40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie (8/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 99 minutes.

NR

Everybody, or mostly everybody of a certain age, knows the story of The Mamas & the Papas, four singers who were nobodies but, thanks to Lou Adler, became the most popular Folk Rock group of the ‘60s. They told their own story in their song, Creeque Alley.

They got lucky and hit it big. This, on the other hand, is the story of a similar group that got together in the early ‘70s in Boulder, Colorado, writing and playing acoustical rock who never came to anything, despite their local popularity. Director Lee Aronsohn was a big fan when he was in school in Boulder. Nothing ever came of them, so he decided to look back and find out why and what happened to them.

Told with personal interviews with all the band members and some of their wives, along with archival videos and stills, it is a truly fascinating tale. They are all appealing people and tell their story without shame, in fact laughing at how close they came to success and the silly things that caused them to not get the big break.

One of those is right near their beginning in the early ‘70s when they got a manager who had some connections in Nashville. They all flew down there and had an interview with someone who liked them and offered them a contract. But there were two problems. One was that he insisted that they needed a drummer and they didn’t want one. The other was that he wore pointed shoes and one of the members was turned off by that. So they passed, losing not only a chance at the big time but, understandably, their manager, who washed his hands of them.

The music that they wrote and sang is played in the background throughout the movie and at the end they get together for a big reunion concert in Boulder and sing some of their songs. While they were tuneful and their harmonies were nice, I didn’t think their songs were comparable to Monday, Monday or California Dreamin’ or the other hits by The Mamas & the Papas. Conversely, George Martin, who gave The Beatles their big break, said that it wasn’t their music that sold them to him, it was their charm, “They were just very charming people,” said Martin.

These guys are all charming, too, which makes this such an interesting journey as they tell their story. They clearly had talent and with the help of a top producer like Adler, Martin, or Phil Spector (whose genius made The Righteous Brothers’ recording of You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ the most played song on American radio and television in the 20^th Century), it’s conceivable they could have become stars and the songs they wrote big hits.