A few years ago I took Andrea on my David Bowie Walking Tour of London which ends at the Ship pub, just a few steps from Trident Studio where the Ziggy Stardust album was recorded. I’ve whiled away quite a few hours at that bar over the years, but this visit was special.
A guy came in, sat next to us and we began talking. Turns out, he was doing the same thing, a self-styled rock ‘n roll tour of the city. We traded stories and drank some beers.
He was so enthusiastic and cool and when I told him I’ve spent years trying to master my favourite drum lick, Woody Woodmansey‘s brilliant work on “Five Years,” he showed me how to play it, pounding out the beat with his feet on the bar rail and hands on the bar and on his knee. It was the coolest. He had just played for 20,000 Foo Fighter’s fans the night before, and here he was playing for us, making it look easy.
I’m thinking of Taylor Hawkins today and the afternoon we spent together. A nice, talented guy gone far too soon. #RestInPower
Is there a band who enjoys rock stardom more than Foo Fighters? They fill stadiums, record disco songs and death metal tunes. Leader Dave Grohl does drum-offs with teenaged musicians on YouTube and they trolled a Westboro Baptist Church protest with a loud ‘n lengthy version of the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing” from the back of a flatbed truck.
Foo Fighters let the good times roll into theatres this week with the release of “Studio 666,” a rock ‘n roll horror comedy now playing in theatres.
Following in the footsteps of their ancestors—KISS and the Monkees—they play themselves in a big screen schlock fest with some guts, glory and great tunes.
The movie begins with a flashback to 1993 and a horrific murder scene in an Encino mansion. The band Dream Widow has been recording an album there, but are interrupted by a nasty guy swinging a hammer. The dull thwacks of the hammer hitting the final victim are even captured on tape.
Cut to present day. Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett and Rami Jaffee of Foo Fighters owe a new record to their label. “It’s our tenth album,” Dave says, “we can’t do the same old ****. We have to break the mold on this one.”
The label boss (Jeff Garland) knows how to make that happen. He suggests an old, abandoned mansion in Encino (see above). The place is rundown, and even the flirty neighbor (Whitney Cummings) gives off a strange vibe. “It definitely has a weird energy,” Dave says. “Do you guys get an overwhelming sense of death and doom?”
They do, but Dave hears something no one else does. “The sound of this house is the sound of album ten,” he says. “No songs yet, but we’ve got the sound.”
Reluctantly, the band moves in but despite Dave’s enthusiasm, the songs don’t flow. All he can come up with are retreads of his old tunes or plagiarized versions of other people’s songs, which leads to a Lionel Ritchie cameo that makes you wonder why he doesn’t do more comedy.
The writer’s block breaks one night after Dave is tormented by a dream—or is it?—of strange creatures who lure him into the mansion’s basement, where he finds a dusty old reel to reel machine, loaded up with hard driving songs left behind by Dream Widow.
Dave emerges with some killer riffs and a plan to record a devilish epic that could be a double or even triple album. “It’s going to be like “2112” times 2112,” he says.
Question is, what exactly has possessed Dave to record this song and what, exactly, will the band have to sacrifice to finish the album?
“Studio 666” is a satire on the whole “Devil made me do it” heavy metal lore with old school splatter effects, spurting blood and headbanging, literally and figuratively.
It’s unlikely we’ll be seeing any of the Foo Fighters on next year’s Best Actor list, but that isn’t the point here. This is a loving tribute to the kinds of movies Blockbuster kept on a shelf near the back of the store. Devil possession movies with low fi effects and some fun thrills and chills. Add to that some pretty good in-jokes, some funny/gross killings and you have a Faustian tale about selling one’s soul for rock ‘n roll.
“Studio 666” feels a bit long, but Foo Fighters, as usual, bring the good times, by poking fun at themselves and the devil movie genre.
Hilly Kristal became known as the Grand Curator of Punk. As the owner of CBGB, the American birthplace of punk rock, he auditioned hundreds of bands and gave groups like The Ramones, Blondie and The Talking Heads their first big breaks. When he liked a band he’d say his now legendary catchphrase, “There’s something there…”
After watching “CBGB,” the Alan Rickman movie based on his life and club, I was reminded of Gertrude Stein’s famous catchphrase, “There is no there there.”
When we first met Hilly (Rickman) he’s a divorced father with two failed clubs to his credit. When he stumbles across a dive bar on New York City’s Bowery he sees an opportunity. Taking over the lease, he befriends the neighborhood’s junkies, bikers and musicians, even if his original idea of presenting country, blue grass and blues (hence the acronym CBGB) gets passed over in favor of underground music by bands like Television and The Ramones.
The club is a hit, but Kristal is a terrible businessman who never pays his rent or liquor distributors. That job falls to his daughter Lisa (“Twilight’s” Ashley Greene) who pays the bills as an endless parade of musicians with names like Iggy Pop (Taylor Hawkins), Joey Ramone (Joel David Moore), Cheetah Chrome (Rupert Grint) and Debbie Harry (Malin Akerman) create a new youth movement on the club’s rickety stage.
Punk rock was a glorious racket, a stripped-down music designed put a bullet in the head of the Flower Power generation. Loud, fast and snotty, the music was ripe with energy and rebellion.
In other words it was everything that “CBGB” is not.
Director Randall Miller gets period details mostly right—the film’s set features artifacts from the punk rock shrine, including the bar, the pay phone, the poster filled walls and the infamously funky toilets—but entirely misses the spirit of the times and the music.
A movie about punk rock should crackle with energy. Despite a rockin’ soundtrack, “CBGB” feels inert. The story focuses on Kristal but Rickman barely registers. The actor reduces the flamboyant character to a morose monotone; a man at the center of a hurricane but who doesn’t feel the breeze.
The impersonations of the musicians are mostly quite good. The surprising stand-out is Rupert Grint as Dead Boys bassist Cheetah Chrome. It’s as un-Harry Potter a performance as you could imagine and he enthusiastically embraces Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Potter habit of showing his bum as often as possible.
Others acquit themselves in suitable snotty fashion, but the recreations mostly made me wish “CBGB” was a documentary and not a feature film. It has interesting tidbits about the time. For instance when Hilly first meets the Ramones he asks if they have any original songs. They say they only have five tunes, four of which have “I Don’t Wanna” in the title while the fifth is called “I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” It’s a funny story, whether true or not, it hints at the kind of details that may have fleshed out a film that spends far too much time focused on the club and not on the music.
Not that there is a shortage of music, but it feels more “Rock of Ages” than “Raw Power.”
“CBGB” takes an exciting story of an important time and shaves all the rough edges away, leaving behind smoothed over vision of a rough-and-ready time.
