Screen Gems
Release date: Zappa's birthday - December 21
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.