Kevin Bacon names the greatest rockumentary of all time: “Chilling and interesting and disturbing”
Who do you go to for music-related recommendations (aside from Far Out, obviously)? Probably not Kevin Bacon. And yet, the actor has a lot to say about it. You might know him as the light-footed high school kid from Footloose or that astronaut with the steamy shower scene in Apollo 13. Maybe you know him from all those EE television adverts if you’re in the UK or for being the official spokesperson for the US egg industry. With a name like that, how could he not be?
From an early age, however, Bacon has been a music devotée. His brother, Michael, is nine years older and was already pursuing a music career when Bacon was a kid. He introduced his younger sibling to soul and folk music and eventually moved to Nashville to make good on his dreams. Bacon himself dabbled in various instruments, including drums and guitar. These days, the siblings have a band called the Bacon Brothers.
Whether or not you’re a fan of the actor’s music, there is no questioning his passion for the medium. This was made abundantly clear when he had the opportunity to visit Criterion’s legendary closet recently to pick out a few of his favourite films. After picking up a copy of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai because he has yet to see it, Bacon plucked a documentary off the shelf – 1970’s Gimme Shelter.
“I was a giant Rolling Stones fan,” Bacon said, “And it is one of the most chilling and interesting and disturbing documentaries about the flip-side of crowds and of fandom and of rock ‘n roll. And certainly so emblematic of a turn from the ‘60s ‘Love Child Generation’ to where we kind of went, for a while, in the direction of the ’70s towards the ’80s… it’s just [a] breathtaking, breathtaking movie.”
Directed by the famed Albert and David Maysles, who went on to make Grey Gardens, as well as filmmaker Charlotte Zwerin, Gimme Shelter is a seminal documentary that chronicles the Stones’ infamous 1969 US tour, which included the infamous Altamont Free Concert in San Francisco in which 300,000 members of the Love Generation clashed with a handful of Hells Angels who were hired to provide security for the event. The conflict led to the brutal killing of Meredith Hunter, as well as three other deaths and dozens of injuries.
What was meant to be a celebration of peace and love and rock ‘n roll turned into a landmark cultural moment in which the idealism of the ‘60s collapsed into the chaos and violence that would define much of the ‘70s. Zwerin and the Maysles captured the carnage with an unflinching eye, creating a document of the moment that remains shocking and unnerving to this day.
It isn’t for the faint of heart, but it is one of those rare documentaries in which the filmmakers were not only in the right place at the right time but also capable of presenting what they saw in a way that gives it maximum impact.
