You talkin' to me?: Barney Hoskyns introduces Scorsese's rocumentary masterpiece, The Last Waltz, at Wimbledon Film Club next week
If Spinal Tap was the ultimate mockumentary, the film it was based on - Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz - is the real deal.
Touted by many as the finest concert film ever made, Scorsese's documentary shows the final performance of Canadian-American rock group, The Band, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, 1976.
And this week, courtesy of Wimbledon Film Club, you can see it once again on the big screen it was made for, introduced internationally-renowned music journalist and author, Barney Hoskyns.
"This film made a huge impact on me, not least because I was a huge fan of The Band," recalls Hoskyns, 48, who wrote their definitive biography.
"Here is a group wrapping up their career, taking stock and trying to make sense of their last 16 years together. But Scorsese gives it a poetry that sets it apart."
A collage of American music styles from blues and gospel to country and folk, The Band were, in Hoskyns' words, "the band that musicians admired more than any other." Thus the staggering line-up of artists who turned up to perform on the night, including Muddy Waters, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton and, of course, Bob Dylan, for whom The Band were an unofficial backing group.
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This was not Band Aid nor Live 8 nor, god forbid, Live Earth. These musicians were there for the music alone.
Says Hoskyns: "Nothing can replicate the experience of being at a live concert but what Scorsese does, being Scorsese, is to choose angles and perspectives that other directors wouldn't. When you see music on film or TV today, the editing is so slick and cut-up. Scorsese holds the camera on a particular face in the same way that you would watch a gig."
The great director's latest film, Shine a Light, is due out in April - another concert documentary, this time capturing The Rolling Stones' star-studded gigs at New York's Beacon Theater in 2006.
Plus ca change for Scorsese. But Hoskyns argues that in the three decades since he began as a rookie writer on Melody Maker and NME, the way we consume music has changed beyond all recognition.
"Music has become just another lifestyle choice," says Hoskyns, who now edits online music archive, Rock's Backpages. "Thirty years ago, to be into music was to set yourself apart from the status quo. You went to gigs and you bought T-shirts but they were tribal statements, not fashion statements.
"When I got into Marc Bolan and David Bowie, I was terrified my mother would find out. Last year, I went to see The Raconteurs with my 18-year-old son! That's not a bad thing but you can't shock anyone anymore and it means music can be a bit toothless."
Even so, every now and again something comes along and grabs him by the cajones. "You hear Amy Winehouse and you think, this rocks. This is the genuine article. This isn't trying to pastiche an earlier style. This is vulnerable and emotionally real. And in its way, that is shocking too.
The Last Waltz (U), with guest speaker Barney Hoskyns, Wimbledon Film Club, Polka Theatre, 240, The Broadway, Wimbledon, Thursday, February 28, call 07799 455589, visit wimbledonfilmclub.com.
Barney Hoskyns' favourite rock films:
Don't Look Back (1967, DA Pennebaker) - Portrait of Dylan as a young man, touring England at 23.
Gimme Shelter (1970, Albert and David Maysles) - A 1969 Stones' tour ends in chaos and carnage.
This is Spinal Tap (1984, Rob Reiner) - The original rockumentary and Hoskyn's all-time favourite.
Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll (1987, Taylor Hackford) - Chuck Berry documentary from future Ray director.
A Skin Too Few (2000, Jeroen Berkvens) - Dutch biography of tortured singer-songwriter Nick Drake
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