Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul

Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul (2017)

**** (out of 4)

Recent times have been very mixed for music fans as so many of our most beloved artists are dying off. At the same time, the documentary business is booming as so many artists are getting wonderful tributes to them. Both cases are true for the legendary Cocker who passed away in 2014 but here's a terrific documentary that will help keep his legacy going through the decades.

I really loved the way this documentary presented itself as it pretty much tells Cocker's young life and then we get into a year- by-year look at his musical talents. This includes his breakthrough, his performance at Woodstock and the infamous Mad Dogs and Englishman tour. From here we see the various issues that the drugs and alcohol caused and, as Billy Joel states, how he was like a cockroach and everything you thought he was done he'd come back with another terrific single.

If you're a fan of Cocker then you're going to love this documentary, which is full of touching interviews as well as plenty of archival concert footage. Interviews feature his widow, his brother as well as various musicians and producers that he worked with. All of them give you a great idea of what made Cocker who he was and it covers the darker times where he struggled with a various of issues. The documentary also focuses on that wonderful voice and the amazing songs that we'd get from it.

JOE COCKER: MAD DOG WITH SOUL is certainly a highly entertaining documentary and it does a fantastic job at covering all the highs and lows of the man's career. One really couldn't have asked for a better documentary.

I always thought Joe had "that" thing... that voice, that presence, whatever you want to call it. So very few singers these days could even stand in his shadow.

I'm just a fan... not a critic, but I know I will watch this documentary over and over just to remind myself that at one time, Joe Cocker lived among us.

What a blessing.

This documentary kept me captivated and wanting to delve deep into Joe Cocker's discography. But I couldn't help think it focused far too much on Joe's struggles with alcohol and drugs - even for a documentary of this type, it was overloaded.

Joe Cocker had one of the greatest rock voices of all-time - yet not enough about Joe's incredible musicianship is featured here. Woodstock and the 'Mad Dog' phase of his career is highlighted, but after that many career and life phases are quickly glossed over in favour of random people complaining about his alcoholism and its impact on performances.

Almost every musician has had these substance abuse issues. They're the same over and over. But there has only ever been one Joe Cocker, and his incredible uniqueness should've been a much stronger focus of this documentary! In saying that, I still enjoyed this, despite coming away not really learning a lot about who Joe was as a person.

Rest in peace, mate. You were one of a kind.

My wife and I regularly play a double CD compilation of Joe Cocker's best material. Never a prolific or even regular songwriter, he was instead, rather like the more feted and certainly more commercially successful Rod Stewart, an interpreter of other writers' songs covering everyone from the Beatles to Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley to Elton John. His biggest musical hero was Ray Charles and it's good to see the clip here of master and pupil together reminding us that the first recording Joe ever made was of the Genius's "Georgia On My Mind".

Elsewhere the film takes us back to his Sheffield roots with some fascinating footage of the time in the late 60's when the now local-boy-makes-good returns to his hometown to escape the distractions of the music business. There's no doubt however that the man had his demons, the usual dysfunctional duo of drink and drugs and while they unquestionably affected his behaviour and treatment of those around him, the picture emerges of a softer, gentler man than his wild man image might have you think. Even people he abruptly stopped seeing appear to have forgiven him, although it just may be no one wants to speak ill of the recently dead.

There are excerpts from many of his famous songs with his talismanic debut smash "With A Little Help From My Friends" omnipresent on the soundtrack. Among the admirers paying generous tributes to him are Randy Newman, Billy Joel and Jimmy Webb, three of the best piano-writers you could ever hear.

I was glad that by the end of his life, Cocker appeared to have found lasting love with his wife and peace in their mountain retreat in Colorado. From the footage of one of his last recorded concerts in Germany, where he was massively popular, he still had the voice too, up until the end.

How this hellraiser got all the way to 70 before dying would probably be a mystery to him too. This respectful tribute will hopefully encourage devotees and more casual fans like me to deeper explore his musical legacy. As they might have said in his native Yorkshire, he were a right good singer.

As a singer Joe Cocker was one of the purest, most natural talents of the past fifty-plus years. At his best he often so fully occupied the performance that he was truly somewhere else, a place where he was unavailable for anything else. By all accounts Joe Cocker was a humble and sweet-natured man with little ego to either drive him forward, nor to shield him from what was to come. He entered the American musical scene in an overcrowded rocket made of glass, at a time perfectly primed for his talents, yet tangled with vices that would scar him forever and often lay him low. He alternately disappeared below the waves and skipped beautifully above them for the remainder of his life, never entirely losing that mammoth natural gift of a voice, the fire that he could muster for a performance. Aided greatly by his wife and others, Mr. Cocker had some often good, though never trouble free years in the latter part of his life. That voice and those performances will continue to outshine the bad forever.