“Immediate Family,” a new rock doc now playing in theatres, and available December 17 to rent or buy on the Apple TV app and other VOD platforms, is a feature length look at musicians you’ve listened to your whole life.
“I would buy records just because they were on it,” says Phil Collins.
They were to the 1970s singer-songwriter era what The Funk Brothers were to Motown or The Wrecking Crew to Los Angeles based pop music. They were the four names that graced the back covers of albums by singer-songwriter Hall-of-Famers like James Taylor, Keith Richards, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, Stevie Nicks and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
“The creative input of these session guys cannot be overstated,” says Taylor.
Legendary session musicians, drummer Russ Kunkel, bassist Leland Sklar, and guitarists Danny Kortchmar and Waddy Wachtel, are the Immediate Family, a group who’ve played together on-and-off for more than fifty years, and treat one another as brothers, hence the band’s name.
The story brings together each of their stories, from Kortchmar’s first exposure to James Taylor, when both their families were vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, to Sklar admitting he hides his insecurities behind his trademark ZZ Top-worthy beard to Kunkel’s story about being kicked out of the 5th grade orchestra.
Each has a tale to tell, and, of course, there are accounts of excess on the road and studio stories galore, but director Denny Tedesco isn’t interested in a tell-all or gossip. The most rock ‘n roll moment comes when Linda Ronstadt says she always won their tour bus poker games because she “was the sober one.”
“Hammer of the Gods” this is not. Instead, this is a warm-hearted story of friendship and music.
There is an undeniable chemistry in their group interviews, as they share a lifetime of experience punctuated with lots of laughs. It doesn’t dive deep. This is a hangout movie with great music. To that end, Tedesco makes sure to include lots of archival musical footage, bolstered by newly shot performances.
Tedesco, the director best known for his doc “The Wrecking Crew,” is clearly a fan and while “Immediate Family” is a companion piece to movies like “Echo in the Canyon” and “20 Feet from Stardom,” it doesn’t have the same in-depth flavor. Still, as a snapshot of an iconic era, it’s a bit of fluffy fun.
Linda Ronstadt was one of the voices of the latter part of the twentieth century. The pure, gorgeous vocals that were once a staple at the top of the Billboard charts has been silenced by Parkinson’s disease but a new documentary, “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” serves as a reminder of a pioneer who danced to the beat of a different drum.
The Arizona-born singer made headlines as much for her off-stage life as much as for her on-stage work, but the film wisely focusses on her legacy, the music that made her a superstar. The story begins at home with a family who played and sang all types of music from rock and roll, rhythm and blues, gospel, opera, country and mariachi. Later, those influences mixed and mingled in the folk-rock trio the Stone Poneys. Their biggest success, a cover of Mike Nesmith’s “Different Drum,” became Ronstadt’s first and only hit with the band and she soon left to forge a solo career that would see her become the first female rock star and the first woman to have five platinum albums in a row. “Linda was the queen,” says Bonnie Raitt. “She was like what Beyoncé is now.”
At the peak of her fame she grew tired of selling out arenas and the constant grind of being on the road. Looking for new challenges she took to the Broadway, appearing in “Pirates of Penzance” on stage opposite Kevin Kline. “Gilbert and Sullivan? Can you imagine another rock star who has the guts to go out there and do that kind of musical comedy?” says Jackson Browne. “To her it was a mountain to climb.”
From operetta she went on to explore the American songbook, interpreting the songs of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald among others. “I didn’t think it was a good idea, not because she couldn’t do it,” says Warner bros executive Joe Smith, “but because we had this run going with rock and roll and country rock records.”
The portrait painted of Ronstadt is one of an artist more concerned with music than her career. She was once the highest paid women in music but left that behind in favour of following her passions, whether it’s making a record of traditional Mexican songs (which became the largest selling Spanish-language record in history to that date), roots rock or singing with her pals Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
The film closes on an emotional note with the revelation that Parkinson’s disease has robbed her of her instrument. “I still sing in mind my but I can’t do it physically,” she says.
Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman use archival footage, mixed with new interviews with many of the singer’s friends and colleagues, to complete the picture. It’s wonderful to hear the music, to be reminded of the width and breadth of Ronstadt’s daring and talent, but the commentary tends toward the “She was the best singer I’ve ever heard,” style rather than providing much insight into what makes the singer tick. At the end, however, it doesn’t matter much, as the music, in all its variation and strength, tells the story in a way that suits Ronstadt best.
Laurel Canyon, a nexus of 60s counterculture located in the Hollywood Hills, was home to a generation of singer-songwriters who shaped the music that dominated the baby boomer heyday of commercial radio. “It was the one place you could live that was the antithesis of the plastic straight world you saw on television,” says longtime resident Jackson Browne. “It was always a hangout for bohemians,” says Mamas and Papas singer Michele Phillips and now it is the subject of an entertaining documentary, “Echo in the Canyon.”
The movie’s framework comes from a 2015 tribute concert featuring songs made famous by Laurel Canyon acts like Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys. “The music that came out of the Laurel Canyon scene in the 60’s was not only inspiring to other bands at that time,” says Jakob Dylan, “but also became inspiring to my generation. Tonight is an opportunity, like folk music, to pass it on to a new generation and keep the echoes of that music going.”
Between live performances from artists like Beck, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor and Norah Jones, Dylan interviews a who’s who of California Sound-era superstars like David Crosby and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills, Michelle Phillips, producer Lou Adler and Brian Wilson, about whom Tom Petty, in his last filmed interview, says, “I don’t see anything in Mozart that is better than Brian Wilson.” Other accounts of those times come from John Sebastian and Eric Clapton.
They often say if you can remember the 60s you weren’t really there, but the talking heads here seem to have no trouble recalling the details of the Canyon’s early days. Adler remembers exactly where the musicians sat during the Mamas and the Papas’s first recording session and Ringo Starr says the Byrds turned the Beatles on to a “hallucinogenic situation” when they first met. A mix of contemporary sounds and nostalgia, it paints an apolitical (you would never know that Vietnam was raging during the time documented) picture of a creative collaboration that saw artists competing with one another to expand the limits of what rock music could be. “You can listen to the records,” says Stephen Stills, “and you can hear the cross-pollination.”
Ultimately this isn’t a history of a generation but an enjoyable look at a brief period that still echoes in the imaginations and ears of many fans. “These records came like an avalanche,” Beck says of LPs like “Pet Sounds,” “and there was nothing like them before.”
