It’s only rock ‘n’ roll and I liked it. The new documentary “Troubadours” remembers the thoughtful side in a bipolar era for music. In the early 1970s, you could let your freak flag fly with the Who’s smashed guitar theatrics or Led Zeppelin’s heavy bass grooves. Or, you could unplug and hear lyrics from the singer-songwriters who gave voice to the emotion of a generation left spent by the sociopolitical upheavals of the 1960s.
| If you go |
| ‘Troubadours’ |
| 3 out of 5 stars |
| Director: Morgan Neville |
| Not Rated. |
| Running Time: 90 minutes |
James Taylor, David Crosby and their peers were the pop poets before hip-hop. Forty years after Carole King’s milestone album “Tapestry” set records on the charts, “Troubadours” shows where and how rock’s singer-songwriter movement emerged. Following a world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the film opened theatrically at downtown D.C.’s West End Cinema and will air on PBS as a part of its American Masters series next month in conjunction with a DVD release.
Emmy- and Grammy-nominated Morgan Neville directs this well-told slice of modern history, which will be of most interest to devotees of the genre. A melding of folk with rhythm and blues, the music offered personal storytelling grounded in acoustic technique. Its epicenter was a legendary club in West Los Angeles called the Troubadour, owned by a great eccentric of the day, the late Doug Weston. Even fans may not realize how many rock icons made their debuts on the Troubadour’s stage. Filmmaker Neville interviews several of them. He also includes riveting concert footage from then and now, archival photos, and plenty of hippie nostalgia to chronicle the personalities that eventually intersected at the Santa Monica Boulevard venue.
The personalities/careers of Taylor and King are the focus of “Troubadours.” But Crosby, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Elton John, and Kris Kristofferson all offer their recollections of the era, tracing their origins back to impresario Weston and a distinctive L.A. scene then.
Oddly, Cheech and Chong and Steve Martin debuted at the Troubadour too. Martin offers particularly witty anecdotes. For instance, he recalls his bar conversation there with a pretentious Glenn Frey who was naming his new band: It was to be “Eagles” not “The Eagles!”
But “Troubadours” becomes most, er, electric when these mellow cats sing and play. Ancient clips of a young Joni Mitchell riffing her verse, of a frizzy-haired King feeling like a “Natural Woman,” of a 23-year-old Sir Elton pounding out “Take Me to the Pilot,” and of a “Sweet Baby James” Taylor harmonizing — they prove why they’ve endured from vinyl to iTunes.
