The tried-and-tested, rags-to-riches, obscurity-to-legend format of music documentaries tracing the origins of pop and rock’s biggest and most influential stars is well established, with such recent-ish examples as Oasis: Supersonic (2016) and Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground (2021) showing the genre is still in rude health. But every now and again, some smart arse comes along to mess with the formula and pose the question: when is a music documentary not actually a music documentary? The latest culprits are Pavement. The Californian slacker-rock god-fathers have done nothing to tidy up the assorted myth and mirth that has followed them around since their 1990s zenith, with the making of a feature-length film called Pavements.
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Splicing traditional documentary narrative with behind-the-scenes making-of elements from both a spoof biopic of the band and a fake stage show called Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical, it’s been variously labelled as a “meta-documentary”, “docufiction” and an “experimental musical biopic concert film”. Words so chin-strokey they could give your chin a rash.
We’re not talking ‘mockumentaries’, here, like This Is Spinal Tap – where the band is completely made up. But rather true-ish musical tales told with a healthy and sometimes mischievous dose of artistic licence, full of fictions intentionally difficult to separate from fact, perhaps in the pursuit of revealing a deeper truth. So, hands on chins for a round-up of five of the most slanted and enchanting music docs out there today.
Searching for Sugar Man, 2012
Malik Bendjelloul’s film about obscure Mexican-American musician Sixto Rodriguez and his reputation in South Africa (where he’s said to have outsold Elvis) became the first rock doc to win the Best Documentary Oscar since Woodstock in 1970. Deservedly so, both for its revealing view of the harsh censorship of the apartheid regime, and the way it platformed an artist who never got his dues in his day. But tales of his career vanishing were exaggerated in the interest of crafting a more gripping story. He was big in Australia, for example, and his records remained available around the world for decades. Searching for Sugar Man is a powerful watch, but it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Mistaken for Strangers, 2013
Featuring two pairs of siblings among their line-up of five, The National’s ascent to indie-rock darlings is built on brotherly love. Not to be left out, frontman Matt Berninger brought his own brother Tom on tour as a roadie in 2010. Tom decided to take the opportunity to shoot a fly-on-the-wall road doc, much to the detriment of his responsibilities (at one show in LA he lost the guest list, leaving Matt’s wife, Werner Herzog and the cast of Lost all locked out). Mistaken For Strangers is much more scripted than it claims to be. But its tale of believing in your art and blood being thicker than water is funny and poignant.
