13/05/2024
The Lefsetz Letter: Revival ’69 Scroll down for trailer.
This is a fantastic movie. One that you will see if you were alive and conscious back in ’69, and one you will see even if you were not. Because it contains John Lennon. When he took the stage my heart skipped a beat.
But it also shows how the music and the business used to be different. Two twentysomething concert promoters flying by the seat of their pants. They concoct an oldies festival and ticket sales tank but instead of canceling the show, they go to the head of the local motorcycle gang for the money, who appears all warm and fuzzy fifty-five years later and doesn’t remember much, but he coughs up the dough.
And they’re off to the races.
Only they’re not. The 25k they got from the kingpin was for the Doors, but Jim Morrison got arrested for indecent exposure right after the deal was made and tickets still don’t move.
So the local deejay said to fly in Rodney Bingenheimer and Kim Fowley to scare up business. But that doesn’t work either.
This is not only the days before mobile phones, never mind smartphones, but faxes, everything was done by the landline. And the promoters are told the only way they can save the gig is by getting John Lennon.
Yeah, right.
Benefit shows are de rigueur these days. If you haven’t been approached to play for free, you’re not a star. But everybody on the inside knows the linchpin comes last, the superstar is not going to commit unless their fellow superstars are in. Then the dam falls.
But this Rock and Roll Revival is headlined by people playing clubs, they were stars once, but Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and Gene Vincent and Little Richard are not a draw for the boomers now hooked on FM rock. Believe me, no one from that demo cared, these performers were oldsters who truly didn’t get respect for at least another fifteen years. But John Lennon was older, these were his heroes.
So the promoter calls Apple.
Just imagine it, someone you don’t know calling the Beatles’ camp and his proffer being considered realistically, a pipe dream. Two nobodies from the Great White North are going to get John Lennon?
No one believes it, not CHUM radio, not even the outlaw biker.
But Lennon comes.
How do I know this? This was news back in ’69. And ultimately there was an album, entitled “Live Peace in Toronto 1969,” which was most notable for a version of “Cold Turkey,” which got radio airplay. But in an era where you had to buy it to hear it, I didn’t, but a friend did, and I listened. I can still see the cover in my mind’s eye, the cloud in the sky.
But I had no idea there was footage.
Oh, they’ve combed the vaults for a zillion rock documentaries. Oftentimes giving them the imprimatur of life-changing when that’s questionable at best, like “Summer of Soul,” or even the recent “The Greatest Night in Pop.” Both great flicks, worth seeing, but not the essence of rock and roll, they say they capture the zeitgeist, but they don’t.
“Revival ’69” does.
This is what young ‘uns can’t understand, how it used to be different. Not only were promoters young renegades, the acts were their contemporaries. Everybody was making it up as they went along. There was no VIP, food was hot dogs and popcorn. Hell, the music was enough. No production, just the act on stage. And watching this film you get it.
So there are two stories, the backstory, about putting on the concert, and the concert itself.
And the concert itself… Chuck Berry. This is not the bitter man of later years, sure, he’s employing a pickup band, but he’s smiling, he’s into it. And up close and personal you can see how good-looking he is.
And there are no tape recorders on stage, never mind hard drives. Meaning the music is imperfect, which bothered no one back then, it was expected, we didn’t want a movie, we wanted a one of a kind live experience, that lifted us into the stratosphere.
I saw Bo Diddley at a dance back in ’66, with his square guitar, did not move me, I wanted to hear the cover band, which played a killer version of the Beatles’ “I Want to Tell You.”
Gene Vincent? He died in 1971. I don’t think young ‘uns even know who he is.
But Little Richard. Man, you get it. He won’t go on stage until the lights are right. Because he understands it’s showbiz, a performance, it’s more than the music. As do all the performers. Their sheer will, along with the music, is employed to get the audience into the palm of their hands.
Little Richard has got his pompadour, and he hits the keys…
And I’ll never get over that exposé on Jerry Lee Lewis in “Rolling Stone” back in the day, but people forgot the contents of that article and he was recast as being warm and fuzzy as opposed to a hothead who was...
Scroll down for trailer. This is a fantastic movie. One that you will see if you were alive and conscious back in '69, and one you will see even if you
