20 Feet From Stardom

I really wish I’d taken notes while I was watching this, because the only name I remember is Darlene Love. Remember her, from when the producers of this movie brought her up with them to accept the Oscar for Best Feature-Length Documentary? She sang her acceptance, and it was the best acceptance in a night full of good ones. She was a member of The Blossoms, way back in 1957, and was part of a lot of other girl groups. She sang the lead in “He’s a Rebel,” which that murdering fuck Phil Spector released as being by The Crystals. He later fucked her over again, and eventually she retired. Then one day at her new job, cleaning other people’s houses, she was scrubbing a toilet and heard one of her songs on the radio. “I’m too good for this shit,” she said to herself, and walked out and started a new, successful career.

That’s one of the good stories, even though it’s full of heartbreak. The title refers to the approximate distance (6.096 meters for you metric people) between the star and the back-up singers, usually women. There are many, many people as themselves, being interviewed, and some of them you surely know, like Bruce and Mick and Ray and Bette, and many you probably don’t (I sure didn’t) like Merry Clayton and Táta Vega. And can these girls sing? I swear, some of them I actually thought were better than Aretha. One of them (I can’t recall which) was up there on stage singing with Jagger, face to face, handing it off to each other, and you could see the man was having a great time. He and Springsteen and all the others couldn’t say enough good things about these unsung, so to speak, heroines of the music world.

There were a few of these ladies who stated that they were happy where they were, 6.096 meters away. Most of the others aspired to be the star. A few of them made it. Others had a shot, brought out albums, and they sank like stones. No one can say why. It’s a crap shoot.

You should definitely see this one, if only for the music, which is just terrific in all cases, both the oldies and the stuff I’ve never heard, from these fabulous women.