Rock Family Trees: Rocky (1995)

[michelej1]

Review by the Times UK, June 26, 1995

Rock Family Trees sounds like a great idea the detailed genealogy of pop groups but half-way through the first programme on Fleetwood Mac I realised two things. First, that I had seen a fairly comprehensive documentary on Fleetwood Mac only a couple of years ago (containing more information about the fate of guitarist and drugs casualty Peter Green; and dishing more dirt on the internecine love affairs and punch-ups); and second, that it was just a little bit like looking at someone's photo album, when you don't really know the people.

Evidently Mick Fleetwood and John McVie would do it all again if they got the chance, even though John McVie can now convey no consecutive thoughts except by means of whistles, eyebrows, and sudden fist movements. ''It was, you know, Mm!'' he'd say, pulling a face, stretching his eyes. Presumably the director sat behind the camera, nodding (ah-ha), instead of helpfully shouting, ''What the hell are you talking about?'' McVie considered phoning Peter Green recently, but didn't. Lucky for Peter Green, I'd say. The man has suffered enough.

[michelej1]

June 24, 1995, Times UK
ROCK FAMILY TREES:

The Fleetwood Mac Story

Today, Saturday, BBC2, 9pm

THE band began 27 years ago, when a steady young rhythm section and a limited but brilliant blues guitarist who was celebrating his birthday were given some free studio time as a present. The blues guitarist was called Peter Green and he was the first and the greatest of the band's guitarists to go wild or crazy or Awol, or all three. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie have survived as the core of Fleetwood Mac, and they've got less hair, fewer brain cells, and a lot more money and enemies than they had back then. They also, just in case they lose the drift of their own stories (which, in McVie's case is likely, he's a gorgeous example of a rock star, grey bearded, bandanna across his pate, and a steady supply of little noises and hand movements to fill in the holes in his sentences), have Pete Frame's ''family tee'' and John Peel's voiceover to give us the details. The script is a little plodding. The direction is pedestrian and sometimes laughably literal: when a guitarist successor tells the story of Peter Green turning up with a piece of cheese in his hair, a piece of cheese obligingly drops down in front of us. But the stories and the contributors are fascinating. Drugs, sex, bitterness, madness, primary school headmasters, they're all here.

[michelej1]

June 23, 1995, Times UK

BYLINE: David Sinclair

BODY:
David Sinclair wonders whether TV's raiders of the lost archives are in danger of turning music into a museum

There are numerous incidents in rock'n'roll history that have passed into folklore. From the Sex Pistols ransacking their record company offices in 1977 to Bob Geldof's grand gesture of goodwill in organising the Live Aid concert of 1985, such events make up our collective memory of pop.

But for every celebrated example of derring-do, there have been a thousand small, yet defining moments in the affairs of rock stars that bring their stories closer to soap opera or farce than high drama. Take the matter of guitarist Lindsey Buckingham's acrimonious departure from the ranks of Fleetwood Mac in 1987. It followed a blazing row with the group's singer Stevie Nicks, during which the two musicians (and former lovers) threatened to kill each other. Stepping in in an attempt to defuse the situation, bass-player John McVie said: ''Lindsey, why don't you just leave?'' The guitarist immediately quit the band. ''What I actually meant'', the bemused McVie says now, ''was: 'Why don't you just leave the room?'''

The episode is one of the many revealing reminiscences in the first edition of a new, six-part BBC2 series, Rock Family Trees. Based on the intricate genealogies researched and painstakingly hand-drawn by Pete Frame, subsequent programmes will focus on the tangled histories of Deep Purple, the Birmingham Beat Boom of the 1960s (the Move, the Moody Blues, ELO), the New York punk revolution of the 1970s (Patti Smith, the Ramones, the New York Dolls) and the New Merseybeat scene of the 1980s (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Echo and the Bunnymen, OMD, the Teardrop Explodes), among others.

The programme comes at a time when television interest in the history of rock has reached an all-time high. An Arena documentary called Punk and the Pistols, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of the birth of the Sex Pistols, and Message To Love, which marks the 25th anniversary of the Isle Of Wight festival, are both scheduled for broadcast in August. They come in the wake of the popular BBC series Sounds of the Sixties and Sounds of the Seventies, and Channel 4's recent My Generation season, ''rockumentaries'' of the Kinks, the Animals and the Troggs. Currently in production at BBC Bristol is a ten-hour documentary series called Dancing in the Street The History of Rock'n'roll, which, according to the series producer Hugh Thomson, promises to be ''the mother of all rock archive programmes''. Combining old footage with new interviews of about 200 ''key'' musicians, the programme's brief is to tell the full story of rock'n'roll.

But who is watching this stuff and why? ''For those of us who grew up in that era it has an obvious appeal,'' says Mark Cooper, fortysomething producer of BBC2's Later With Jools Holland. ''But it seems to appeal to younger people too. When you see the Brit-pop bands around now, they're more into the Small Faces than I ever was. I'm sure they're just as seduced by old footage of those groups. They've clearly been seduced by the haircuts.''

Ask anyone about the growth of archive TV programming in recent years and sooner or later they will refer to Michael Jackson, the controller of BBC2. Just 35 years old when he was appointed two years ago, Jackson commissioned a succession of projects, such as the various Bank Holiday theme nights, which have exploited TV's own history. Years ago, Jackson bought the TV rights to Rock Family Trees, but was unable to get the project off the ground.

Today, he's a bit bored with the continuing emphasis on archive material. ''A lot of areas of television have been exhumed,'' he says. ''I think archive material should take its place in the general repertory of television, alongside old movies, the weather, new documentaries, the news. I think it's just part of the warp and weft of television, rather than something to be remarked on as a phenomenon.''

Indeed, Jackson prefers not to think of Rock Family Trees and Dancing in the Street as archive programmes at all. '''Archive' smacks of slapping together a few juicy clips, and I think these programmes are much more than that,'' he says. ''These are brand-new programmes which draw on the archives to illustrate the story.''

But does this fascination with the past suggest that the present has been found wanting? ''I suppose rock music will never be as exciting or interesting again as it was when it was a new force,'' Jackson says. ''At least, you'd have to talk to a 17-year-old to find out whether it's still exciting or not.''

What is noticeable is that documentary programmes about rock usually achieve much higher viewing figures than programmes that feature straightforward performances. ''The documentary element gives it a broader, cultural presence,'' Jackson says. ''The stories tell us about the times. When it comes to just listening to music you either like the tune or you don't.''

''There is a danger that pop is becoming part of the heritage industry,'' says Francis Hanley, producer of Rock Family Trees. ''I sometimes think that pop is gradually becoming pickled in aspic. You get the sort of perspective that says bands were wonderful back then, but they're not so good now. There's a risk of celebrating things simply because they're old.''

''Part of the pleasure of pop music when it began was that it was supposed to be instantly forgettable,'' Cooper says. ''Now the opposite has happened. We're creating a rock museum culture, in which we're endlessly re-examining those images that were supposed to have disappeared. And we're all suckers for it.''

Rock Family Trees tells the Fleetwood Mac story tomorrow (BBC2, 9pm)