DVD Review: Peter Gabriel - Classic Albums: So

DVD Review: Peter Gabriel - Classic Albums: So
Eagle Vision
All Access Rating: A-

Peter Gabriel - Classic Albums: So 2012

Usually, Peter Gabriel’s artistic instincts are above reproach, but his original choice for the female half of the hopeful duet “Don’t Give Up” that appeared on his commercial breakthrough LP So was an odd one. 

For this song about the devastating emotional effects of job loss in a troubled economy, Gabriel thought “country and western” queen Dolly Parton, so cheery and brassy, could be a perfect fit for the role – and make no mistake, whoever was going to be picked to sing opposite of Gabriel was going to be acting, as So producer Daniel Lanois explains in this edition of the highly acclaimed “Classic Albums” documentary series from Eagle Vision.

It’s not that Parton was incapable of toning down her act to express the gritty and desperate compassion Gabriel – inspired by Depression-era black-and-white photos from the lens of Dorothy Lang – needed from her to make it work. After all, as Gabriel says here, he originally imagined the piece as a country song. Because Parton grew up impoverished, she could certainly relate to the subject matter, and she’d performed songs that dealt with the anxiety of economic distress with the requisite empathy and emotional resolve to get through it. Still, Parton’s earthiness and boundless good cheer, at least in retrospect, seem particularly ill-suited for the affecting, air-brushed “Don’t Give Up.” Even veteran music journalist David Fricke, who’s as open-minded as anybody when it comes to musical experimentation, remarks on camera that he “couldn’t imagine anybody else” doing the song but Gabriel’s other choice, Kate Bush.

Bush made perfect sense, her feathery, angelic vocals offering soothing comfort and clinging hope to a broken man facing unemployment and an uncertain future. Lanois, as he relates so eloquently in “Classic Albums: So,” believes Bush’s acting was flawless, and some would say So was pretty close to perfect, as well. An awakening of sorts for Gabriel, So found Gabriel opening himself up to possibilities, tinkering with fecund African rhythms and toying with the classic swinging R&B and soul sounds he loves so much to make music that was more infectious and joyful. He had emerged from the dark, tangled psychological jungles and the obscure, arty ghetto of previous works ready to be artistically “revealing and naked,” according to Lanois. Or, to put it another way, Gabriel just let himself be human on a record that was guileless and openhearted, a piece of art that left him exposed and opened up floodgates of emotions, and yet was still quite experimental. And the filmmakers here conduct a proper examination of its body and its soul.

Unlike a lot of the editions in the long-running “Classic Albums” series, this one wisely doesn’t spend much time on the back story, except to detail the renting of that bucolic paradise Ashcombe House – the manor home where many of Gabriel’s solo LPs were recorded – and discuss Gabriel’s reluctance to give his records titles, as well as reveal how Lanois convinced him to give up his longstanding insistence that his recordings be free of cymbals. Instead, this film focuses on the sometimes thorny, but intensely productive, partnership between Gabriel and Lanois, which, as the film indicates, was tested during the year it took to make So, their sometimes contentious chemistry setting off sparks and spurring creative epiphanies. 

An insider’s perspective on the making of colorful and charming video for“Sledgehammer” is provided, along with engaging, yet detailed, discussions about how that track and others like “Red Rain,” “Big Time” and “In Your Eyes”developed and evolved, with particular attention paid to the one-take drumming of Manu Katche on “Red Rain” and that funky Tony Levin bass line that drives “Sledgehammer.” One of the more interesting segments, however, finds Laurie Anderson spilling the beans about how the innovative and arty “This is the Picture (Excellent Birds),” an austere and almost futuristic collaboration with Gabriel that was light years ahead of its time, was so quickly thrown together, at least by Gabriel’s standards, who, as the documentary reveals, is infamous for taking his own sweet time in the studio and asking for a multitude of takes. 

Rich with entertaining anecdotes, the narrative – constructed with a wide-ranging collection of incisive and intelligent interviews – flows smoothly and logically, though not in what could be considered a linear fashion, from a generous overview of the record into a microscopic study of all its most intricate parts. “Classic Albums: So” also dissects Gabriel’s creative process with an invigorating intellectual curiosity, as evidenced by the sheer number of interviews the filmmakers undertook. All the while they also seem intent on letting viewers in on a little secret: Peter Gabriel has a sense of humor. Although it too often gets bogged down in the minutia of the recording process and glosses over some key aspects of So, the film is exactingly researched and forms a wonderfully edited backdrop of vintage video and photographic stills of Gabriel and company at work or at play – the images serving what is a fascinating story. And the bonus features offer more extensive looks at that “Sledgehammer” video that was so ahead of its time and other album tracks, so that viewers get a more complete picture of how the LP came together in the 35 extra minutes that didn't appear in the broadcast version of “Classic Albums: So.” Lanois calls Ashcombe House a “construction site,” where Gabriel and company did painstaking work on So, the most successful album of his career. He might have added that it was also where the magic happened, because there was some of that in the air as well.

-         –   Peter Lindblad

DVD Review: The Doors - Mr. Mojo Risin' - The Story of L.A. Woman

DVD Review: The Doors - Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman
Eagle Rock Entertainment
All Access Review: B+

In a very real sense, after Jim Morrison’s infamous Miami arrest on morals charges and public drunkenness, The Doors as a whole were subject to house arrest. The south Florida homecoming for Morrison at the Dinner Key Auditorium, packed with 14,000 people, was the first stop on The Doors’ 1969 tour, and it was a night nobody would ever forget. Perhaps it even signaled that the end was near.

Three sheets to the wind, and perhaps inspired by seeing the confrontational performance of the experimental theater group The Living Theatre the night before, the Lizard King was in no mood to sing. And so, during “Break on Through,” he began a confused rant that at once embraced the slavish adoration of the crowd – noting his Floridian roots – and then turned on them with blazing hostility, rebuking them as conformists and calling them “f**king idiots” and “slaves,” while expressing his love for a weirder and wilder locale, his adopted playground Los Angeles.

It’s all there on screen in the documentary “Mr. Mojo Risin’: The Story of L.A. Woman,” which follows the making of The Doors’ magnificent coda, the slice of gritty, sinister blues and dark, surreal jazz known as L.A. Woman that would turn out to be Morrison’s last studio recording. There’s Morrison threatening to expose his genitalia for all to see. There’s Morrison feigning oral sex on guitarist Robby Krieger. And then, of course, there are the clueless cops hauling away a bemused Morrison, who seems completely satisfied with the circus-like chaos and complete disorder he has so diabolically orchestrated. But, maybe, just maybe, there was more to Morrison’s actions than a simple desire to create all-out anarchy. By this time, Morrison’s notoriety had already become the stuff of legend – people had taken to calling them the “dirty Doors” as Manzarek relates in the film – and the alcohol was doing a lot of the talking, leading to arrests and tales, whether made up or true, of incredible hedonism. But, as Manzarek explains, Morrison had some questions for the Miami audience and everybody else who wanted a piece of The Doors, one of them being, “What do you want from us?” Morrison might have been asking the same question of himself.

As longtime music writer David Fricke argues, the implications of Morrison’s actions probably affected him the most. The threat of going to Rayford Penitentiary and losing his freedom, even if for only a matter of months, weighed heavily on a man who valued that above all else. In the short term, all the legal complications forced The Doors to cancel that ill-fated tour. Left with nothing better to do since they really couldn’t go anywhere to play – nervous venue owners didn’t want anything to do with such outrageous behavior and banned them from most of the halls in the U.S.  – The Doors responded by going back in the studio to record what would become L.A. Woman, and “Mr. Mojo Risin’” offers a competent, if somewhat pedestrian, creation story.

The sessions, as producer Paul Rothschild tells it in vintage interview footage, did not begin well. Morrison seemed disinterested, and the music, at least to Rothschild’s ears, was uninspiring. Even Manzarek admits the playing was sub-par, and Krieger relates that Rothschild even felt “Riders on the Storm” sounded like lame cocktail music. In a move that stunned The Doors, Rothschild parted ways with the band, leaving The Doors to their own devices and top-notch engineer Bruce Botnick. The story of Rothschild’s departure and how it resulted in the band taking control of its music is handled with the utmost care, as all sides are given equal time. In fact, there is great honesty and detail that emerge from interviews with all the living Doors, Botnick and a cast of seemingly thousands.

Musicologists will wet themselves over the attention paid to the recording process behind L.A. Woman and the studio magic – which returned for The Doors when they left the drab, lifeless Sunset Sound studio for the livelier environs of their rehearsal and office space on Santa Monica Boulevard, where their music was “seeped into the walls,” as drummer John Densmore so vividly recounts – that gave birth to some of the most memorable songs in the band’s catalog. One moment, Manzarek is telling how the soft, rain-like piano parts for “Riders on the Storm” developed and how Elvis’s bassist Jerry Scheff, who sat in and played on L.A. Woman, was dumbfounded as to how to recreate thosee bass parts on his instrument; the next, the disagreement over whether “Love Her Madly” should have been the first single is rehashed, with Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman recalling how it raised the hair on the back of his neck and Krieger saying he thought it was “too commercial.”

Packed to the gills with revelatory and enthusiastic interviews and vintage photography and video footage of both candid, behind-the-scenes moments and blood-pumping live segments, “Mr. Mojo Risin’” is nothing if not comprehensive. The story of every song on L.A. Woman, with the possible exception of “Cars Hiss by My Window,” gets its own time in the sun, and the filmmakers take great pains to examine the bones and the guts of tracks like the stomping, swampy blues of “Crawling King Snake” and the simmering heat and seedy noir of “L.A. Woman,” a song that captures the essence of the city, it’s literary underbelly and its women and pays tribute to them all in Morrison’s vivid poetry. With Botnick at the sound board and Densmore, Krieger and Manzarek at their instruments, the musical evolution of key moments in each track are intensely explored, as are Morrison’s lyrics, pregnant with metaphor and primal, dream-like imagery.

What crashes the party is … well, the lack of anything resembling a good time. On occasion, “Mr. Mojo Risin’” begins to drift off and become tedious and dry, an academic paper come to life in documentary film form. While smartly emphasizing the actual blood, sweat and tears behind L.A. Woman rather than the sensationalism that seems to dog other Doors’ biographies, the filmmakers treat the subject matter with little wit and a seriousness that colors it in grey rather than the rich, bold hues and apocalyptic psychedelic paints the Doors brushed onto the canvas of their music. Still, the documentary doesn’t pander to the lowest common denominator. It is an intelligent and affecting history, especially as it relates to Morrison’s jetting off to Paris with girlfriend Pamela Courson after his vocals for L.A. Woman were done and the sense among friends and band mates that he wasn’t coming back.

One of the draws to this DVD is the appearance of a new Doors song, “She Smells So Nice,” included in the bonus features. A swinging, bluesy number that jumps off the dance floor of a southern backwoods juke joint, “She Smells So Nice” sweats heavily and steps lively as a cavalcade of Doors still pictures from days gone by passes through – that is before the song morphs into a slow-cooked, tantalizing stew of savory guitar notes, subtle brushed drums and neon electric keyboard lights. Even if the film isn’t quite as glorious or as transcendent as The Doors were, it does its job with workmanlike attention to detail and a tenacious desire to get the story right, to do it justice. And, in the end, isn’t that what we all want from a music documentary?

 - Peter Lindblad

Official Trailer from Eagle Rock: