Rock ''N'' Film presents a cultural history of films about US and British rock music during the period when biracial popular music was fundamental to progressive social movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Considering the music''s capacity for utopian popular cultural empowerment and its usefulness for the capitalist media industries, Rock ''N'' Film explores how its contradictory potentials were reproduced in various kinds of cinema, including major studio productions, minor studios'' exploitation projects, independent documentaries, and avant-garde works. These include Rock Around the Clock (Fred F. Sears, 1956) and other 1950s jukebox musicals; Elvis''s King Creole (Michael Curtiz, 1958) and other important films he made before being drafted as well as the formulaic musical comedies in which Hollywood abused his genius in the 1960s; early documentaries such as The T.A.M.I. Show (Steve Binder, 1964) that presented James Brown and the Rolling Stones as core of a black-white, US-UK cultural commonality; A Hard Day''s Night (Richard Lester, 1964) that precipitated the British Invasion, Dont Look Back (1967), Monterey Pop (1968), and other Direct Cinema documentaries about the music of the counterculture by D. A. Pennebaker; Woodstock (1970); avant-garde documentaries about the Rolling Stones by Jean-Luc Godard, Kenneth Anger, Robert Frank, and others. After the turn of the decade, notably Gimme Shelter (1970) in which Charlotte Zwerin edited David and Albert Maysles''s footage of the Altamont free concert so as to portray the Stone''s complicity in the Hells Angels'' murder of a young man, the 60s'' utopian biracial music--and films about it--reverted to separate black and white traditions based respectively on soul and country. These produced Blaxploitation and Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972) on the one hand, and bigoted representations of the Southern culture in Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) on the other. Both these last two films ended with the deaths of their stars, and it seemed that rock ''n'' roll had died or even, as David Bowie proclaimed, that it had committed suicide. But in another documentary about Bowie''s concert, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973), D.A. Pennebaker triumphantly re-affirmed the community of musicians and fans in glam rock. In analyzing this history, David James adapts the methodology of histories of the classic musical to rock ''n'' roll to show how the rock ''n'' roll film both displaced and recreated the film musical.
Industry Reviews
"I love this book right from the opening sentence, with its fresh yet entirely proper reference to Elvis Presley's first (and timeless) record; the attention paid to the music--not least the black music--in that bizarre film The Girl Can't Help It; and the affection everywhere (including the relish of absurdities like the Teen Age Music International documentary that had Gerry & the Pacemakers take over from Chuck Berry in mid song). Dip into
it, or read it straight through. Either way, you'll value it." --Michael Gray, author of Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan
"This is a first-rate book: well-researched, well-organized, well-written, and on a topic that is of wide interest yet poorly represented in print. James' work will substantially raise the level of discourse on the relationship between rock music and cinema." --Rick Altman, author of The American Film Musical
"In Rock 'N' Film, David E. James provides a complete overview of rock music in the movies, from the teenage exploitation flicks of the mid-fifties to Elvis Presley's decidedly lightweight years in Hollywood and the Beatles' forays into absurdism. Written with a director's eye for detail and a songwriter's understanding of the milieu, Rock 'N' Film is a comprehensive and invaluable guide to the on-again, off-again romance between rock and the
silver screen." --Bruce Pegg, author of Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry
"David E. James' Rock 'N' Film is a valuable, capacious resource, tracing the intersection of popular music and motion pictures from Bill Haley to David Bowie, through exploitation films, documentaries, and every genre in between, on both sides of the Atlantic. Like Hendrix at Monterey, it leaves us wishing there were even more." --Marc Dolan, author of Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll
"Covering rock 'n' roll filmmaking in its entirety, this accomplished volume is readily accessible and written (as James himself notes) without the jargon that often mars film studies...Illustrated with a host of frame blowups, this informed, sharp, inviting, and absolutely authoritative book will be the source to beat on the subject of rock 'n' roll movies for quite some time...Summing Up: Essential. All readers." -- CHOICE
"Rock 'N' Film is an erudite and encyclopedic study of cinema's role in creating the social, cultural, aesthetic, and industrial worlds known collectively as "rock 'n' roll." His knowledge of cinema, as well as his clear love for and deep understanding of popular music as both a sonic and cultural force, make his book an indispensable treasure trove for studying the role of the popular arts in shaping the look and sound of American culture...He has
written a highly readable text, one that appeals to a broad audience and stands as a major contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities."--Phi Kappa Phi, University of Southern California
"With Rock 'N' Film, David James has provided not only a signal contribution to the much-needed reimagining of film history and cinematic intermediality but also one of the most cogent and revealing histories of Western popular music in the second half of the twentieth century."--Diacritics
