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In
the summer of 1970, the year after Woodstock and Altamont, a
crazy collection of future legends of rock and roll took a train
across Canada, playing (in every sense of the word) en route
as well as stopping for concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary.
The
Band, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Buddy Guy, the Flying
Burrito Brothers, and a dozen lesser lights sang, drank, and
communed across the map between June 27 and July 4, while cameras
recorded the escapade. �This was kind of like a traveling circus,�
remembers Ken Pearson, a member of Joplin�s band. �It was a
train full of insane people careening across the Canadian countryside,�
Dead guitarist Phil Lesh recalls. People got very little sleep,
Buddy Guy says, �because every time I went to bed I was afraid
I was gonna miss something.�
The
brainchild of 22-year-old promoters Ken Walker and Thor Eaton,
the Festival Express would bring shows to the people rather
than forcing them all to gather in one place for a concert.
It incidentally proved to be a terrific bonding experience for
the musicians, who were accustomed to whisking in and out of
a venue without getting much hang time with the other performers.
�Somebody on the train said Woodstock was a treat for the audience,
and the train was a treat for the musicians,� relates journalist
David Dalton.
Fondly
remembered by its participants, the event remained largely unknown
to the wider world until the passage of more than a third of
a century. �Festival Express� tidily rescues this odd tale.� Along with �Riding Giants,� it provided a welcome
alternative to 2004�s hue and cry of (and over) �Fahrenheit
9/11� and a dozen other political documentaries.
Why
did the story take so long to get to the screen? A legal dispute
with Walker forced producer Willem Poolman
to stash the reels away in his garage indefinitely. Some material
was taken by people as mementos. A young member of the production
crew, Bill O�Farrell, had the foresight to collect as many reels
as he could find and squirrel them away at the National Archives
in Ottawa, telling them, this will be worth something someday.
In
the 1990s, film researcher and music enthusiast Garth Douglas
dug up the long-lost negatives and audio tapes at the archive,
and began the long job of putting it all together. Original
producer Poolman�s son Gavin became the producer for the revived project.
Bob Smeaton, director and co-writer
of the �Beatles Anthology� project and �Hendrix: Band of Gypsies,�
was brought in to direct. In the end, about 46 hours of an original
75 hours of negatives survived; 15 hours had never been printed.
The
footage of Joplin is the greatest find. The filmmakers save
her first appearance for the second major stop, Winnipeg, where
she hits the stage for �Cry Baby� with a scream that most singers
would have saved for the climax of their set. She wears no makeup.
She scratches her head onstage, unselfconsciously. What modern
pop star would do any of this? Blue lights in the stage array
give Joplin�s pupils an unearthly glow. During a break in the
music she talks to the audience about the repeated heartbreak
of men racing off to Casablanca or somewhere else far away to
�find� themselves. �You know where your life is? It�s waiting
like a god-damned fool right here!�
At
the final stop in Calgary, she tears into �Tell Mama,� but only
after presenting Walker and Eaton with a couple of gifts onstage.
�I finally met someone who can throw a better party than me.�
One present is a model train mounted on a board and signed by
all the musicians. Then, �This box is from me: It�s a case of
tequila. The train is for remembering, the tequila is for continuing.�
Most memorably, she adds, �Next time you throw a train, invite
me, man.� Although she is light and energy and joy itself in
nearly every frame, Joplin has but three months to live before
her accidental death on October 4.
There
are also fine sets of the Band doing �The Weight� and �I Shall
Be Released� (with doomed Richard Manuel singing a wailing lead
and looking like some sort of demented street Jesus), Buddy
Guy�s blistering rendition of �Money (That�s What I Want),�
and the Dead churning through �New Speedway Boogie,� �Friend
of the Devil,� and �Don�t Ease Me In.�
Curios
include Danko leading a howling sing-along
of �Ain�t No More Cane� on the train with Janis and Jerry Garcia
(who afterward tells her �Janis, I�ve loved ya
ever since the day I saw ya�), and
the snatch of a grand jam on �Sunshine of Your Love,� also on
the rails.
All
but the most knowing Yankee fans will be pleasantly surprised
by the fast blues instrumental �Comin�
Home Baby� by Mashmakhan, a Canadian
band that sold big in Japan and elsewhere but is not much known
south of the 49th parallel. On the other hand, Sha
Na Na look as out of place here doing
�Rock and Roll is Here to Stay� in gold lam� suits as they did with �At the Hop� in �Woodstock.� The
Burritos, who have already lost Gram Parsons, look like shaggy
white suburban kids in nice button-down collared shirts tucked
into their jeans, doing a fairly pedestrian rendition of �Lazy
Day.� And though Sylvia Tyson looks terrific in her burning
orange dress and long black hair, a little bit of her mezzo
vibrato goes a long way on �CC Rider.� (Heaton reportedly edited
a long-winded bass solo from this performance, which has Great
Speckled Bird and quite a bit of the Dead backing the Canadian
folk artist.)
The
trip at the time wasn�t all sweetness and light. Like the Isle
of Wight Festival, Festival Express encountered difficulty with
fans demanding to be let in free. Woodstock had set a bad precedent
by not charging most of its listeners because the organizers
had pre-sold the lucrative broadcast rights. Along the Canadian
route, a boycott movement squelched ticket sales, miniature
riots occurred at the city stops, and the promoters ended up
taking a bath. By the time they got to Calgary, a mayor bent
on appealing to young constituents demanded a free concert for
all. Walker refused, and remembers: �He called me an Eastern
scum and a capitalist rip-off son of a bitch. And my answer
was his teeth in my fist.�
One
is treated to the gentle irony of rock artists complaining about
the rioters� abuse of the police hired as security, and defending
the �outrageous� ticket price of $14 or $16. Garcia asks a restive
Toronto crowd to chill for a half hour �so we can work something
out� (which turns out to be an alternative, free set at nearby
Coronation Park). Ian Tyson, in black-and-white archival footage,
tells an interviewer �It�s less than a dollar per supergroup.�
During a press conference, Bob Weir complains about a Canadian
policeman getting his head busted by protestors(!). �I talked
to a lot of the cops and they were all boss, they were all good
people,� Weir says.
Weir
provides the most drily humorous comments
among the recent interviews granted for this film. Of the protestors,
he says, �They were pathologically anti-authoritarian. I know;
I�m that way myself.� Elsewhere, he explains that most of the
musicians were not longtime drinkers: they had been connoisseurs
of acid, pot, and other substances more difficult to obtain
in the Great White North, so �This was a new experience for
us. And it worked just fine.� Midway through the journey, the
train ran dry, so it stopped in the prairie town of Saskatoon,
the riders passed the hat and raised $800, and they bought out
a liquor store, including a huge display bottle of Canadian
Club that the owner did not wish to sell. Weir claims he avoided
the giant bottle when he noticed gel caps had been dropped into
it. �The train was sort of buzzing down the rails. We achieved
liftoff for sure.�
In
his current guise, Walker is a bit hunched and looks a little
furtive, as if he�s not entirely sure he should be sharing this
story, but still good natured and unbowed. �I think the lesson
that I learned was that I gave the public too much. And they
didn�t deserve it.� But then he adds that he�s thinking of doing
it again.
In
sum, �Festival Express� is not a deep or particularly illuminating
documentary. But it does a fine job of rescuing some wonderful
performances from oblivion, gives Baby Boomers another opportunity
to relive a certain, special era of their lives, and offers
the rest of us just a taste of what it might have been like
to be young and alive then.
David
Loftus, Sept. 6, 2004
[email protected]
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Although
he hasn�t been to too many concerts, David Loftus once worked
the sound booth at one end of a stage where Etta James was trying
to lead an audience sing-along, pointed at Loftus and told the
crowd: �He�s singin� louder than y�all.� A die-hard Gentle Giant fan (he
saw them live three times in the late 1970s and got to sing
one of the band�s ballads in front of three former members in
October 2003), he also likes the Roches, the Dixie Dregs, Murray Perahia,
the Bobs, Yes, Tuck & Patti, the Moody Blues, Oscar Peterson,
Kronos Quartet, Andre Watts, Bobby McFerrin, the Butthole Surfers, and Take Six, among the artists he has seen
perform in concert. During his days as a reporter, he got to
interview Hoyt Axton and Robbie Bachman. David
Loftus, Writer - AllWatchers.com
Credits
Bob
Smeaton� � Director
Gavin
Poolman� � Producer
Ann
Carli, Garth Douglas, Willem Poolman � Executive Producers
Peter
Biziou, Bob Fiore � Cinematographers
Eamonn
Power � Film Editor
Martin
Jensen � Music Editor
Blair
Jollands � Sound Editor
Eddie
Kramer � Music Mixer
2003,
88 minutes
Official
Web Site
http://www.festivalexpress.com/
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