The problem with music documentaries | Culture

To summarise: in 2019, Netflix paid a fortune for access to The Vault, Prince’s (1958-2016) archive, with tons of audio and video tapes, photographs, documents. Netflix wanted to produce a documentary series about the artist, which it finally commissioned from Ezra Edelman, a director specialising in sports and music. Edelman has produced a monumental nine-hour portrait of the artist. An overwhelming work, according to those who have attended private screenings, which shows his immense talent alongside his intimate vulnerability. A work that, alas, is in stand-by, without any possibility of release.

Prince died without a will. After the inevitable fight over his estate, the heirs – a sister, several stepbrothers – split up. Some sold their share to Primary Wave, a company specialising in the exploitation of musical legacies. The rest preferred to manage their portion under the direction of lawyer L. Londell McMillan, who had already worked for Prince. This second group is blocking the exhibition of the documentary.

They claim that, among the 70 interviews conducted, there are unpleasant aspects of Prince: his physical violence against a girlfriend, possible anti-Semitism from the album The Rainbow Children, the demand that Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman —her former companions— give up their lesbian relationship, the discrepancy between her public anti-drug stance and the fact that she died of a fentanyl overdose (her militancy in the Jehovah’s Witnesses would prove fatal). The dissidents have the project, excuse the expression, by the balls: a clause in the contract specified that the series would last six hours.

It may all be blackmail to get more money from Netflix, it may be that the platform now prefers less edgy portraits, it may be that the director is very stubborn (although it was already known that he works on a big scale: his Oscar-winning series about OJ Simpson is close to eight hours long). But it serves to remind us that music documentaries are not necessarily reliable biographies.

Filmmakers need to secure the use of the original recordings, usually held by a record company, and permission to place songs in an audiovisual product, which resides with a music publisher. They used to be able to work in the same company, but that has changed, with the turbulence in the rights market and the manoeuvres of veteran figures to regain control of their creations. The record companies don’t put up too many objections: a good documentary revives the catalogue. But the artists or their families often try to sugarcoat the product.

It’s legitimate, I guess. It’s understandable. that the son of Anita Pallenberg remote-control a documentary that skirts his mother’s dark side. You can understand Steve Van Zandt’s self-congratulation in Disciple. Indeed, they have veto power and prefer to whitewash thorny issues. As with Prince, the heirs tend to be at each other’s throats: the conflicts between Zappa’s children prevent an honest profile of the character. As do the hatreds between the Ramones’ successors, which make Martin Scorsese’s planned documentary impossible. An aside: it is best not to overvalue the Scorsese Touch in these matters; although he has filmed great concerts, sometimes he limits himself to little more than putting his mark on it. We know that No Direction Home was largely the work of Dylan’s regular documentarian, Michael Borofsky. But that’s a different war.