David Bowie has had several documentaries made about his legendary and varied career but none have come close to the original: Cracked Actor, which debuted on the BBC during 1975 and caught the vocalist following the release of Diamond Dogs and his preparation for the tour in support of the album. More relevantly, it caught Bowie at the peak of his addiction to cocaine and gave viewers a look at the paranoia and mental exhaustion it caused him. Bowie was far from the only British musician from that era to be captured on film. Here are five other documentaries (some mad during the decade and some made later looking back) that give viewers a new understanding of that period in UK music history.
Cocksucker Blues by Robert Frank (1972)
The Rolling Stones were in need of a facelift in spite of being amidst the most excellent musical period of their careers. The band was returning to the United States in support of Exile on Main St., and needed to be on their best behavior, considering the band's last show in the country had been at Altamount, where hired Hell's Angels security murdered an attendee (an action caught on film and presented on the documentary Gimme Shelter, an even better film that many cite as marking the end of the '60s as many knew it). As the title to Cocksucker Blues might indicate, this wasn't the P.R. move management wanted. It features wanton drug abuse and sexuality (including an orgy aboard a plane). Unsurprisingly, the Stones filed a court order to prevent the film from getting a wide release. Instead, it could only be shown four times a year and if Frank was present as a curator. Do we learn anything new about rock 'n' roll bad boys? No. But no film serves as better testament.
The Kids Are Alright by Jeff Stein (1979)
Most music documentaries begin as passion projects for fans and The Kids Are Alright was no different: Jeff Stein, a massive The Who fan who had previously organized and published a book of photographs compiled from the band's 1970 tour, while still in high school, pushed for support from the group in a project that would trace the loudest band in the world from its beginnings, through Woodstock, through Tommy and Quadrophenia, to the present. Bassist John Entwistle helped out by audio editing, and each member of the band overdubbed its instrumental parts when collected film footage didn't live up to expectation aurally. Unfortunately drummer Keith Moon died during production, before the film made its premiere at Cannes during 1979.
The Filth and The Fury by Julien Temple (2000)
Julien Temple is one of the most well regarded musical filmmakers in the UK, thanks to works stretching from Britain's early punk to the Kinks. His first production was also one of his most controversial: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle gave biographic depiction of the Sex Pistols during 1980 but many complained that the recollections of the era by the band's manager, Malcom McLaren, who considered himself somewhat the Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground (less in charge than he perceived). Thirty years after that film, Temple returned with the surviving members of the Pistols themselves, namely frontman Johnny "Rotten" Lydon. Both films tell essentially the same story with wildly different perceptions...the band's tends to be the more entertaining one.
The Clash: Westway to The World by Don Letts (2000)
Although The Clash was at its peak during the late '70s, most of the great films that have come out on the band's history deal with its more controversial period during the early '80s. Don Letts created Westway to The World by collecting together footage of the band's 1982 tour as well as interviews with all of the band's members. Although it won the 2003 Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video, it also gathered controversy for declaring that the band had ended during 1983 when Mick Jones was fired from the group, when in fact the band continued for three years and released one more album, Cut The Crap. That recording process was caught on film for another excellent documentary, The Rise and Fall of The Clash (2012).
Oil City Confidential by Julien Temple (2009)
As Julien Temple moved forward with his career of making rock documentaries, the subject matter he covered sometimes went backwards. Although he was esteemed for both of his Sex Pistols documentaries at the time, his 2009 feature Oil City Confidential focused on Dr. Feelgood, a less renowned pub band from Essex that is seen as one of the unsung cornerstones of punk rock in the UK thanks to its energetic R&B style performances. Perhaps the best part of Temple's documentary isn't that it sheds new light on acts that we thought we knew (as has been the case with the previously listed documentaries) but that he exposed thousands to a band they might have never listened to otherwise.
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