Doing It Their Way
The Rock Doc is nothing new – hell, there's even been mockumentaries like the famous This Is Spinal Tap going way back, the ultimate stamp of "yep, it's a genre." Usually, I'm not super excited about seeing behind the scenes – it always seems a little… anticlimactic, maybe? This spring, though, Green Day launched a doc at SXSW about the making of last year's Uno! Dos! Tre! trilogy – called, of course, Quatro! This? This, I want to see.
The difference? It's not just that they're one of my favourite bands, it's also that the process of songwriting seems to me one of the great mysteries. I mean, how do you start singing a song that you don't already know? (Which, side note, can not WAIT to see what you guys come up with this summer for our songwriting contest!) And according to this article here, it sounds like you see a fair bit of how they worked on songs, which I think would be pretty cool to see happening. That, and a second documentary (do these guys ever sleep?!) about how American Idiot was turned into a Broadway show, which I think would be another interesting window into how these things even get put together.
Imagine, though. Green Day's been around for about a gazillion years, are serious pros, and pretty much get to call their own shots at this point. Imagine being still in high school and getting this kind of attention paid, and people trying to mold you into the image they want. A lot of young artists have talked about this, the pressure to fit a type. Our booklist pick Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up addresses this, too.
This is a sequel to Lemonade Mouth, which I loved. Quirky, fun indie spirit, underdogs on top, yada yada. I didn't, I'll be honest, love what Disney did with the movie because dudes, they kinda stripped the characters of what made them stand out. Which is pretty ironic, given that the book is all about people being themselves. I kinda thought the author wasn't impressed either, given that his followup was all about the band protesting their reimaging.
We've seen this before – artists totally changing it up once they get a little more success and have more freedom to do it their way. Now that process is a documentary I'd like to see – how much discussion goes into what you reveal and what you front? How much of all of this do we really think is real, anyway? Do we buy the image? What do you think?
5 thoughts on “Doing It Their Way”
I sometimes think that even though we think that they will have more freedom it might work out the opposite, in that they have now set that standard and have to live to that…ie: a rock group whose demographic is teen girls and all of a sudden wants to turn to punk rock…might not go off so smoothly.
I totally agree with that, it’s tough to try to make a new image when you’ve already established one
They will have to explore some new territory at the risk of alienating their current fan base but also at possible incentive of gaining a new one. I think exploration is certainly an important thing in the arts.
It can definitely be hard for people to believe it! The question is – how much of that is manufactured, and how much is really them? Impossible to know from the outside.
I love Green Day, I think that it’s really impressive that they managed to stay around for this long and still produce awesome songs. Usually, when bands and artists become famous, they tend to go all out to satisfy the media and the majority of the audience. This tends to cover up who they really are and just creates a fake image of them for us to just eat up.