Mr. Rock ‘n Roll: The Alan Freed Story (2009, Eagle)
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You never know what to expect when you’re watching a made for TV docudrama like Mr. Rock ‘n Roll: The Alan Freed Story, especially one starring Judd Nelson as Alan Freed, one of the most important and influential men in the early days of rock and roll. To be quite honest, I glossed over the fact that this was a biopic and thought it was a straight up documentary. So when it arrived in my mailbox and I realized that this movie is 10 years old and just now coming out on DVD, I was a little suspect.
I wish I could say that I fell in love with Mr. Rock ‘n Roll, and indeed, I found the first half of the film rather charming. But in the end the movie is rather, umm, bad. As I mentioned, Nelson plays Freed, whose career as a disc jockey really takes off in Cleveland, Ohio. He hosts a popular radio program and when looking for a way to attract a younger audience, Freed decides to start playing rhythm and blues. His ratings go through the roof as teenagers tune in to hear what new record he’ll be playing and what crazy shenanigan he may pull while on the air. As he becomes famous with the kids, Freed also faces the scorn of angry listeners who want their lite pop orchestra music. He even receives death threats from racist, which only makes Freed want to play more music. The film goes out of its way to paint Freed as a man who didn’t not care about the color of a person’s skin, emphasized in a scene where he takes Jackie Wilson for drinks and then drinks from Wilson’s glass and takes a drag from his cigarette just to piss off some idiots at another table. (more…)
Two years later, armed with a new vision of an R&B/rap hybrid that could take over the pop charts, Farian assembled a crack lineup of expatriate-American vocalists in his studio outside Frankfurt. He named his new act Milli Vanilli, and later claimed the phrase meant “positive energy” in Turkish. (In fact, the phrase translates directly as “National Vanilli.”) Forsaking glamour in his search for the ideal marriage of voices and songs — he even released the group’s album in a plain black-and-white sleeve, to preserve an air of mystique — Farian emerged with an irresistible sound that dominated first the European charts, and then American pop radio for much of 1989.
