The Talkies / Rock-and-Roll Grandeur
Yagoda, Ben
"The Talkies / Rock-and-Roll Grandeur" I'll tell you 'bout the magic that will free your soul, But it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock-and-roll. o sang the Lovin' Spoonful, back in a time when it...
...So were one or two well-known Investigative Journalists, who I fear have this covert operation under sur- veillance and are about to blow a rude whistle...
...Moreover, when the greaser tries to sabotage the Sullivan show's transmitter, lightning destroys his hatchet...
...I rap pled with its collar before it realized I was upon it...
...Along the way, they manage to carry out every hotel sight-gag in the book: 24 The American Spectator June/ July 1978 The cAMERICAN SPECTATOR...
...So much for cultural analysis...
...the focus is on six suburban teenagers who are determined to catch a glimpse of their heroes, or die trying...
...The brilliant Martin Mull, playing an extension of his Barth Gimble on the TV series "America 2Night," is strangely subdued, as if he mistakenly thought Ezra Sacks' script was meaty enough to eliminate the need for comic exaggeration...
...As for pink-haired punk, or "the New Wave," many see it as a revitalizing force, a return to the energy, simplicity, and anger of rock's roots...
...the slight Midwestern twang...
...Zemeckis and Gale, when they're thinking at all, seem to disagree: They show Beatle- mania as abenevolent force, something like Prospero, that brings together three pairs of lovers and convinces one girl to dump her stuffy fiance...
...the straight, almost square mike style (as opposed to the fast-talking hype wee xpect from AM jocks...
...Since then, however, their output has been so limited that one number, "Up on Cripple Creek," has shown up on five of their albums...
...But ifi Manna Hold Your Hand lacks in- telligence, it has wit, which in the movies often translates into an eye for the telling detail...
...I nodded surreptitiously in Peter- son's direction...
...Granted, the point of contention—whether Dugan should be forced to play ads for the Army—is a legitimate problem...
...The other part has to do with the pressures put on QSKY by its parent corporation and the station's resistance (a very popular kind of theme among CIP films, which is interesting when you consider the economics of the movie business...
...The Fab Four, cleverly, are not shown (not above the waist anyway...
...Don't miss this collector's item and the outstanding articles by William F. Buckley, Jr., James T. Farrell, Hugh Kenner, Irving Kristol, Malcolm Muggeridge, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., and many others...
...When Freed, secretly watching the Chesterfields rehearse, murmurs, "That's it,that's it," we may be put off by the portentous way the sentiment is expressed, but we can't help agreeing...
...The Last Waltz is Martin Scorsese's documentary account of the farewell concert given by the rock group The Band in November 1976...
...Rock-and-Roll Grandeur and-roll" and with bringing the music to the public's attention, and who was the principal victim of the payola scandals of the early sixties...
...the pacing is exemplary...
...the portly imi- tation of Chuck Berry's duckwalk during the Paramount concert...
...The first is Tim McIntire as Freed...
...As a rule, cultural phenomena begin to be viewed from a historical perspective only when they have lost their currency, and so it isfitting that we are now being treated to a spate of movies about the rock era...
...According to Hot Wax, Freed was the innocent victim of an evil coalition from officialdom which combined to stop the first-anniversary rock show at the Brooklyn Paramount (the film's cli- max then sent him out of the music business and to his early death in 1964...
...All tenth anniversary issues will be sent in aprotective brown kraft envelope...
...Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...This was not a good sign...
...and the one-trackperformances (especially Wendie Jo Sperber's, as the most fanatic Beatlephile of all, and Bobby DiCicco's, as guess who) are stylized to just the right degree...
...One strand of the storyQSKY's attempt to steal a Linda Ronstadt concert from its rival—while dull and confusing, is excusable on the grounds that it gives Miss Ronstadt the opportunity to do three numbers on camera...
...You can stop me...
...the main FM station in New York does so, and the spots are glaringly out of place...
...others argue, perhaps more persuasively, that Johnny Rotten, Meat Loaf, the Dictators, and company are a glorified death rattle...
...McIntire does a hundred things right: the Buddha-like grin when listening to the latest release...
...But the way the story is told is so full of cliches, bad jokes, and conventions that haven't been new since the thirties that any audience interest is quickly lost...
...The American Spectator P.O...
...IManna Hold Your Hand, another New York period piece, is somewhat less ambi.- tious than American Hot Wax, and is to that extent more successful...
...The script offers no insight into Freed's devotion to rock or the reasons for his appeal...
...To proceed chronologically, American Hot Wax, set in 1959, is about Alan Freed, the Ohio-born discjockey who is credited with coining the term "rockBen Yagoda is a free-lance writer living in New York...
...My only complaint, aside from the paucity of substance, is that the com- mercial preceding the Beatles' live TV appearance—during which two of the characters have to get crosstown—takes up three minutes of screen time, which must violate some Aristotelean unity...
...More are on the way—Grease, Hair, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Buddy Holly Story, and, no doubt, others...
...Two examples: In the opening scene, we see a worker changing the third letter in the group's name on a marquee from an "e" to an "a' '; and the off-camera patter emitting from the Beatles exactly captures their anarchic, schoolboyish good humor...
...The nametag read " Junket," and directed finders to return same to one "Les Aspin" at a Georgetown address...
...The current rockpanoply consists of mellovv crooners, balding ex-superstars, de per- sonalized and mindless disco outfits, strung-out heavy metalists, and various other contingents, each appealing to an ever-narrower audience...
...I know a "tail" when I see one...
...Boris, Peterson, and the Mafia Mother were at their stations...
...It is possible to find a quiet corner and stay out of reach of stray electronic bombardment for a few hours at a stretch...
...The closest Mutrux and Kaye come to interpreting an eminent- ly interpretable decade is showing us pompadours, Mad magazines, narrow lapels, big fins, and other fifties' artifacts...
...So do Carl Earl Weaver, Al Chalk, Sam Harkness, and Arnold McCuller as the Chesterfields, a fictional black a cappella group "discovered" by Freed...
...he says, rather sensibly, "It's like agoddamn disease, for Christ's sake...
...But most should go to The Band and their all-star guests—particularly Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan—for making some fine music...
...Theirs is a music that worships energy and spontaneity, and neither quality is notorious for longevity...
...Box 877 Bloomington, Indiana 47401 YES, send me a free copy of The American Spectator's tenth anniversary issue and enter a one- El ear new Y ^ renewal subscription for the regular rate of $10...
...Inthe intelligence department, I Manna Hold Your Hand is somewhere between "Happy Days" and American Graffiti...
...the look is superb (except for some street scenesthat couldn't have been shot anywhere east of Nevada...
...Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Boris withdrawing behind his "Street cover"—a copy of the Wall S ournal he has been carrying around forweeks...
...0 CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethel/ Espionage in Outer Georgetown Walking across downtown Washing- ton the otherday, I soon realized that I was being followed by a dog...
...And though they release an occasional uninspired album, they don't perform live, and are no longer a musical force of any consequence...
...No 1 / NovrmAer 1977 °scud., HIlDo14.1 Did you miss The American Spectators Tenth Anniversary Issue...
...THE TALKIES by Ben Yagoda I'll tellyou 'bout the magic that will freeyour soul, But it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock-and-roll...
...The year is 1964, on the day of the Beatles' initial appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show...
...their lyrics came from deep within the national consciousness (this was all the more remarkable, since four of the five Band members are Canadian...
...making it the conclusion of a "now" film is laughable...
...I feel much at home in the place...
...To make a CIP film, all you need do is take an enterprise—city (Nashville), minor-league hockey team (Slap Shot), alternative weekly (Between the Lines), car wash (Car Wash), or now progressive-rock radio station—come up with the flimsiest of plots, provide a ubiquitous score, and set the camera a-rollin...
...Accepting money from record companies wasa universal practice among DJ s, con- tend director Floyd Mutrux and screen- writer John Kaye...
...I blame this premature demise not on The Band itself, but on the form it chose: Rock-and-rollers, with only a handful of exceptions, have tended to burn out very quickly...
...Almost all the comic bits work...
...FM, besides being a rock movie, belongs to a burgeoning genre that one might christen Cinematic Institutional Phenomenology...
...Rock, which began almost a quarter-century ago as a broad-based, energized reaction to a socially repressed time, and had its moment of hubris in the sixties, is nowfirmly entrenched in its decadence...
...But you can never stop rock-and- roll...
...I patted the dog on the head (which I realized was most likely "bugged") so as not to alarm him and thus betray my discovery to the chaps with headphones undoubtedly listen- ing in a few blocks away...
...But finally, it doesn't matter...
...Their tight music was a unique amalgam of the sounds of America...
...The real virtue of CIP films is that by stressing the texture of day-to-day life, they can avoid the bugbear of American cinema—melodramatic, contrived plots...
...The clincher is the ending, in which the czar of the corporation (the heavies are middle managers, one in pinstripes and the other in plaid-on-plaid) finds out about the dispute, admires QSKY's spunk, and gives it freedom...
...James T. Farrell Hugh Kemier • Irvitig Kristol Theodore Levitt • Stepheti Makolm Muggeridge • Michael Novak • I...
...Terith Anniversary: Remember* the Gravdeur William F. Brickley, Jr...
...The story is shapeless...
...she The American Spectator June/ July 1978 25 simultaneously needs and is repelled by the narcissistic drivel she plays, by "five hours a night, ego-tripping in this toy store...
...A rock journalist friend of mine, on the other hand, tells me that the film's facts are substantially correct, since Freed's ex- manager was a consultant (although Freed's ex-manager probably isn't the most objective source in the world...
...When I stopped to admire a window display of summer fashions,the dog would stop too and affect interest in a fire hydrant...
...Avenue, a haven for spies, mutterers, and lip-readers—assorted solitary sitters who communicate with ease at a distance...
...The Band is a peculiar case...
...I turned smartly into Sholls' Colonial Cafeteria on Connecticut Torn Bethel/ is Washington editor of Harper's and contributing editor of the Washington Monthly...
...To make a good CIP film, however, you also need: a firm directorial hand, a theme that somehow unifies the material, and a set of interesting and/or wacky characterizations...
...I checked with my sources when I got home and found out that this "Les Asp in" 26 The American Spectator June/ July 1978...
...The sad fact remains that magic, whether you believe in it or not, can't last forever...
...The second- ary characters are unreal, especially the pin-striped heavies...
...Some credit should go to Scorsese, who pulls no funny stuff during the concert, and who, with the assistance of no fewer than six directors of photography, has provided exquisite lighting and solid camerawork...
...On that score, American Hot Wax fails badly...
...The only character to hold our attention is Mother (Eileen Brennan), a late-night DJ on QSKY-FM who suspiciously resembles a certain New York City night-owl...
...The only character who re- fl ects on it is the obligatory,greased-down Fonz-figure...
...They not only make fine music, but their spirit communicates what distin- guished fifties rock: the way anyone, so long as he had three other guys and a bath- room, subway station, or streetcorner, could create it...
...and here FM strikes out...
...Station manager Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon)—Alan Freed's squeaky-clean 1978 counterpart—is on screen longer than anyone else, but you'd never know it...
...Two things make the film watchable, and occasionally something more than that...
...For Robert Zemeckis, who directed, and Bob Gale, with whom he collaborated on the script, Beatlemania is mostly an excuse for making people behave in a remarkably silly fashion...
...Yd .11...
...It didn't work...
...the establishment was really afraid of the sexual energy released by rock and the prospect of "black kids and white kids boogeying together...
...Supplies are limited so send your order today...
...I joined in the general muttering for a while and drank several cups of coffee...
...Fictions, even if they are based on real events and people, should not be judged on historical accura- cy, on how much Brian Keith looks like Teddy Roosevelt, but on their own terms, as works of art...
...The do g was still there, unwarily dozing on the sidewalk...
...This one-dollar-and-fifty-cent value can be yours free when you order a one-year new or renewal subscription...
...If you overlook some weighty remarks abort "changes" and "celebration" in the filmed talks with group members, and Scorsese's inept interviewing technique (which consists of either turning immediately to the metaphysical or repeating the answer he has just received as another question), The Last Waltz is probably the best rock-concert movie ever...
...To be sure, the Americanpop song has been irreversibly changed, and good rock is still being made, but the music is no longer anything more than that...
...Giving Messrs...
...As for "the music" (as it's re- peatedly called), supposedly the source of all the commotion, we are fed the simple-minded idea that the kids just want to have a good time, the grown-ups want to stop them, but the music's bigger than them all...
...Nothing too obvious, like a bloodhound with ears hang- ing and tongue lolling, but a harmless- looking, shaggy sheepdog frisking along twenty yards in my wake...
...This credo is expressed in a series of numbing, "significant" lines, ranging from a budding songwriter's "I never had anything till I found the music" to Freed's climactic "You can close the show...
...MIN INN IMO ••• fON MI INN =II MIN NI USE THIS COUPON OR A REASONABLE FACSIMILE Special FREE Tenth Anniversary Issue offer PLEASE PRINT Name Address City State Zip Canadian and foreign 118 ^ Payment enclosed ^0 Bill me later add $1.00 for postage...
...His performance gives us a glimpse of a far better film that might have been...
...Originally a rhythm-and-blues bar band in the early sixties, they first became known when they backed up Dylan in 1965-1966, and achieved wide recognition with the release of three excellent records in 1968-1970...
...Stein and Wood the slip, I walked out quickly, adjusting the package under my arm...
...What is more important, and re- markable for a rookie director like Zemec- kis, the film isput together masterfully...
...If you are renewing we will extend your subscription no matter when it expires...
...Not so FM...
...Send for your free copy now (or if you already have a copy you undoubtedly know of a friend who would savor this special issue...
...The unspoken but strongly implied conclusion isthat, vide the sixties, we lost the battle but won the war, that Freed died so that rock might live...
...Hot Wax has been upbraided by some for whitewashing Freed, misrepresenting his foes, and getting the details all wrong...
...The idea that the .very rich are always fair and sensible is hackneyed and wrong enough to begin with...
...Now you can receive a free copy of our special 48-page tenth anniversary issue...
...get locked in broom closet,get stuck in elevator, hide in closet of someone else's room, and, sure enough, knock over waiter carrying tray...
...o sang the Lovin' Spoonful, back in a time when it seemed that them usic really could set America free,until everyone was gyrating to the same beat, not talking about it—because you couldn't tell a stranger about rock-and-roll—but feeling it, man, and the world would be made anew...
Vol. 11 • June 1978 • No. 8
