Hear those sounds blasting from your local multiplex? They may be strangely familiar, tunes heard many years ago.
That’s because it’s suddenly a boomtime for ’60s and ’70s rockers whose documentary profiles keep arriving like a mini tsunami.
Next up is David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, who despite eight stents and three heart attacks remains vital at 77 as he reminisces about his highly influential career in “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” which opens Friday.
Crosby’s rock ’n’ roll life included highly publicized affairs (Joni Mitchell), heartbreak (a young lover’s unexpected death), drugs (bolted rehab, served hard time) and broken friendships (with just about everyone he ever knew).
An incredible yet true saga, one that echoes too many other rock icons.
“Echo in the Canyon” recently played Boston. Director Jakob Dylan (Bob’s son) considers the birth of “the California sound,” a breezy blend of folk and rock that began in the mid-’60s with The Byrds (original member David Crosby). Dylan examines Laurel Canyon, the era’s hippest hippie hangout, and interviews Mamas and Papas’ Michelle Phillips, CSN&Y’s Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.
The era’s defining event was practically consecrated as a spiritual event in Michael Wadleigh’s popular “Woodstock” (’70) which boasts Martin Scorsese among its editors and captures the musicians — Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Joe Cocker and Santana — who made it so memorable.
For the 50th anniversary of 1969’s “peace, love and music,” “Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation” views the event’s legacy through the era’s political and cultural disruptions — Vietnam, civil rights, sexual politics.
As rock changed the culture in the ’60s, the Beatles were the good guys and The Rolling Stones with their sexual androgyny, in your face insolence and down and dirty R&B were the baddies.
That makes “The Quiet One” a surprise as it examines the life of the Stones’ bass player Bill Wyman. He left the group after 31 years. Here is his other life beyond the sex-drugs-rock scenario, meticulously catalogued in home movies, photo albums, diaries.
Currently onscreen is “Yesterday,” a contemporary romantic comedy via Richard Curtis (“Love Actually,” “Notting Hill”) that salutes the Beatles with nearly 20 of the Fab Four’s classic songs played as a reminder to this young century what great music sounds like.
More to come? Undoubtedly.
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