Written by Drew DeNicola
Directed by Drew DeNicola & Olivia Mori
**** (four stars)
What happens to a band when despite their musical greatness, the blinding white lights of fame, fortune and celebrated mass appeal still remain completely out of reach?
In a recent posting, I reviewed Director Alison Ellwood's excellent documentary "The History Of The Eagles (2013), a two-part, four hour exploration of the globally famous Southern California rock and roll band, whose sparkling body of work not only struck gold during the band's heyday of the 1970's, it has only grown ten-fold ever since. Now, I arrive with another excellent music documentary, but this time about a band whose musical legacy is no less enduring and has also grown since their arrival in the early 1970's but unlike the Eagles, this band's superior talent, stellar critical acclaim and greatest expectations only led to dismal commercial failures and interpersonal emotional states that were debilitating at best and crippling at worst.
The band is the ironically named Big Star, created by the late singer/songwriter/guitarist Chris Bell, who, alongside drummer Jody Stephens, the late bassist Andy Hummel and the late, and enormously celebrated singer/songwriter/guitarist Alex Chilton, created what I feel is one of the 1970's very best power pop albums, the seminal "#1 Record" (1972), an extraordinary debut that was then followed by the dazzling "Radio City" (1974) and the harrowing, hallucinogenic artistry of the band's final release "Third/Sister Lovers" (1978).
The film is "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me," titled with an equal sense of irony as Directors Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori have created an experience that unfolds and functions very much like the band's three albums; a powerfully conceived and felt work of art that contains equal parts beauty, exuberance and the deepest levels of melancholia and tragedy. As with "The History Of the Eagles," DeNicola and Mori do not deviate from the form of the music documentary in any conceivable way but what they do accomplish as cinematic storytellers is the realization of a film that unfolds slowly and beautifully, with full purpose and an undeniable force that left me consumed with a palpable sadness that made even the triumphs linger with tremendous bittersweetness. Now available on all home video formats, "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me" comes highly recommended to all of you, especially if you are looking for an alternative to the behemoths running amok at all of our local cinemas. And do not be surprised if you happen to find yourself involuntarily reaching for the Kleenex.
Set in Memphis, Tennessee, "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me" chronicles the creation of the titular rock band, the recording sessions that yielded their debut album and then, the stunning failures that followed and eventually broke the band apart. But as a contrast to a film like "The History of The Eagles" and even most music documentaries that seem to chart the standard arc of the beginnings, rise, troubles, failings, the subsequent redemption and even greater rise of an artist and band, what DeNicola and Mori have achieved with this film is to not only explore the nature of what happens when dreams die but even more provocatively, what happens when failure somehow becomes the success. Yet even that kind of success, especially for Big Star, whose cult status and massive influence only continues to grow, is a most bitter pill to swallow as there was indeed such tremendous failure and the one band member who desperately needed to see the fruits of his labors never lived to experience them.
But first, there is the process of creation and "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me" deftly delves into that invigorating process as we are witnesses to work, talent, and craft all blending together into musical alchemy. While DeNicola and Mori do not have actual film footage of Big Star at work in the studio, they do indeed have many studio photographs as well as audio studio chatter to utilize, which does indeed preserve a sense of mystery to an already mysterious band. Furthermore, DeNicola and Mori also achieve a feat that Director Dave Grohl accomplished so masterfully in his outstanding documentary "Sound City" (2013), as we see that the creation of a wort of art is the result of not just the gifts of the artist in question but also in part to the people and the environment that surrounds the artist.
"Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me" is a passionate tribute to the musical culture of Memphis, Tennessee during the specific time period of the 1960's and 1970's. DeNicola and Mori are able to weave a quiet yet perceptive socio-economic layer into the film as we can see that due to the rise of the middle class, there was just enough extra family income to be able to provide children with the opportunity to pursue any musical desires, especially after the sonic boom of The Beatles and the British Invasion hit the American landscape.
As we meet several key figures of the Big Star story, from musicians to engineers, producers and other local artists (and whom all contribute enlightening interviews and narrative to the film), we gather the true sense of community that existed in Memphis, a community that was able to produce bands like Big Star. We see how every person involved played a part into gathering those four particular men together to create, record and experiment to their hearts content, blending their influences of The Beatles, The Byrds, bubblegum pop, garage rock, gentle psychedelia, and the rich soul music inherent to Memphis (especially through the presence of the legendary Stax records music label for whom Big Star recorded through the subsidiary of Ardent Records) into a succulent sonic stew that contained dark existential themes and deep introspection combined with the universal tales of love and loss.
That ebb and flow in the pursuit of success and the influence of the people that surrounded Big Star was most significant during sections of the film that almost feel like diversions from the main storyline of the band but are ultimately crucial. I especially loved the section of the film that was devoted to a 1973 Rock Writers Convention held in Memphis, an event designed to prompt the unionization of rock journalists but one that also featured a heroic performance by Big Star after the commercial failure of "#1 Record" and Chris Bell's departure, leaving the band as a trio.
But mostly, "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me" provides us fascinating windows into the inner worlds of the band's leading figures, Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, young men who were essentially Big Star's "Lennon and McCartney" but also young men who were fiercely idiosyncratic, profoundly creative and inventive, deeply "heart-on-sleeve" artists who were constantly seeking and searching but also somehow unknowable, even to their own bandmates.
The enigmatic status of Alex Chilton only continues to broaden, deepen and puzzle through the course of the film. Chilton, once the teen-aged lead singer of The Box Tops (who scored big with "The Letter") was the one band member of Big Star who had achieved a certain level of fame. And it almost seemed that as soon as he touched that brass ring, he wanted nothing to do with it. Yet, he still pursued his creative muse, regardless of where it would take him and at times in the most confounding ways. After Chris Bell's departure from Big Star and Chilton had taken over the creative reins and established himself as the band leader, that crystalline, glistening sound and sonics of "#1 Record" were already abandoned for a harder edged, thicker sound that somehow never belied the power pop glory found on extraordinary tracks like "September Gurls" but infused them with a pungent darkness that was often unsettling, as in the amazing drowsy track "Daisy Glaze," on which Chilton sings "You're gonna die! Right now!"
Returning to the element of how the environment affected the art, once the drug scene of the '70s had become more commonplace, and the music scene had evolved past the more radio friendly sounds of power pop into something more abrasive, so did Alex Chilton, as his artistic process (which was indeed narcotically enhanced) became more deconstructive. It was not only as if he was taking the tightly structured songs of Big Star's past and turned them inside out, upside down and backwards, he seemed to be doing the exact same thing to his mind and spirit as well, trying to take apart and reassemble exactly what music may have even meant to him. This new conceit sometimes found him arriving to the studio for session work without his guitar! Chilton's mercurial personality eventually found him abandoning Big Star entirely for increasingly difficult solo work and forays into the punk rock movement, and still, for whatever reasons, he re-formed Big Star with Jody Stephens in the 1990's anyway. It remains a mystery to me as to why he would shrug off the growing accolades that came his way from new musicians on the rise during the 1980's, thus finally increasing the notoriety of Big Star. But the sadness of the one who needed to hear those accolades the most but never did, struck the deepest chords with me as I watched "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.".
The greatest tragedy in the story of Big Star to me is firmly housed within the figure of Chris Bell, an enormously talented yet extremely fragile soul who, in addition to his issues with depression and drug abuse, his devout spirituality and even questions concerning his sexual identity, was indeed forced to face the harsh realities that occurred when his music was under-heard and therefore undervalued by the mass public despite the immense critical acclaim. One thing to note about the band first album "#1 Record," and cannot be over-stated is that Chris Bell, while serving as a writing partner to Alex Chilton, was truly the architect of that album's sound and overall presentation as well as being the founder of the band in the first place. These facts were ignored upon the album's release, and the acclaim leaned towards the more famous Chilton to boot. This display damaged Bell to the point where his relationship with Chilton dissipated, he exited the band and even erased all of the master tapes.
Chris Bell died from a late 1978 car crash and so sadly, his massive influence was not fully recognized until after the posthumous release of solo material, featuring the gloriously painful and transcendent "I Am The Cosmos," in the early 1990's, material that he was unable to convince record labels to support while he was alive. And then, there is the even greater fact that he, along with the band, more or less invented the alternative rock scene as we know it due to bands and artists like R.E.M., Robyn Hitchcock, The Replacements, Teenage Fanclub and others citing Big Star as a key source of influence.
This was the point of the film where I wished that Chris Bell had lived, especially during this era of social media where fans are able to communicate with the artists more or less directly and he could then be able to see that all of the work was not in vain. To know that he fully expressed his artistry, pain and joy and those messages were indeed received in full by generations upon generations of musicians and fans, like myself. That something he created so long ago would never be unappreciated but beloved and would still retain its artistic power and strike those heartfelt chords among anyone who chose to listen. DeNicola and Mori achieve this feat in their film not through any means that are cloying or falsely manipulative. All they do is just provide the venue for his friends associates and family members to just speak and speak and to also just play the music, allowing us to make any and all connections to the emotions contained. Witnessing this piece of the Big Star story just made me realize just how horribly sad it would be to give your heart to the world and feel as if nobody cared. Yet, we did and still do. I just wished that I could have the opportunity to have told him myself.
During these instant gratification times that we live in, 'Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me" is a film that seriously questions what exactly is success. It seems to be more than fitting that I am just now seeing this film as one year ago this month, I wrote a feature for Savage Cinema's companion blogsite Synesthesia celebrating Big Star's "#1 Record" as being one of my favorite albums, a fact that cannot be over-stated in any fashion to all of you. While I cannot remember the exact year, I discovered the band sometime during the mid to later 1990's as I was exploring a local record store just looking for...something. I had no idea of what I would find but somehow, I just knew that once I found the elusive album, it would be the perfect fit for my spirit. When Big Star found its way to me, the meeting was indeed life altering as they have spoken to my soul and have inspired me in more ways than I could possibly recount to you.
I urge you to seek out this band if you have never heard them. Listen to their albums and most certainly, I sincerely hope that you all take the time to view this wonderful movie. Maybe the nature of success is not always within sitting at the top of the charts. It is knowing that you were seen and heard and valued at all and completely accepted upon your own terms unconditionally.
And for that, Big Star has got to be one of the most successful groups to have ever existed.
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