Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen

JOE COCKER: MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN (1971) Few films capture the grimy, jazzy feel of what it was like to be in a rock and roll band than this documentary gem. One particularly revealing scene shows what a recording session was like: ten people crammed in a smoke-filled room playing loudly and in one take. No over dubbing or fancy equipment. Just some men and women (or, as the final song shows, hermaphrodites) with passion and raw musical talent. The famous performance of "The Letter" with Joe Cocker in a lei is the one you hear on the radio today. The Mad Dogs, headed by Cocker and Leon Russell, rework several well-known songs to fit their own groovy, down and dirty style. "With a Little Help from My Friends" becomes a choir backed extravaganza, while The Box Tops' "The Letter" is fashioned into a R/B piece with an immortal horns riff; You know the "da da da dadada" when you hear it. The technical aspects are solid as well, with split screens, frame coloration, and the like. The film doesn't tell you in voice over what the road was like, it shows you. In a camp out scene, Joe can be seen looking at his contemporaries embracing while he sits off-kilter by himself. It's always suggesting, never telling. I saw this with my grandpa and he had lots to say about what he remembered about those days. He enjoyed it thoroughly and I was surprised how much I did as well; more so than even "Woodstock". "Woodstock" was too sprawling, too colossal to love. This one is a brief, piercing look at a band that wasn't necessarily the best, but had a hell of a time trying to be.

Charming, messy documentary of Joe Cocker's 1970 American tour. Some really fun performances are captured here (and, gratefully songs are allowed to pay out at their full length). At the same time, we get a pretty fascinating voyeur's peek into the odd, wild commune like life of Cocker's tour; a huge number of musicians, girlfriends, wives, babies, roadies and the occasional groupie. And, perhaps funniest of all, the off-screen Cocker – who's on stage energy and almost spastic movements famously make him look like a man possessed –off-stage seems like a quiet, likable, thoughtful, even somewhat shy fellow. Not a particularly deep film, but an enjoyable two hours if you're at all interested in Cocker and his hard edged rock-blues-gospel approach to some great classic rock tunes.

I found "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" to be a very satisfying music presentation.

At the time of this rock'n'roll documentary, British vocalist, Joe Cocker (1944-2014) was a youthful 26 and, believe me, he certainly proved to be quite an energetic performer on stage.

Not only does the viewer get the opportunity to watch the gravel-voiced Cocker go into his spastic movements (as he totally got into delivering his songs) - But, there was also plenty of worthwhile "behind-the-scenes" footage to watch, as well.

Traveling along on the concert tour from Detroit to San Francisco - "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" also included (for your added enjoyment) live performances by both Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge, too.

MAD DOGS & ENGLISHMAN: A great film and is a statement of Rock History because of the people involved. Joe Cocker asked Leon to get some mates together as this tour was to get off the ground right away. For the most part Leon just pulled Delaney & Bonnie's Band right out from under them. Jim (not John) Price, Bobbie Keys, (who both later went with the Rolling Stones and then the Blues Brothers), Rita Coolidge,(who did a solo "SUPERSTAR" which was cut from the first video issue because of A&M problems) She has since recorded out of Japan and Canada and sings with her sister Priscilla and her niece Laura Satterfield in a group called Walela. Jim Gordon, (who co-wrote LAYLA) Carl Radle and of course sometimes Leon. All were with Delaney and Bonnie. There group just fell apart after that. Bonnie did play Bonnie the waitress on the Roseanne Show and sometimes sang on that show with David Crosby. I might add at this time that Claudia Linnear who solo's on Let It Be is the girl who Mick Jagger wrote Brown Sugar about. If you listen to the sound of Delaney & Bonnie's albums you will here the Mad Dogs sound. Donna Wiess is a great writer of music and has worked with Rita Coolidge off and on over the years.

This movie is rated as one of the top 10 music documentaries of all time. All About Jazz wrote this: In 1971, the movie Mad Dogs & Englishmen was the first of a new class of concert films which documented an artist over a single tour. It was big and brash, and full of the excess and hedonism of the 1970s. Because of its split- screen production, frank depiction of drug use and philandering, and its generally rebellious vibe, the movie might be seen as harsh and crude by today's standards.

That's not the angle from which to view Mad Dogs. A period piece it may be, but it's a defining period piece. In early 1970, the United States was in the last quarter of the British beat group invasion. Up to this time, the greatest thing the British invasion did was to re-introduce American music to its blues roots. The Animals, The Rolling Stones, John Mayall & The Blues Breakers and The Yardbirds all repackaged the blues of the Deep South and Chicago and made America pay attention.

What Joe Cocker did was a next step. He repackaged the music of Stax-Volt and Atlantic-Muscles Shoals and showed America that she did indeed possess musical divinity in Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes...the entire Southern r&b/soul axis.

Released in 1971, Mad Dogs & Englishmen has thankfully not aged gracefully. Compared to the antiseptically prepared concert films of the past several years (The Eagles' Hell Freezes Over and Fleetwood Mac's The Dance), Mad Dogs is a glorious mess—full of contemporary energy generated by playing a sexy, funky, rocking version of Southern-fried soul strained through British sensibilities. This is not note perfect music; it couldn't be because of early 1970s' technology. The performances are loose and fun, drunken and transcendent- -the soul of rock & roll.

Mad Dogs is superior to Woodstock in that it is more tightly focused in theme and form. However, there would have been no Mad dogs without Woodstock first. This is true if for no other reason than Joe Cocker's incendiary performance of the Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends that not so much jump- started his career as radioactively detonated it. Woodstock was a celebration of the musical counter- culture and Mad Dogs & Englishmen was the perfect realization of it.

One of the first things striking the viewer of this newly remastered DVD release is the plethora of regional accents one is pummeled with. First, of course, is Cocker's boggy Sheffield brogue, thick and mossy with a slight interdental lisp. Next there were Okies Leon Russell, Carl Radle and Kim Keltner. Russell's dry, Lawton, Oklahoma twang is as astringent as moonshine and authentic as the dust bowl.

Then there were the Texans: Bobby Keys from Lubbock and Jim Price from Fort Worth, both speaking with the sweet light crude of the Southwest. Rita Coolidge and Bobby Jones lent their Tennessee tongue togs to the swirling mix, along with other band members from parts known and unknown.

The concert film is a very human endeavor. Cocker's "choir consists of various professionals and non- professionals including wives, girlfriends, friends and acquaintances, and as backup singers they sound so. They provide that big wet kiss of sound behind Cocker's plaintive wailing. Nowhere does the power of this group reveal itself better than the choruses of "The Letter, "Feelin' Alright, and "With A Little Help From My Friends. They made history as if they did it every day. The great humanity of the tour is evident in the tour mascot, a dachshund-terrier mix that is on stage with the band during its performances.

The lynchpin of the tour was Russell, whose presence on the recordings almost equals that of Cocker's. Russell acted as musical director, arranger, lead guitarist, pianist, lead vocalist and all around glue to the tour.

Contemporary criticism of the tour likes to accuse Russell of having taken advantage of Cocker, using the singer to advance his career. If that is true, then the whole band is guilty, as they almost all went on to bigger things. That is what makes this brief two-month tour a touchstone in music history. It was the moment when these musicians came together to play before they left for the Rolling Stones, Derek & The Dominoes and many of the defining recordings of the 1970s, and indeed of rock music itself.