Music journalist, publicist and producer, Danny Fields helped some of the most influential bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s get their start: The Stooges, The MC5 and The Ramones are just a handful of the groups he shepherded to fame if not fortune. Named after the Ramones’ tribute to Fields, Brendan Toller’s documentary Danny Says doesn’t reveal the man behind the curtain to be a particularly engaging personality. Fortunately, the music helps.
In interviews, Fields has a rambling demeanor that might have been better served by tighter editing. Still, certain excesses in the film clearly lie with the filmmakers. One incident recounted has particular resonance in light of the recent Beatles’ documentary Eight Days A Week.
Everybody knows that in 1966 John Lennon got the band in trouble with American audiences for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. At the time, Fields was then managing editor of the teen magazine Datebook and didn’t especially care for the Beatles. With some retrospective sense of mischief, Fields takes credit for that publicity disaster, as he made the decision to plaster Lennon’s quote all over the cover of the magazine. Protests were so heated at the Beatles’ concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park that some blame Fields for ultimately ending the band’s performance career – that was the last time they would ever perform live in the US.
It’s a great story, but Toller makes it grating by repeatedly showing the offending magazine cover onscreen—a cover which includes a less remembered but equally sensationalistic headline quote from Paul McCartney on race relations in America: “It’s a lousy country where anyone black is a dirty n—–!”
The film isn’t subtle about making a point, sometimes to its own detriment. Toller enlists a variety of animators to illustrate the stories that Fields tells, which aren’t that entertaining even if you like lurid, juicy rock star tales. Crude animation of Jim Morrison’s reportedly homely groupies doesn’t make the anecdote any more enlightening.
The movie’s subject isn’t a great raconteur, but Danny Says picks up in the late ‘60s with tales of Fields’ success and subsequent failure with The MC5 and The Stooges, both of whom he helped get signed to Elektra Records. In fact, the movie is more entertaining when it deals with stories of bands that didn’t quite work out. Fields was stunned by the Detroit/Ann Arbor rock gods (as were generations of fans ever since), but The Stooges only lasted for two albums on Elektra, and The MC5 only managed one for the label. One wonders how much Fields will be on hand in Jim Jarmusch’s upcoming Stooges documentary Gimme Danger.
The story of The Stooges will be elaborated upon soon enough; but Danny Says does offer a few lesser-known stories, as of Fields’ involvement with Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, who are more than worthy of their own feature length documentary.
We are living in a golden age of music documentaries, but Danny Says is not one of its finer moments. Still, Fields discovered some great music, and the movie is worth watching as a sampler from one of rock’s most influential tastemakers.
The post Danny Says appeared first on Spectrum Culture.