The inter-cutting and inter-relation of three ages of Bill– the hot young media celebrity, the older retired family man who has a recording studio he hasn’t quite bothered to learn how to use, and the youngest Bill, an African-American kid in an often bleak yet beautiful West Virginia mining town, hamstrung by severe stuttering-is extraordinarily effective.Ĭo-director/producers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack worked over ten years to bring home this intimate, telling portrait, an under-the-radar mini-masterpiece in a documentary genre that so rarely transcends clichés at all. He’s a star who felt like walking away from celebrity, even from performing, and so, for a generation till the time of this film’s completion, he just did. This revelatory little film takes us right to the man, his charm (undiluted by the decades), his singularities and peculiarities, and his utter disregard for show business machinery. Bill Withers is recalled by some simply as a charming soul singer of the seventies who scored a couple of monster hits with “Lean on Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and by others as a model alternative performer, purveyor of a form of jazzy, acoustic soul balladry that others have been able to reference ever since. The DVD, with extensive interviews and cut-by-cut depiction of the album making, simply assumes that you’ll find the subject historic, and gets on with showing how it happened.
Given Exile on Main Street’s sometimes forgotten lukewarm initial reception, the questions raised in ’71-‘72 sometimes related to the unexpectedly dense sound mix and sometimes to the songs, “eventually celebrated” might be the apt description of the LP. Much is made here, finally, of the rough documentary footage, some of it previously seen here and there, if not officially released, shot by photographer Robert Frank at the time, on the site and follow-on tour. Jagger and Watts revisit, today, and comment on the French Villa where the free-form, find-it-as-you-play recording and general mayhem associated with it ensued.
Heard the one about how the Rolling Stones recorded one of their most celebrated albums, the big double one, in a shabby, cramped French basement with abysmal sound and even air, having just left England because of confiscatory taxes and various legal issues? Likely you have, but the situation, conditions, and nature of the sessions involved will stick with you more on seeing this documentary produced by Mssrs.
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