Gigs on Film

Andy Serkis in 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll'

2010 is still young, but already our screens have been graced by two films about dead rock stars. The first, Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy, told the story of the turbulent upbringing of John Lennon, and of the strained relationship with an estranged mother that helped to fire the future Beatle’s artistic ambition. The second, released in the UK today, is Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, a warts ‘n’ all biopic of Ian Dury, singer, songwriter and leading light of the British punk scene.

In theory, popular music and cinema should go together like love and marriage or cheese and chutney. Both are popular art forms after all, both came of age in the 20^th Century, and there’s a big overlap between gig-going and cinema-going audiences. Film inspires music and music inspires film, so naturally film-makers are tempted from time-to-time to tackle the subject of popular music and its stars.

And yet, somehow, this promising partnership rarely seems to work out well. If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then filming music is like, I don’t know, singing about theatre: not quite so remote, but still a difficult trick to pull off.