Friday, June 28, 2013

Twenty Feet from Stardom (***)

Something like a companion piece to Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary about the unheralded musicians who backed up 1960s hits by the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Miracles, the Temptations, and other stars, this shines a spotlight on the backup singers of American popular music, mostly the rock and R&B of the 1960s–'80s. With DIY home-recording equipment, Auto-Tune, and cash-strapped record companies, these are tougher times for backups, but some can still make careers of it.

Movies like this can sometimes be on the dull side because they don’t get beyond testimonies to the wonderfulness of their subjects. The first half has some of that, with Bruce Springsteen (who married his back-up singer), Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, and Sheryl Crow (a former back-up singer) among those testifying. Sting does too, but we actually get to see him working in the studio with Lisa Fischer, too. Fischer is one of the stars of the second half of the film, which is built around featurettes about a few of the women, but particularly in terms of their efforts at building solo careers. Among the most successful has been Darlene Love, still singing into her 70s and inducted, as a solo artist, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then there is Merry Clayton, the powerhouse female voice in the Rolling Stones hit “Gimme Shelter,” whose solo efforts in the 1970s met with only modest success. There is the relatively young Judith Hill, a songwriter who worries that too many backup gigs will derail her efforts to be seen as a solo artist. And there is Fischer, who had a moment of Grammy-winning stardom in the 1980s but professes to be happier as, most prominently, the Rolling Stones’ favorite backup singer on tour.

The film is not as revelatory as Standing in the Shadows; a couple of the women (and, with a few exceptions, the subjects are women) speak of their discomfort at being seen, on stage, as sex objects more than performers, but not that much behind-the-scenes dirt gets dished. (That Ike Turner saw himself as a pimp and his backup dancers as “hos” hardly counts as dirt at this late date.) Nor is there a ton of technical information about how back-ups are utilized in the recording process. But, for those with an interest in pop music, especially pre-1990 rock, the movie should be entertaining. I was especially taken with old clips of an impossibly young David Bowie, of George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh, and of Ray Charles exuberantly singing on television with the Raylettes, who included Clayton.

IMDb link

viewed 7/3/13 7:25 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/3/13

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