It’s all Martin Scorsese’s fault. Back in 1978, the maestro released The Last Waltz – the film that invented the music documentary. Covering the final concert by rock’n’roll road warriors the Band, Scorsese’s movie was the first to be shot on 35mm with professional cameras, and a script based on a set list and lyrics so the director could chart where the cameras needed to be ahead of time.
It opened with a disclaimer that flashed white on screen against a black background: “This film should be played loud!” The director clearly meant business.
Then, in 2005 – when music docs were still generally confined to niche audiences and MTV was gradually morphing into one long reality show – Scorsese did it again. No Direction Home traces Bob Dylan’s career from his 1961 arrival in New York to his first retirement from touring, following a motorcycle accident in 1966. It won awards from the TV, film and music industries and kickstarted the new golden era of artful, raw and passionate music docs that have been sprawling across the screen for more than a decade now, from Anvil! The Story of Anvil – a real life Spinal Tap – to 2006’s Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, built around music from Kanye West, Mos Def and the re-formed Fugees, along with Julien Temple’s memorable Glastonbury documentary.
In part this boom is down to rock entering its anecdotal stage – most punk or reggae stars are over 50, and there are so many rich stories attached to their lives. 2012’s Marley, for instance, spans the life and career of Bob Marley, with 66 tracks from his early solo career to his final days, and focuses on the racism he faced growing up as a mixed-race kid alongside his gradual conversion to Rastafarianism. 2013’s Muscle Shoals tells the story of soul music’s legendary recording studio with artists from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to Mick Jagger, Alicia Keys and Bono. What Happened, Miss Simone? covers Nina Simone’s music and politics and Standing in the Shadows of Motown revels in the unheralded Motown house band the Funk Brothers, who played on more hits than the Beatles, the Stones and the Beach Boys put together.
But this new wave of films isn’t just about old timers. Thanks to the smartphone age there’s a wealth of instant contemporary material that meant, for instance, Asif Kapadia’s groundbreaking 2015 feature Amy could begin with a 1998 home movie before unpicking her slow decline into addiction and her tragic death, mixing TV appearances with ugly drinking bouts or messy arguments caught on phone cameras.
Amy’s success meant 2016 was drenched in high quality music docs – from Hip-Hop Evolution, which told the history of rap in four parts, to One More Time with Feeling, which followed Nick Cave recording the album Skeleton Tree and dealing with the death of his son Arthur. If there’s a cult band, act or genre in existence, it’s now only a matter of time before someone makes a documentary about them.
What all of these documentaries have in common, of course, is the music – from huge hits to tracks you’ve never heard before (just think of Searching for Sugar Man), unrepeatable live performances and catastrophic musical collapses.
When Scorsese insisted on The Last Waltz being played loud, he wasn’t banking on a couple of speakers at the back of a TV. He didn’t think you’d hear it on a pair of tinny headphones. He wanted you to throb with every bassline, peak with every howling vocal and shiver with every beat of the drum. That’s exactly what the Sonos Playbase was built for – playing music from your TV that’s rich enough and loud enough to keep the maestro happy. How? Well, it’s designed to fit directly under your TV, allowing you to enjoy your favourite movies with the same sound clarity as a recording at Abbey Road Studios.
Created with both the home-cinema buff and pure audiophile in mind, the Sonos Playbase is the ideal system for experiencing music documentaries – enhancing the clarity of audio from archival footage and interviews, and rendering every note from every performance as it was intended to be heard by artist and film-maker. Because, after all, it’s not just about keeping the maestro happy, is it?
