Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen

First off, if you're looking for some good music and classic concert footage, this movie is a hit. I'm sorry that I'm too young to have made it to this show. Unfortunately, I think the movie falters is in its storytelling. This was a band of some 30 people put together for a tour with Joe Cocker. It would have been nice to get a glimpse of how it all came together. The movie does drag from time to time, and I found it difficult to make it all the way through the 2 hours. Now with that said, there are still some great scenes, including one that I swear Rob Reiner flat out stole for "Spinal Tap". I'd say it's worth a look. The music alone is worth it, but keep your finger close to the fast forward button.

Sure this on-tour movie is cliched in parts, none more so than with the post-Woodstock-ian split-screen techniques thrown into every musical sequence, but the whole is elevated by the great music this 30 strong band of gypsies generates.

The story was that Joe, seeking to capitalise on his new-found Stateside success, found himself without a band for a coast to coast tour booked well in advance. Whereupon his US record label introduced him to the Master Of Space And Time, Mr Leon Russell who not only put together this massive band, comprising such later luminaries as Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys and most of Derek's (Eric Clapton) Dominos as well as Leon's own Delta Lady Rita Coolidge on backing vocalists, but also played lead guitar and lead piano, as well as arranging the music.

I love the big sound this band makes, with almost every song given the celebratory, evangelical treatment just bound to get the crowd going. The song selection is excellent, lesser known Cocker gems like "Space Captain" and "Darling Be Home Soon" rubbing shoulders with established classics like "Feelin' Alright", "The Letter" and of course Joe's piece-de-resistance "With A Little Help From My Friends".

One could argue that Cocker was something of an extra in his own movie which is partly due to Russell's charismatic presence, whether on guitar or piano, but also because Joe himself seems like such a self-effacing guy. Even when interviewed on camera, Cocker doesn't really have a lot to say and you can tell he's happiest when letting his frazzled larynx rip on songs whether he's live in concert or having a knees-up on the tour bus.

So, nothing revelatory here either in the music, anything said by the contributors or the presentation of the film itself. Still, it's an entertaing travelogue by a band the size and quality of which hasn't been witnessed too many times since.

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.

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.

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.