THAT’LL BE THE DAY/ STARDUST

Charting the rise and fall of David Essex’s sociopathic deckchair attendant turned rock star. By Peter Watts

DAVID Essex’s career-best twoparter about the rise and fall of rock superstar Jim Maclaine was never intended to be about music.

That’ll Be The Day, directed by David Puttnam, started as a simple coming-of-age drama, but after EMI offered extra cash if the producers could work 40 songs into the soundtrack, the action was relocated to the funfair and holiday camp, where ’50s rock provided a natural soundtrack. The film (and soundtrack) was a smash, leading to a sequel,

Stardust, directed by Michael Apted. Both films had a string of rock cameos: Ringo Starr, Billy Fury and Keith Moon in That’ll Be The Day; Moon again, Marty Wilde, Dave Edmunds and a faultless Adam Faith in Stardust. But these are odd and deeply cynical films. In That’ll Be The Day, Maclaine has no burning love of rock – he’s more interested in getting his leg over. And even after he makes it big in Stardust, he’s never presented as much more than a ruthless chancer. At one point, adoring but open-eyed manager Mike (Adam Faith) admits that Maclaine wasn’t better than anybody else, he just wanted to be more famous.

We first see him as a small boy (played by Puttnam’s own son), meeting an unfamiliar father returning from the war. Dad can’t take domesticity and scarpers, creating a role model that angry young man Maclaine soon embraces, running away to the funfair where he meets Mike (played engagingly by Ringo in the first film) and sleeping with every woman in sight. It’s a story of feckless masculinity, with Essex oozing a wounded charm as he treats everybody – mother, wife, best friend, even Ringo – with sociopathic disregard. At one point, Maclaine literally numbers one of his sexual conquests with lipstick like some sort of serial killer.

That’ll Be The Day ends with Maclaine running away again, this time with a guitar, which he thinks will allow him to escape responsibility once and for all. That provided a segue into Stardust, which follows Maclaine’s progress from young chancer to ultimate runaway – a messianic drug-addled burnt-out superstar marooned in his own castle. While That’ll Be The Day is a concise kitchen-sink character study,

Stardust has a wider narrative sweep. It’s also more predictable – we know how this story will end. Essex is outstanding in That’ll Be The Day but in Stardust his shallowness makes him a passive victim and the strongest performances come from Adam Faith and Larry Hagman’s fast-talking US tycoon.

A handful of outstanding scenes explore the tension between escapism and reality that sit at the centre of the films. In one, Jim returns to his hometown to attend his mum’s funeral, only for the ceremony to be interrupted by screaming fans. This footage was taken from life after the set was besieged by Essex’s fans who had discovered him through “Rock On”, the hit from That’ll Be The Day. As so many ’60s stars eventually came to learn, when you’re famous you can run but you can never hide.

Extras: 7/10. That’ll Be The Day has new interviews with David Puttnam, Ray Connolly and Bob Stanley;

Stardust has Puttnam, Connolly and Michael Apted. Both have a stills gallery and are on DVD and Blu-ray.

Stardust is restored.