057/ Questlove's SNL 50 music film
Questlove edits documentaries like he’s DJing them into existence. What an audacious conjurer.
I probably ought to write about Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl half-time show, but now it’s done and dusted I can’t be arsed. Not that it wasn’t terrific, it was. Perhaps too subtle, or pulled too many punches, at a moment requiring the opposite. But more than enough US cultural commentators have covered that ground fast, like dung beetles. There’s nothing to add. Obviously, it’s worth watching if you like Lamar’s work, or you’re (even casually) interested in how a thoughtful revolutionary hip hop artist handles the biggest music TV spot in the world, during the first weeks of the Flump Presidency.
But for me this week, what showed up was Questlove.
So, right now, a bunch of documentaries (as well as a disappointing movie) are floating around focused on the long-running American TV show Saturday Night Live, which this weekend celebrates its fiftieth year. There’s a three hour live show full of huge guests incoming. Here in the UK we barely notice SNL, but in the USA you know it’s a big old hoo ha. And we’ve appreciated the trickle down impact of its music/comedy relationship, even without knowing it (from Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World to the Lonely Island).
The best of the documentaries is Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson’s two-hour movie, Ladies & Gentlemen: 50 Years of SNL Music. In Britain you can watch it via NOW TV. A couple of years ago Questlove made that masterpiece Summer Of Soul, cut from of rediscovered footage of a 1969 six week New York City concert series. This new documentary is a different beast: more carefully put together on commission to eulogise a specific television show, far tamer, yet it’s still a music film built from archive and still one particular skill bursts from the screen, from the first moment.
In essence, Ladies & Gentlemen: 50 Years of SNL Music is a conventional — even somewhat small-c conservative — doc on a big slice of television history. It blends enthusiastic talking heads with lots and lots of footage, a rich source text, to tell an obvious, largely uncritical story, with little peril or surprise.
But it opens (no warning) with this jaw-dropping six minute megamix of different performances from across the decades, all mashed up, seamlessly beat-matched, audio and visual components stitched. This is how Questlove sets the pace and tone for his piece. It goes on and on. It’s like Jive Bunny on a bucket of molly in a time machine (a reference for folks of a certain age!)
Four minutes in, Rifa turns to me, is the whole thing just this? What an intricate, yet gonzo, thrill ride. Unsurprisingly for a fine drummer, Questlove has perhaps the greatest editorial rhythm of any doc maker working today.
Then the film settles in and introduces itself, zooming in on Saturday Night Live’s relationship with the thousands of music artists who’ve performed, almost always live live, from back when that was unheard of — and sometimes hosted as well, joining in comedy sketches, putting on stupid costumes… From the Rolling Stones to Prince to Nirvana. From Bowie, to Destiny’s Child, to Olivia Rodrigo, to Taylor Swift’s ten minute ‘All Too Well’, to ‘Dick in a Box’. From Elvis Costello changing his song, to Rage Against The Machine’s failure to comment effectively about that week’s ultra-capitalist host Steve Forbes, to Miles Davis with his back to the audience, to a genuine one-human revolution in Sinead O’Connor (for me, of course SNL’s single greatest ever moment). Like Saturday Night Live itself, this film is flawed and shackled in its ambitious remit. Deeply problematic iconoclast showrunner Lorne Michaels looms over all. It’s inevitably too hagaeographic, inevitably has no complete performances and, while it does cover the difficult and controversial moments, inevitably it skirts over and cleans up people’s responses from the time.
It’s also a pity that this must’ve been completed just too early to include last autumn’s sublime post-‘brat summer’ performances, Charli’s smasher and Chappell’s debut. If I’m right (and I am) about Brat’s likely ongoing cultural resonance and influence, those will remain iconic. But here’s the eternal problem for any doc like this: the audience, especially the American viewing public with a lifetime of SNL history, will have personal favourites built up from the vast pool. Key moments they grew up with, which overshadow all else.
Crucially though, regardless my moaning, the electric energy and rhythm and cadences of that first incredible sequence maintain throughout Ladies & Gentlemen. Even with everything I’ve written above, this is a belter of a watch and I’d hugely recommend it, if you can access NOW.
And I’m excited for more Questlove filmmaking: what does it look like when he makes something with more freedom to move? How might his editing rhythms come across in a film that’s not about music?
Mind you, right now, what I most wish for is another two or three hours of those best and worst, most iconic and chaotic SNL performances, in full. I guess you can compile it yourself as a YouTube playlist but it’s not the same. I want it properly curated, the best possible sound, perhaps with those little factoids popping up onscreen as text, Top Of The Pop 2-style. Now that would be a wondrous night’s telly.
icymi —
• Darren Hayman’s new website for his paintings. I haven’t bought any Hayman art yet but I love his work. At some point I’ll own some.
• Hugh Laurie interviews Michael Jackson.
• Rising star of virtuoso fingerpicking composition Yasmin Williams got into guitar via Guitar Hero the video game. This week she made it to the Tiny Desk and it’s a beautiful set.
• It feels like ages since the Grammys but they’ve only just started putting up the live performances on YouTube.
• White Magic For Lovers, Thomas White’s new project that I banged on about on a previous Double Chorus, has now released their debut album The Book Of Lies and it’s bloody mesmerising.