkite (last seen in "Remastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black"), Roger Daltrey (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Keith Moon (ditto), Pete Townshend (ditto), John Entwistle (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Cassie Gaines, Steve Gaines, David Johansen (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Dean Kilpatrick, Jim Ladd, Walter McCreary, Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), May Pang (last seen in "LennoNYC"), Billy Powell, Lacy Van Zant, Leon Wilkeson, Tom Wills, Neil Young (last seen in "Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon")

RATING: 5 out of 10 trips to Muscle Shoals 

Elton John: Never Too Late

Year 17, Day 196 - 7/15/25 - Movie #5,079

BEFORE: If I'm late posting tonight, it's because I had to work at a premiere of the new "Smurfs" movie - and you know how much I love working at movies with a bunch of kids attending. Also I was working outside and it was like 85 degrees so I probably got my arms sunburned, because I never think to wear sunblock, most summer days like this I just stay home and I only go out if we need half-and-half or want bagels. The kids were pretty well-behaved (too hot to act up, I guess) so the biggest problems were an injured seagull that decided to take up residence in the theater's foliage (of course, RIGHT behind where the guests were going to check in) and the fact that they handed out not just popcorn and candy, but also (for some reason) cannolis with a blue filling - it took two hours for the porters to clean JUST the theater, and then they could focus on the lobby, bathrooms and the sidewalk outside, which was stained in blue goo. I know it was from the cannoli filling, but with costumed Smurfs characters walking around I suppose other answers were possible. Try not to think about that too much. 

I realize I covered Elton John in last year's Doc Block, but then this film got released on Disney+, late last year, and also I feel I have to make up for including "Becoming Rocketman", which was just a thrown-together doc that aired on AXS. This one's an authorized doc that actually saw fit to interview Elton himself. 

John Lennon carries over from "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium" (Movie #4,781)

THE PLOT: Showcases never-before-seen concert footage of Elton John over the past 50 years, as well as hand-written journals and present-day footage of him and his family. 

AFTER: The idea here was to land this doc somewhere right in-between the two Elton John films I watched last year, the schlockumentary that contained some information about Elton (but not much) and the concert film, which was all music and no info. BUT since this was an inside job (co-produced and co-directed by Elton's life partner) they had access to the man himself, so we finally get to hear Elton's side of things, PLUS a bunch of his music, so that should have been a win-win. As a bonus, yesterday's film about CCR was set in London in April 1970, and that's kind of around where this one starts. 

BUT,  the timeline, or timelines are all a bit crazy. There are two concurrent timelines, which should be a contradiction in terms. One details Elton's career, from about 1970 to sort of mid-1975, a most creative period during he released eleventy or so albums (JK, it was 15) and the other timeline showcases his Farewell Tour (well, sort of, it's lean on concert footage from most of the cities). So by toggling between the two timelines, it's impossible to keep track - we're in London in 1970, then we're in Detroit in July 2022. Back to Colorado in 1972, and then jump forward again to Toronto in September 2022. This is not how time works - although I guess it does progress forward in both time periods more or less similarly randomly - but the end result if kind of like watching "Slaughterhouse Five" with Elton John in the central role. 

To make things more confusing, both time periods end with a large concert at Dodger Stadium - the first one he did in fall 1975 and the last concerts he did in the U.S. in November 2022. This doc claims that the 1975 show was the FIRST time that a solo act played a large stadium show, and I don't know, that just can't be correct. Sinatra never played a big stadium?  What about Elvis? I just want to see the paperwork on this point. 

The other problem here is that I've seen many of these key moments in Elton John's life re-enacted in other movies, like "Rocketman" and those other docs. The footage of Elton actually retiring and saying he wants to spend more time with his family was also seen in the "Farewell from Dodger Stadium" film. Even the interactions with John Lennon and Elton guest-singing on "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and betting John it would be a number one record, I've seen that in a couple John Lennon docs, this is just the same story told from the other P.O.V.  We already know that the record was a hit, Lennon lost the bet and then he had to perform with Elton at MSG on Thanksgiving and this is when they sang that song, plus "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There" together, and that was Lennon's last major live concert appearance. 

This is probably the first doc where Elton addresses not just his sexuality but his lack of it in the early days, that he was a virgin when he became a record star, and his first experiences were with his producer, John Reid - we kind of know all this already, but it's at least novel to hear John's side of this relationship in his own words. There's no mention of his short marriage to a woman, this apparently is still a taboo subject. They were married for three years, but the "Rocketman" movie would have you believe it was more like three days. Any details beyond that are just not available, it seems. 

But OK, this is how the world works now, two men can get married and they can have children via surrogate and we're not allowed to ask which man is biologically the father, it's really none of our business, which is why everyone wants to know. The truth is, they may not even know, and it doesn't matter. And if Daddy's a superstar, he can make whatever he wants happen, and he can retire at age 75 if he wants to spend more time with his sons. It's all fine, let's move on. 

We also got to see how Elton put his band together over time, so it's kind of like watching Batman put the Justice League together, only in rock music form. And a lot of those same band members played BOTH shows at Dodger Stadium, the 1975 one and the 2023 one, they have side-by-side footage so you can see how they all aged. Well, it's going to happen to us all, if we're lucky - may we all live long enough to have our songs sampled by much, much younger artists with zero talent. You know who I'm talking about. 

Directed by R.J. Cutler (director/producer of "Belushi") & David Furnish (producer of "Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium")

Also starring Elton John (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), David Furnish (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Bernie Taupin (ditto), Dua Lipa (last seen in "Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium")

with archive footage of Winifred Atwell, Joe Biden (last seen in "Join or Die"), Jill Biden, Steve Brown, Paul Buckmaster, Ray Cooper, Gus Dudgeon, Pete Fornatale, Cliff Jahr, Davey Johnstone, Billie Jean King (last seen in "Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer"), Tony King, Jerry Lee Lewis (also carrying over from "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), Little Richard (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Dee Murray, Nigel Olsson, Yoko Ono, Alexis Petridis, John Reid, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 animated sequences (used when footage of Elton doing cocaine or trying to drown himself in a swimming pool was unavailable)

Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall

Year 17, Day 195 - 7/14/25 - Movie #5,078

BEFORE: I've got at least another week of rockumentaries to go - this one's the fourth in the series of good old Summer Concerts - just one more to go, and it's a doozy, but I won't get there until Friday. Almost at the halfway point of this year's Doc Block, and there seems to be a competition for which rock doc has the longest title. This one's vying for second place, because yesterday's film had an additional tagline in the name which I didn't even use. 

John Fogerty was one of those musical guests shown in the montage in yesterday's film, so he carries over tonight from the Billy Joel doc with the very long name. There's been an appalling lack of birthday SHOUT-outs lately, which is only shocking considering how large some of the casts have been in these docs with so much archive footage used. So can I send out a non-synching belated Birthday SHOUT-out to John Fogerty, who turned 80 on May 28? Man, all the boomers who were born in 1945 are really getting up there...

THE PLOT: Follow the legendary Creedence Clearwater Revival concert as well as unreleased material from the band. 

AFTER: I think you can see now how much crossover there is in documentaries - every doc filmmakers is out there scrambling, trying to land the biggest names possible to appear in or narrate their film. So this film links back to "Valerie" by using Jeff Bridges as a narrator, he also was available to talk about Ms. Perrine's life. There are a THOUSAND or so other connections like this, and the hard part for me is realizing that I don't have to follow 99% of those connections, I only need one per day and I can ignore the rest. But when I start putting a doc chain together, I still need to know about them all, so I can figure out which are the rare ones that I want to use as links. I think it might be easier in the long run to just put the films in the order I want and then make sure there's a through-line. Which is kind of what I did this year, lumping all the actors together and then all the rock bands, I just got there the hard way. Really once I get to rock music, almost every film uses footage of the Beatles and/or the Stones so in the end I shouldn't even have to worry about it. 

There's maybe a scandal brewing, bigger than the fact that the Beach Boys didn't play their own instruments on their records, because CCR was not in fact "born on the bayou", as their song implies. They were just four guys from outside San Francisco who liked blues music and made it seem like they grew up near a swamp. They saw this as their meal ticket, performing songs in a style similar to the records they used to listen to, which happened to all have the sound of Mississippi river music. 

Back in those days there was no internet, so fans couldn't check out the band's background (or perhaps they just didn't care) or they would have found out that John Fogerty had not grown up in a swamp, he just went to summer camp a few times in the Bay area. Also he had never owned a hound dog and gone chasing a hoodoo there, nor had he rolled with a Cajun queen. And then after "Proud Mary" became a hit, people might have found out that the band had not actually cleaned any plates at all in Memphis, and never took that ride on the Riverboat Queen. It goes without saying therefore that none of them had pumped any 'pane down in New Orleans. (I always thought it was "pumped a lot of pain" which always seemed like a weird metaphor but thanks to subtitles today I found out it was really 'pane as in propane. Maybe it works both ways?)

It turns out that CCR started as a cover band, there's really no shame in that, because The Stones started out as a Chuck Berry cover band (some would say they still are...) and even The Beatles formed as a skiffle band, and they would have stayed that way if someone hadn't told them they could make more money by writing their own songs and getting those sweet, sweet publishing royalties. But we've had to re-visit Led Zeppelin, because they were essentially covering Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters and Leadbelly songs all those years, without giving proper credit to those artists, which is a form of stealing. CCR wasn't that bad, like when they recorded "Susie Q" or "I Put a Spell on You", they gave credits to Dale Hawkins or Screamin' Jay Hawkins (no relation) but they were essentially doing what every 60's band was doing, taking old blues songs and playing them for a much larger white audience. As penance I'm relegating the Led Zeppelin documentary on Netflix to next year's chain - really I'm too lazy to try and work it in to what I already have planned.

But it's just music, right?  We've all played it and listened to it for years and I guess we'd rather not think about reality while we're doing that, or it's just on in the background while we shop or party or hang out at the beach and yeah, I get that I'm harshing everyone's mellow while they're trying to have a good time. The same probably holds true for country music and rap music, maybe once you do a little digging you find out that it's all just fantasy and the personal lives of the artists could be very different from the experiences they're singing about, just like how movie stars are playing characters most of the time and they're just people who do other things when they're not in front of a camera. 

But let's say that this trend of making movies about the lives of rock musicians continues - like Chalamet playing Bob Dylan was a big deal, and now they're working on a similar movie about Bruce Springsteen starring Jeremy Allen White, and it might be a huge deal. Also there are FOUR movies coming out about the Beatles, each telling the backstory of a different band members. If the trend continues, and somebody ends up making a film about CCR, they really should call Steve Zahn first to play John Fogerty, if Zahn's not already too old. 

Remember that after the Beatles hit, there were a thousand bands hoping to do what they'd done, and CCR was one of them, perhaps the most successful to ride along in the Beatles' wake, since the "Abbey Road" album displaced CCR at the top of the charts.  They were always in the Beatles' shadow, weren't they?  Like just as they were preparing to do this concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the news broke that the Beatles were done, that the band couldn't reconcile with each other and there would be no more albums released. Creedence figured this was their opportunity, they'd benefit from the bad news, and they were poised to take over as the number one band in the world without the Beatles in their way. And it seems a lot like the British people spoke as one and said, "Nah, that's all right, we're good, we'll just keep listening to these Beatles records over and over."

Well, after all that, how was the concert? Well, I'm really just whelmed, partially because except for "Fortunate Son", which they played at a too-fast tempo at the Albert Hall, these songs sound EXACTLY like the recordings - so I could have just played "CCR's Greatest Hits" on my iTunes and achieved the same effect. OK, so they were consistent, but nobody is THAT consistent, right?  I think the band maybe just had their sound locked in, and this is what you get when the same four guys play the same songs together a few thousand times.  Still, if you told me that some of the sound recordings from the concert were not that good, and the film crew ended up using Creedence's records to edit to, and then they accidentally left that sound in the film, I'd be inclined to agree. Or maybe it's just that we've all heard these songs a thousand times, I had only a few cassette tapes in college, and one of them was CCR, so yeah it was in constant rotation - but I wasn't as woke back then about how much of white person rock was stolen from black people. 

Still, this band played at Woodstock, though maybe they were scheduled for 2 am, they still PLAYED there, so respect should be paid. The band broke up three years after that for the typical reasons - disagreements about business matters and artistic control, plus you go on tour with each other for a decade or so and any little petty annoyances grow into really big ones. Lawsuits and court cases over the band's songs and other matters continued until the mid-1990's, I remember the one over who got to use the NAME of the band in promotional material for concerts, did it belong to John Fogerty or the band that had two other members of CCR in it. Really, this is how every rock band ever has ended, except for the Rolling Stones, those guys will still be touring together when they're 200 years old. 

Another scandal - CCR's record label released an album of the Royal Albert Hall concert, only the music on the record was NOT from that concert, it was recorded in Oakland - but it was probably the same set-list, so really, who cares? It's just another part of the fantasy world that the recording industry was selling. It's not like the Woodstock festival album was recorded in Woodstock, NY, as we all know the festival took place in Bethel, about 60 miles away. What's in a name, as long as the kids keep buying the records? 

Directed by Bob Smeaton (director of "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child")

Narrated by Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Valerie"

with archive footage of Doug Clifford, Stu Cook, Tom Fogerty, Ray Charles (last seen in "Remastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black"), Dick Clark (last seen in "Stevie Van Vandt: Disciple"), George Harrison (ditto), Mick Jagger (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Vince Guaraldi, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Howlin' Wolf (last seen in "The Stones and Brian Jones"), Muddy Waters (ditto), B.B. King (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Leadbelly, Jerry Lee Lewis (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind"), Robert Plant (last seen in "Count Me In"), Max Weiss, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 prior horrible band names. (The Golliwogs? Really?)

The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden

Year 17, Day 194 - 7/13/25 - Movie #5,077

BEFORE: Now that I'm all caught up with Bruce Springsteen and his band (or am I?) except for the fact that he carries over one more time to appear in today's concert film. Let's see, we had David Johansen, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band from 1979, so this is Summer Concert Film #3, I think there are two more. (There could have been four more, but I didn't want to re-shuffle everything to cram in Tom Petty & Fleetwood Mac. Maybe next year if the linking allows.)

I didn't realize there is a bit of a time structure here, I started with Joan Baez in the early 1960's and moved forward into the 1970's with Johnny Cash and then Springsteen, now I've kind of hit the current day with Billy Joel's landmark concert, and now I'm going to work my way back in time again, ending with the Beatles and then Elvis. Maybe the whole thing should have been flipped around the other way, I don't know, but this is what the linking that I had suggested. 

By the way, there is a new Billy Joel doc, titled "And So It Goes" - I'm aware of it because it screened at Tribeca Film Festival, but it's arriving on HBO too late to qualify for this year. Sorry, Billy, again, maybe next year if the linking allows.

THE PLOT: A concert celebrating Billy Joel's record-breaking 100th consecutive performance at Madison Square Garden. 

AFTER: Billy Joel began this run of monthly concerts at Madison Square Garden way back in 2014, and 100 months is actually a pretty long time to do anything, and I should know. According to MSG, he sold out all of the shows, which I'd kind of like to see the paperwork on, I'm thinking maybe there's a loose definition of "sold out", like come on, every single seat?  That place holds a LOT of people - but it turns out that he's got a ton of hardcore fans in the NY area, some claim to have come multiple times during that run, others claim to have been at every show, which again, I'd like to see the receipts because I'm thinking that would cost more money than the average person would earn during their lifetime. Did those people spend $500 each time (I'm estimating with meals, travel, merch) for 100 shows, which would be, umm, carry the two, like $50,000?  

I don't know if I'd call these concerts "consecutive", because there were other events held at the Garden in between, so they're only consecutive if you ignore all the stuff in-between, and well, that's not consecutive. They're only consecutive to Billy Joel, assuming he didn't go play any other shows between these gigs, and well, I don't have firsthand knowledge of that, either. But I feel kind of sorry for whoever has to change MSG from a basketball court to a hockey rink to a Billy Joel concert every other day, I don't think I could do that job. I'll tell my bosses that I'm not putting ONE TABLE back in the closet because I think the event the next day at the theater needs it, so why not save a bit of effort? 

What's important is that there were often special guest performers, and the filmmakers saw fit to include a montage of them (see list below) and most documentarians are not completists, it's almost like they don't have any regard for a guy in Queens who's linking docs together for some reason.  By the way, this is my 5,077th consecutive movie over almost 17 years, if you ignore any other movies I may have watched in between, because those don't really count. See, I can mess with the statistics, too. 

Also important, this is another concert where there's NO filler - I'll try to post the set list below with some random thoughts on some songs. What's great is that this was 99% a back-catalog concert, and it helps that Billy hadn't released a new album in years, so yeah, if you're going to hit the nostalgia circuit, make sure you hit it big and tap into those hits from the 1970's and 80's as best as you can.  Here's the line-up. 

1. "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)" - damn, my favorite Billy Joel song of all time opens the show. It's a bold move, because it seems to represent the views of people who both love AND hate New York City at the same time. Yeah, that tracks, because if Manhattan did blow up or get burned down or sink into the ocean, it would be a terrible, tragic loss of life and property BUT then I wouldn't have to get up and go to work again, like maybe ever. So I love this song, I love any song like "I'll Sink Manhattan" by TMBG or movie like "Escape from New York" or "I Am Legend" where the island is deemed a lost cause and they blow up all the bridges or something. If liking that is wrong then I don't want to be right. BUT this song kind of found a whole new audience after 9/11 just because it concerned all our landmarks getting blowed up, and then it found even more of an audience a couple years later when we had that big blackout, it was like Billy Joel could predict the future or something. But some of us loved this song before all of that - now it's a little problematic because we're on the other side of the year 2017 and some of that stuff has NOT happened. So now Billy Joel just sounds like an angry old man who also has dementia and is very confused about cataclysmic events from several years ago. Or was this whole song just a metaphor that got taken out of proportion as soon as disasters started happening in NYC? 

2. "My Life" (with an intro from Beethoven's "Ode to Joy") - this is another song that aged in an unexpected way, because Joel wrote it when he was in his late 20's or early 30's and he was this rebel who wanted to live life like he wanted to, so you know, go ahead with your own life, leave him alone and stop telling him what to do. Now that he's older, phrases like this just synch up with that old man vibe, so by all means, leave him alone, but also get off of his lawn. 

3. "Vienna" (OK, I lied, this one is filler. This is a deep cut from the 1977 album "The Stranger", and it was the B-side to the Just the Way You Are" single. I'm not familiar with "Vienna" and having that here only makes me wonder why my second favorite Billy Joel song, "The Stranger", is absent.  For that matter, where the hell is "Just the Way You Are"? 

4. "Movin' Out" - ah, I get it, we're including all the quintessential "NYC" songs in this show, so we need the one that name-checks all the New Yorkers that he made up, like Mama Leone and Anthony and Sgt. O'Leary, they're all going to be important characters in the Billy Joel jukebox musical, if they aren't already.  This is another great classic, and I think the transition from "My Life" to "Movin' Out" would have felt more natural if "Vienna" didn't get in the way. But I get it, you want to show your range and that your catalog has more than just songs about young people working two jobs and changing apartments and trying to afford a Cadillac-ack-ack-ack. 

5. "New York State of Mind" - yeah, definitely a theme building here. Is it me or did he really perform this one in a very Sinatra-like fashion?  Or maybe he's just getting older and older people sing things a certain way, I don't know. But there's definitely a case to be made for slowly phasing out "New York, New York" as the song they play after every sporting event in this city and phasing in Billy Joel's song instead. It may never happen though, but it should because this is a much better song as far as NYC tourism is concerned, too bad you can't take a Greyhound bus any more, but you can make people want to come and visit the city if they haven't been in a while, it's not just about losing those little town blues and becoming king of the hill any more, or is it? 

6. "Big Man on Mulberry Street" - yep, you've got to put the NYC-based songs together, except the one about the Italian restaurant, that comes later. Sting came out to perform this one during the big 100th show, I guess that was the best choice for him to sing. I was never a big fan of this song, but yeah, I get it, a lot of TV shows in the late 1980's discovered this song because of how brassy it is. 

7. "An Innocent Man" - an interesting choice, because everyone seems to have forgotten about the Tom Selleck movie with this title that Billy Joel wrote the song for. Joel kind of pre-apologized for maybe not being able to hit the high notes in this song any more, but then I think he did OK with it. 

8. "Turn the Lights Back On" - aha, he DID have a new song up his sleeve! I don't know if he wrote this new song specificially for the 100th show or if it was just well-timed, but this song was NEW or relatively new back in 2024, maybe the ticket sales were slowing down a bit and they didn't want to admit that maybe one of the 100 shows might not really be sold out. OK, OK, have Billy write one more new song and then all of his biggest fans will just HAVE to come back to MSG because now there's a song that they haven't heard him perform live yet. Well, it does seem a little fitting that he's got one song about the lights going out, and now he's got one about the lights coming back on. This is really a metaphor, though, about trying to bring the romance back to a long-term relationship. But what would Billy Joel know about THAT? Doesn't he just get divorced and go find a new wife when things get rough? JK. 

9. "River of Dreams" (includes a segment of "River Deep, Mountain High" sung by his back-up singer). Well, I'm glad that he kept finding new ways to present his songs. So often we hear the older rock singers who have gotten bored with their own songs, so they speed them up or slow them down or play them with an acoustic guitar just so they can get through their 100th concert without killing themselves. If that means dropping a Motown song in the middle of your own one, by all means, go and do it. Or maybe Joel's voice just needs a break when he's 9 songs in, I don't know. 

10. "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" - well, if you're not going to sing "Just the Way You Are" or "She's Always a Woman", you still have to have at least one song about relationships, and by singing the one about Brenda and Eddie getting married, trying to live together and then getting divorced as "the closest of friends", we can kind of assume how Billy Joel feels about relationships, right? He's been married what, three times? Four? When you're 76 years old, this is probably how you feel about relationships, that nothing is permanent - well, what is? 

11. "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me" - another deep cut from the early days, going back to 1980 and the "Glass Houses" album. In case there was any debate about what genre he's been singing all along, and maybe those love songs made things a bit confusing, it's rock, and it's always been rock. Rock accepts a lot of different styles and tempos, but people come to a rock concert because they want to rock out. I remember that Weird Al Yankovic once made a parody of this song, I think he never released it, but it was called "It's Still Billy Joel to Me". 

12. "Only the Good Die Young" - another upbeat rocker, we're going to land this plane with the crowd cheering like crazy.  Although I've heard it said many times that the good die young, it's only been in the last few years that I've come to agree with it, because that would kind of explain why it seems like there are more assholes alive now than ever before. Anyway, this is kind of like Billy Joel's answer song to Springsteen's "Rosalita", both sung from the POV of an up-and-coming rock star urging a girl he likes to come out and party and probably have sex with him. 

13. "You May Be Right" (mixed with a verse of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll") - another young punk song from the "Glass Houses" album (I remember this because the song starts with the sound of breaking glass). Well, if it's a lunatic you're looking for, then I guess you came to the right place. It's another "Hey, girl, come hang out with me" song, but in this one the focus is more on him being a bad boy, riding a motorcycle, walking home through dangerous neighborhoods and such. Remember that NYC was a very different city back in the 1970's, some places like Bed-Stuy were no joke. 

14. "Piano Man" - well, you just gotta. I mean, if Billy Joel played a concert and didn't end it with "Piano Man", there would really be a riot. All these 10,000 people payed at least $500 each, you got to give them the song that means nothing to them personally but yet somehow everything to them at the same time. Well, they sat at his bar and they put bread in his jar, but I can tell you it's been a very long time since Billy Joel played a piano in a smoky bar that was populated by a bunch of aimless losers. But I guess maybe some things are just universal. 

So many great songs that didn't make the cut - "Captain Jack", "The Entertainer", "Say Goodbye to Hollywood", "The Stranger" of course, "Big Shot", "Don't Ask Me Why", "She's Got a Way", "She's Always a Woman", "Pressure", "Allentown", "Tell Her About It", "Uptown Girl", "The Longest Time", "Keeping the Faith", "The Night Is Still Young", "A Matter of Trust", "The Ballad of Billy the Kid", "You're Only Human", and 'I Go to Extremes". Any collection of Billy Joel songs would be an incomplete list, of course, and I understand that the concert can't be six hours long, but I would expect at least a couple of the above to be played. So I wonder, was the set list for the 100th show the same as for the previous 99, or did he shake it up every so often and pick different songs from the catalog? I'll have to research this. 

Anyway, the news is that Billy Joel went on tour again, because it turns out that there ARE other concert venues besides MSG. He was doing shows with either Sting, Stevie Nicks or Rod Stewart, three people who couldn't commit to a full tour so they decided to tag-team it. Well, shows started getting postponed, and it looks like the promoters just kept pushing dates for shows back and back and shows that were supposed to happen in March or April of this year got rescheduled for dates next year, and now the latest update says the whole tour's been cancelled and everybody's getting refunds. So if you missed any of his 100 shows in NYC, you might be out of luck for the foreseeable future, he's got some kind of health issue that is affecting his hearing, vision and balance, which are kind of important if you're going to come out on stage and play the piano. So yeah, health watch on Billy Joel and like I said a few days ago, sometimes you don't know if your last tour is going to turn out to be your LAST tour. 

Directed by Paul Dugdale (director of "Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium")

Also starring Billy Joel (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Jerry Seinfeld (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Sting (last seen in "Wham!"), Chuck Burgi, Tommy Byrnes, Andy Cichon, Mike DelGuidice, Carl Fischer, Mark Rivera, David Rosenthal, Crystal Taleifero, 

with archive footage of Tony Bennett (last seen in "Billie"), Jon Bon Jovi (also carrying over from "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Elvis Costello (last seen in "Dare to Be Different"), Miley Cyrus (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), John Fogerty (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Peter Frampton, Billy Gibbons (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Steve Miller (ditto), John Mayer (last seen in "Vengeance"), John Mellencamp (last seen in 'Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Olivia Rodrigo, Howard Stern (last seen in "Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer")

RATING: 7 out of 10 saxophone solos (how you doin', Mark Rivera?)