Released to coincide with their incredible 50th anniversary in 2019, this documentary traces the history of a band who became the unlikeliest stars of the generation. It starts off setting the scene with shots of Texas before that familiar intro to ‘La Grange’ kicks in. And it’s pedigree is good – created by Banger Films, the same people behind ‘Iron Maiden – Flight 666’; ‘Rush – Beyond the Lighted Stage’; ‘Super Duper Alice Cooper’ and others…
What follows is mainly a collection of some extremely interesting tales about the very early days and there is some amazing footage of some of the bands that were doing the rounds in the day including home movie footage of Billy and his early days in The Moving Sidewalks as well as his legendary meeting with Jimi Hendrix. It paints the picture well of how they all started off in separate bands and with some amazing coincidences along the way that eventually got them playing together in the same band.
As well as interviews with the three members, this feature is also interspersed with additions by Billy Bob Thornton, Josh Homme and Ralph Fisher the legendary animal trainer & former rodeo clown !!
Whilst there are some greta anecdotes I’ll just give you a taste – there is one truly hilarious story about one of the very first gigs they every played. The stage curtain dropped to reveal the audience comprising one a solitary man. He was about to leave when they stopped him and proceeded to play the full show and an encore just to him !!
There are some amazing unseen live clips on offer here, although sadly none of the clips are long enough. There
are also some very interesting ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘on stage’ footage of the amazing and legendary Texas World Wide Tour and the problems involved with sharing the stage with buffalo, steer, rattlesnakes and buzzards.
They don’t hold any punches either – covering how the band briefly fell apart and did their own things for a while while Frank Beard battled his addictions is the most brutally honest and painful part of this.
They reconvened of course, fully refreshed and were on their way to being the biggest band around. Then comes the big disappointment. How the band changed their sound markedly for ‘Eliminator’ is glossed over in favour of how the videos were made and it’s at this point still thirty odd years ago sill that the documentary begins to wind down.
The years from that pivotal release until the present day are fitted into a couple of pictures which is a shame and also brings into doubt whether there will be a part two to this story. But a couple of pictures showing their Superbowl half time show and their 2010 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are hardly sufficient to cover several decades.
For me, the very best part of this documentary are the new clips of the band just jamming together in footage which was filmed especially for this film. That footage is spread throughout this video and you can’t help feel that a full length version of that footage might have been a great addition to this video on its own.
And its that decision and the fact there too much needless stuff here – like silly animations to narrate some of what happened and irrelevant footage of no importance. A more varied array of famous faces being interviewed would also have been better. It’s a decent doco all in all but you can’t help feel some disappointment at the wasted opportunity to make something truly special..
7/10
