film review: Immediate Family

Directed by Danny Tedesco

ChinoKino rating: B

Review by Allan Tong

This music doc is the logical and spiritual sequel to Danny Tedesco's impressive The Wrecking Crew from 2008. Both films profile groups of top session musicians, unsung heroes in the L.A. rock business who reflect on their past glories. Immediate Family are drummer Russ Kunkel, bassist Leland Sklar, and guitarists Danny Kortchmar and Waddy Wachtel.

Starting in the early 1970s, they as individuals performed on landmark albums, including Carole King's Tapestry, James Taylor's Sweet Baby James, Joni Mitchell's Blue, and into the late-1980s played for many stars, such as Neil Young, Keith Richards and Don Henley. They also went on tour with some of them, like Wachtel for Linda Ronstadt in her heyday. Hands-down, these are top-notch players and they step out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this enjoyable film.

If you've seen Tedesco's previous doc, you know what to expect. Interviews are generous as are music clips, over 80 in fact. Phil Collins, Stevie Nicks, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Lyle Lovett and producer Peter Asher are among the parade of rock legends who sing the Family's praises. It's entertaining to hear tidbits like the one of headstrong Wathtel insisting on a guitar solo to replace a planned saxophone one in Steve Perry's hit, Oh Sherrie (a good call). Another highlight sees Wachtel recalling Linda Ronstadt singing her way into a strip joint in the middle of nowhere while on tour, because she wasn't carrying any I.D. to get past the door.

In fact, the entire film is fun and nice. Perhaps too nice. Apart from a brief mention of butting heads in the studio, the Family come across as nice guys. But the music business is a place notorious for clashing egos and where sex, drugs and greed rule. There's none of that in this film. Kunkel confesses his one regret that he didn't spend enough with his children when they were growing up. However, we don't hear from any of his children or spouses.

Another weakness of the film (not fault of the filmmaker) is that Family aren't a self-contained unit like the Wrecking Crew of the 1960s and beyond. Sure, they are now officially a band, playing gigs under that name in New York. However, this doc comes across as a collection of personalities who cross paths over the years, but were never a unit like the legendary Wrecking Crew.

That said, Immediate Family is a fun film to watch and listen to. It'll hit home to those who grew up on this music and there ain't nothing wrong with that.

Immediate Family opens on Dec. 15 in Toronto (at the Hot Docs cinema), Vancouver (at Vancity)! and is also rent or buy across Canada on the Apple TV app/iTunes and Google Play. It is being released in Canada by Mongrel Media.

film review: The Stones and Brian Jones

Directed by Nick Broomfield

ChinoKino score: A

Review by Allan Tong

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are household names in 2023, but not Brian Jones. Only longtime Rolling Stones fans will know Brian Jones, who in a few years after founding the band was kicked out and found dead in his swimming pool in 1969.

Renown British documentarian Nick Broomfield has released a gripping film about this tragic figure that will impress both diehards and newcomers. The Stones and Brian Jones includes many extensive interviews with bandmates, lovers and friends, unseen footage and even a forgotten Jones song.

Broomfield nailed the right interviews. Stones' bassist Bill Wyman is the band's most reliable chronicler and the bandmate closest to Jones. Jones was a brilliant guitarist whose mission was to bring the blues to British then white American audiences. However, says Wyman, Jones was also cruel, driven by insecurities over his elfin stature and losing control of the band he founded to Jagger and Richards.

Jones was also charming and polite. He sweet-talked his way into the homes of families and impregnated their daughters (some less than 20). He sired at least five children. Two schools expelled him and his parents threw him out of their cozy, middle-class home in Cheltenham, England. The teenage Jones rebelled against his  strict parents who objected to his passion for jazz and blues. Their schism lies at the heart of this film.

Another key interview is Marianne Faithfull, the musician, actress and Jagger's lover in the mid-60s. Jones had "incredibly low self-esteem" and that relations with the two leading Stones were so bad "they would have killed each other." She refers to the infamous 1967 drug bust after Jones carelessly boasted to a journalist about his drug intake, but the newspaper mistook him for Jagger and nearly killed the Stones.

Jones was also a bastard. Ex-girlfriend Linda Lawrence recalls knocking on the door of his flat with their little boy in tow and begging Jones for more support money. Instead, Jones and his then-paramour Anita Pallenberg huddled inside and laughed at her predicament.

Pallenberg is a key character. Seen in archival footage (she died in 2017), Pallenberg transformed Jones and (with Faithfull) injected sophistication into a the yobbish Stones. The Italian-German model was wordly and fearless and looked like Jones' twin. However, Jones beat her and Pallenberg fled to Keith Richards. (One of the film's few flaws is that it allows filmmaker Volker Schlondorff to characterize Pallenberg as a gold-digger. This is false.)

Though his occasional voice-over is unnecessary, Broomfield has done an outstanding research job, unearthing audio interviews of Jones' father, heartbreaking family letters, a song Jones had co-written that's never seen the light of day, childhood photos and even old film footage of him gamboling around his schoolyard. French singer Zouzou, "Lady Jane" Ormsby-Gore, photographer Gered Mankowitz, band insider Prince Slash and TV director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Rock and Roll Circus) also weight in. Zouzou recalls that Jones "never" played Rolling Stones records at home (though spun the Beatles constantly). Broomfield's film untangles the psychological mess that was Jones, digging deeper than most chroniclers of the Stones.

Insecure, substance-addicted and self-destructive, Jones felt trapped being a Stone. To the world he was a rebel, but really he remained a little boy who sought his parents' approval and never got it. 

The Stones and Brian Jones will be released by Mongrel Media on November 17 in select cinemas across Canada, Apple TV and VOD.