A&M Records Documentary Coming in December

[Mike Blakesley]

Some I forgot: The Bob Edwards Show did an interview with Herb right after he and Jerry were inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame (and also promoting the "Re-Whipped" album), and of course there are various A&M related interviews that were on "The Download" (Chris May's podcast). I have them archived.

 

[jfiedler17]

Just finished watching both parts. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the interview bits with Herb and Jerry, but I thought the format of the documentary did a bit of a disservice to the label in terms of demonstrating the depth of the pool of talent within their roster over the years - the extended segments on some of the bigger artists (i.e. Carpenters, The Police, etc.) meant that a lot of the label's other commercially successful signings were either reduced to a single still photograph with no voiceover, if they were even mentioned or alluded to at all, particularly in Part 2, which just tried to cover too many years in too short a period, which meant that acts like Bryan Adams, Joe Jackson, Simple Minds, Human League, OMD, Squeeze, UB40, and Amy Grant were barely acknowledged. (Did Adams even get mentioned at all? I don't remember even seeing a still photograph of him in any of the montages.) Their coverage of the label's years from '68 through '79 felt a little more rounded, though I feel like the emphasis on the label's rock acts during that time meant that the label's success that decade in other genres (be it soft-rock (Pablo Cruise), adult-contemporary (Captain & Tennille, Gino Vannelli, Rita Coolidge), or R&B (Billy Preston, Brothers Johnson, LTD/Jeffrey Osborne), etc.) got a bit downplayed. (I at first didn't make sense of including the Sex Pistols since the signing didn't amount to anything but realized as the segment went on that it added to the story of the label's overall culture and set of principles.) But then again, as a diehard A&M enthusiast, I suppose any documentary of that relatively short a length was bound to disappoint me just a little bit, and for someone less familiar with the label than myself, the film would admittedly make a fairly good introduction to someone just starting to delve into the label's back catalog and wanting to know what the label was about. I'd agree with the earlier comments grading the film as a B-minus with Part 1 feeling more satisfying than Part 2.

 

[Rudy]

Their coverage of the label's years from '68 through '79 felt a little more rounded, though I feel like the emphasis on the label's rock acts during that time meant that the label's success that decade in other genres (be it soft-rock (Pablo Cruise), adult-contemporary (Captain & Tennille, Gino Vannelli, Rita Coolidge), or R&B (Billy Preston, Brothers Johnson, LTD/Jeffrey Osborne), etc.) got a bit downplayed.

That would irritate me a bit right there--even if the bands/artists weren't chart-toppers on the Hot 100, there are still some well-known songs that get overlooked in one-size-fits-all documentaries. For instance, L.T.D. had an R&B hit with "(Every Time I Turn Around) Back In Love Again" that was ubiquitous on local R&B stations back in the day, and even today it gets a lot of attention on the right streams/channels. (I hear it most of the time on my "70s Soul" Pandora station, as one example.) Only when I was compiling the tune into my own playlist did I remember it was an A&M recording. And anyone listening to the same stations would also have heard the Bell & James hit "Livin' It Up (Friday Night)" which was even bigger, although their career as headlining performers wasn't long-lived. Still, their first recordings were on A&M.

One could also argue that Gino Vannelli is overlooked, beyond "I Just Wanna Stop." Hearing his story, of how he ran onto the A&M lot to get Herb's attention, is a big part of the lore of A&M, and how some artists and bands got their start just due to the right person hearing something promising. The bigger labels would have had security haul Gino out without a second thought. Which almost happened at A&M! But he did get the big guy's attention and this event set him off on his career.

A good documentary would not just hit the highlights most of us already know about, in other words. If I were directing it (and I'm no director!), it would probably cost too much to produce. I'd have interviews with the artists who are still with us, telling of how A&M gave them their big break in the business. That's what I feel A&M's story really is--discovering and nurturing talent. Some of it was very successful. Others bubbled under. But they all had the same chance under a label with one owner who had an uncanny ear for music, and another owner who knew how to market them.

 

[Harry]

I'm going from memory here after seeing the thing once, but I recall that in the first part, Lani Hall was on screen as Herb's wife before they ever got to the Brasil '66 story. My sensibilities would have made that timeline more linear.

I don't think they ever mentioned We Five, and their big hit, "You Were On My Mind" is STILL considered play-worthy on stations that play 60s music. There seems to be a tendency when telling the A&M story to sort-of "get through" the 60s quickly so they can concentrate on the latter years.

In all of these documentaries, I don't think there's been much at all about Julius Wechter or Sol Lake, and certainly nothing about the likes of Jimmie Rodgers or Claudine Longet, let alone the Sandpipers or even LIza Minnelli. I can understand that most of those don't have much star-power these days, but a quick mention would have been welcome.

 

[Rudy]

The earliest A&M artists are niche artists for sure, but without them the label never would have succeeded. Sandpipers did have a fairly decent hit with "Guantanamera," as one example, and the Roger Nichols LP as another (a cult favorite today) and I agree that these earliest artists should have been mentioned. Even if it were a 15 minute montage of sorts, it would have been illuminating.

 

[jfiedler17]

Great points all, Harry and Rudy! I agree, they did really gloss over the '60s period in this, though the fun interview snippets with Herb and Jerry helped to mask that a bit. The only pre-Joe Cocker artists I can recall them mentioning (rather than simply flashing onscreen, if they were even shown at all) were Herb, Sergio, and Bacharach. No mention at all of the Sandpipers, Wechter, Longet, Minnelli, Jimmie Rodgers, or even We Five that I can remember. (Although I did spot one of Claudine's album covers clearly visible in a montage shot of album art.) Considering how big both "Guantanamera" and "You Were on My Mind" were - both Top Ten hits, and the latter even going Top Three - it's weird that both those acts in particular got skipped over.

Even within the segment on Herb, I don't recall there being any mention of "This Guy's in Love with You," which was the label's first Number One single, something you would think would be worth highlighting. But then, it's kind of in keeping with the artists that were and were not featured in the film's coverage of the label's output during the '70s, too - the film simply downplayed the label's success in MOR music over the decades and tended to primarily focus on those acts who were either classic-rock staples (i.e. Styx, Supertramp, etc.) and/or acts who've been sufficiently revered by music critics to make it into the Rock Hall (i.e. Police, Go-Go's). Much though I like Suzanne Vega, I also found it odd that she got her own featured segment, while much bigger acts from the label's '80s period (i.e. Human League, Bryan Adams, Joe Jackson, etc.) were ignored entirely.

But that's the wonderful thing about A&M - for an indie label, they gave rise to so many countless stars, and their catalog covered such a vast array of musical styles and yielded so many hit albums and singles that it truly is an impossible task to try to work it all into a two-hour documentary, and it was perhaps inevitable that even some of their most successful acts would get left out, especially in a format that gave each highlighted act their own six-to-ten-minute segment.

Rudy, I agree that it would have been even more entertaining to have interviewed more of the label's still-living stars about how they first came aboard. We didn't get too much of that, although when it surfaced, i.e. at the top of the Police segment, it was quite fun to hear.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

These comments make me wonder who this doc was aimed at. Die-hard enthusiasts like us would like to see something more thorough, whereas more casual listeners might not care enough about the origins of a record label to bother watching.

 

[Rudy]

Even within the segment on Herb, I don't recall there being any mention of "This Guy's in Love with You," which was the label's first Number One single, something you would think would be worth highlighting.

A&M's first #1, Herb's first #1, and surprisingly also Bacharach/David's first #1. A landmark for the label, the artist and the composers. And I believe it topped the charts for four weeks, so it wasn't just a fluke. It should have at least gotten a mention. Likewise, Herb and the TJB planted, I think, five LPs in the Top 20 of the album chart simultaneously, still a feat that nobody has topped to this day. That kind of popularity, for both accomplishments, really shows that A&M had "made it." And I agree--they should have been highlighted.

These comments make me wonder who this doc was aimed at. Die-hard enthusiasts like us would like to see something more thorough, whereas more casual listeners might not care enough about the origins of a record label to bother watching.

If I'm reading correctly, many of the interviews were from several years ago, like 2012? So it's good to use existing interview footage but for that long of a wait, it makes me wonder if nobody was really interested in distributing it.

Only collectors would focus on labels, whereas the general public is more interested in the individual artists--many probably don't even pay attention to which label music is released on. The days of vinyl and shellac really sold the "label" concept, as you had the physical label itself on the record that gave it a visual/corporate identity, and often an innersleeve highlighting other releases on the same label. Much of that was lost with CDs since after the initial years, most releases had custom artwork for their labels, vs. having a corporate logo label.

Labels were more like a family of artists in the vinyl days. Today you don't get that feeling unless you visit a label's web site. The way music is downloaded and streamed today, there is almost no indication of what label it is released on. (Although the better services like Qobuz have an editorial staff that highlight and curate new releases and often refer to the label, vs. repeating the label's press releases as the others do.)

 

[Steven J. Gross]

An ok doc. Too much time spent on individual artists, and spent a lot of time on a dull, insignificant Suzanne Vega for example while ignoring the Baja Marimba Band altogether. C minus..