Our guest film critic this week is none other than Dome label head Peter Robinson, who has been to see “Muscle Shoals”. No lover of soul music should miss the opportunity to see the excellent 2-hour music documentary “Muscle Shoals” which, after debuting at the Sundance film festival, has now opened in London. Think of it as the Southern Soul version of “Standing In The Shadows of Motown”. For the Funk Brothers read The Swampers, alias Barry Beckett, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood and Roger Hawkins. The core of the movie is about Rick Hall, who formed FAME studio in Muscle Shoals in the heart of rural Alabama in the Sixties. Overcoming a personal life filled with tragedy, he was and is a driven individual who single handedly put the community on the musical map and created hit after hit for Atlantic and then Capitol Records. There is some great behind the scenes footage and black and white stills from back in the day, including footage from Aretha’s truncated visit, during which she cut “I Never Loved A Man” before her husband had an argument with one of the horn players and they flew out of town the next day. Among the many others who feature are Wilson Pickett, Candi Staton, Clarence Carter, the Allman Brothers, Steve Winwood and the Stones (Mick and Keith). The film brought back a lot of memories for me because I’ve been to Muscle Shoals myself - not once, but three times in the late Eighties and mid-Nineties. One of the UK bands I worked with at RCA cut part of an album there . I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time on those visits with guitarist Jimmy Johnson and drummer Roger Hawkins - who come across in the film, along with pretty well all the musicians (who also include Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham) as just regular, exceedingly modest guys. Although FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound were both known primarily for the incredibly gritty, soulful records they turned out, Muscle Shoals and their musicians were very versatile - cutting some great reggae with Jimmy Cliff and assisting in the birth of Southern rock, with the Allman Brothers coming into being at the studio. I learned to my surprise that Jimmy Johnson had produced the very earliest recordings of Lynyrd Skynyrd - recordings that initially went unreleased because they couldn’t get a deal and they were later re-recorded by Al Kooper. Johnson tells the story in the film of how “Free Bird” came about, from a piano intro played by their then roadie Billy Powell, who was a classically trained pianist, but nobody knew it. He was immediately hired as the band’s keyboard player. I was surprised about this because I spent a lot of time hanging with the guys in Lynyrd Skynyrd when they first came to the UK in 1973-74, and I never knew they’d recorded in Muscle Shoals..... although I guess the clue should have been the line in “Sweet Home Alabama” that goes “in Muscle Shoals they got the Swampers”..... For soul music lovers this is a must-see. It’s in London cinemas now and coming on DVD in February next year. The only negative is the frequent appearance as a talking head of Bono, for no good reason that I could discern. The American movie magazine Variety commented” “There’s too much of Bono, who’s ever ready to pontificate, but is not an ideal commentator on the soulfulness of African-American music”. Couldn’t have put it better!
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 14:52:06 +0000
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