Screen Gems
In his 21st and latest book, Screen Gems: Pop Music Documentaries & Rock and Roll TV Scenes, pop culture historian Harvey Kubernik – native Angeleno, child of Hollywood, and a music journalist for more than 50 years – offers a bio-regional memoir perspective as he dives deep into 24 noteworthy productions.
As music documentaries enjoy what some insiders are calling the genre’s “Golden Age,” Kubernik explores films spotlighting the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Tina Turner, the Doors, Leon Russell, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Motown, Stax and Chess Records recording artists, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, the Seeds, Stevie Van Zandt, the Go-Go's, and Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, as well as television programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, Ready, Steady Go!, Elvis Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, and The Johnny Cash Show.
Kubernik, who has been involved in the documentary world for decades, incorporates exclusive interviews he has conducted over the last half century with groundbreaking, influential documentarians D.A. Pennebaker, Murray Lerner, Albert Maysles, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and Mel Stuart, alongside contemporary filmmakers like Baz Luhrmann, Andrew Solt, David Leaf, Morgan Neville, Alison Ellwood, Thom Zimny, Roddy Bogawa, Beverly Lindsay-Johnson, Jonathan Holiff, Alex Winter, Neil Norman, and Bill Teck.
Providing further depth and perspective are Kubernik's interviewees Keith Richards, the Doors' Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore, Jerry Garcia, Ice Cube, Johnny Cash, Tina Turner, George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, the Supremes' Mary Wilson, David Bowie, Merry Clayton, Micky Dolenz, Phil Spector, Jack Nitzsche, Bobby Womack, Tom Petty, Steve Cropper, Wayne Jackson, the Temptations’ David Ruffin, Roger Steffens, Jon Burlingame, Eddie Kramer, Billy Cox, Smokey Robinson, the Seeds’ Daryl Hooper and Jan Savage, Andrew Loog Oldham, Howard Kaylan, Berry Gordy, Jr., Al Kooper, Kim Fowley, Jim Keltner, Marty Balin, Ice-T, Henry Diltz, the Miracles’ Bobby Rogers, Bill Graham, Ken Scott, Bob Johnston, Robbie Robertson, and many more.
Kubernik's cinematic, multi-voice narrative also mixes the recollections of record producers, engineers, photographers, university professors, authors, and writers discussing the documentaries.
Nearly 100 photos and artifacts illustrate Kubernik’s 378-page expedition through the documentaries and exploration of the genre’s remarkable surge in popularity in recent years.
Screen Gems: Pop Music Documentaries & Rock and Roll TV Scenes opens with a foreword penned by Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones’ 1963-1967 record producer/manager, author, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee. The book wraps with a back cover testimonial from another Rock Hall member: DJ, author, singer-songwriter, and producer Stevie Van Zandt, also musical director of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band.
“Without a doubt, Screen Gems is the first book to explore the rock documentary in-depth. Once again, Harvey Kubernik couples his encyclopedic knowledge with the willingness to investigate behind the scenes and talk to the people that actually make the movies and music. If you want gossip and lightweight fantasy, go elsewhere. If you want to learn about the art form and the people that fight hard to push it forward, this is the place. "
- Daniel Weizmann, novelist, Pacific Coast Highway Mystery series
“There are authors who have lived it and breathed it. And there are authors who can only read and dream about it. Harvey Kubernik is a native of Los Angeles who lives with an endless goldmine of stories in his head and keyboard. Kubernik relishes diversity and has always championed the forgotten East L.A. sound and its communal R & B heritage in his writings.
“In his new book Screen Gems, Kubernik touts and covers documentaries near and dear to the heart and soul of East L.A., such as 18th & Grand The Olympic Auditorium Story and Zappa. Growing up in East L.A., I admired Frank Zappa’s connection to Doo-Wop, Pachucos, and El Monte Legion Stadium.
While others have chosen to ignore the Sounds of East L.A., Kubernik continues to revive his intense alliance to one of L.A.'s finest and obscure homegrown genres. It gives me great pleasure to know that all of Kubernik's rock 'n' roll life has been one big intersection with East L.A. favorite sons, such as Thee Midniters, Cannibal & the Headhunters, and the Premiers.”
- Gene Aguilera, East Los Angeles music historian and Boxing Hall of Fame inductee, author, Mexican American Boxing from the Golden State.