Great docus to watch about Bowie & Ronstadt
David Bowie: Finding Fame. Try as I might, the closest I’ve ever come to relating to David Bowie’s music is with Space Oddity. I know Bowie, who passed away in January 2016, was an extremely talented artist who had the most fascinating ideas. I thought he looked beautiful and I liked watching him in the movies, Basquiat, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, but his music and I just did not click. As a result, Bowie to me all these past years had been merely, “Ground control to Major Tom. Ground control to Major Tom.”
I expect that to change soon, now that I feel like I have a better knowledge of the real Bowie. This is thanks to the BBC documentary David Bowie: Finding Fame. Directed by Francis Whately, this is the last of his Bowie Trilogy. The first two are Five Years and The Last Five Years. Those covered Bowie’s period of great success and the years before his death. Finding Fame chronicles what happened before all those.
Did you know that Bowie was in part of The Riot Squad Band, that nobody seems to have heard of? Did you know that he used to sing songs by the Kinks of The Who? Did you know that he was constantly in search of an image while trying to make it in London? Think Major Tom, Aladdin Sane, Space Man and others. The greatest of them all was Ziggy Stardust whom Bowie famously killed onstage in 1973 after he made it big. All of these and more are in Finding Fame.
The unauthorized docu uses archival footage of Bowie and interviews with close friends, like an ex-member of Spiders from Mars Woody Woodmansey, an ex-girlfriend and muse Hermione Farthingale and others who knew Bowie during the early days. No relatives joined in but I guess they were just being protective of the man. Best of all, though, there are lots of old and rare recordings in the soundtrack, Letter to Hermione, All the Madmen, London Boys, including my favorite, “Ground control…”
Now, Linda Ronstadt is one artist I easily relate to. Not only because there was a time when I wanted to sing Hurt So Bad, Ooh Baby, Baby and Blue Bayou. It is also because, from country rocker, I Fall to Pieces, I Can’t Help It If I’m Still in Love with You, she switched to I’ve Got a Crush on You, Someone to Watch Over Me, I’m a Fool to Want You and other standards with Frank Sinatra’s great arranger Nelson Riddle. Those albums were utterly divine. Just so you’d remember, she also had hit duets like Somewhere Out There with James Ingram and Don’t Know Much with Aaron Neville.
Now 74 years old, retired and suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, she has decided to tell her story in the documentary, The Sound of My Voice. Winner at the 63rd Grammy Awards for Best Music Film, it tells Ronstadt’s life story from her childhood singing Mexican canciones in Arizona to her rock period with the band Stone Poneys and her time with the Eagles and then onto major success as one of the first and the biggest crossover divas of them all and then up to her retirement in 2011.
Ronstadt herself narrates the film. And as usually happens when the subject cooperates, the docu presents such a wealth of materials for the audience to feast on. The live performances are stunning, particularly the diva medley with Stevie Nicks, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt and Carrie Underwood performed when Ronstadt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And lots of interviewees with interesting stories, Cameron Crowe, Aaron Neville, Kevin Kline, Glen Frey, David Geffen, Peter Asher, Jackson Browne, Dolly Parton and so many more.
Directors Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein show very little of the present-day Ronstadt. But who cares, there are more than enough of her pretty old self to go around. Come to think of it, The Sound of My Voice is more than her story. It is a cross section of pop music history told by somebody who was a very important part of it.
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