‘Sheryl’ recaps life of singer Crow, and looks forward
All that Sheryl Crow wants to do is have some fun. And through her many years of making music, she’s earned it.
After debuting at the South by Southwest festival in March, director Amy Scott’s documentary “Sheryl” gets its television premiere Friday on Showtime. Besides tracing the career that has brought the much-traveled Crow nine Grammy Awards, it also considers her relationships (including a broken engagement to cyclist Lance Armstrong), her bouts with breast cancer and a brain tumor, and her role as an adoptive single parent. Keith Richards, Laura Dern, Joe Walsh, Emmylou Harris and Brandi Carlile are among friends and peers who offer comments.
“I’ve been asked over the years about doing a documentary,” said Crow, who was a music teacher before she entered the industry herself. “I’ve always felt like documentaries were told after someone has already gone on after a fiery plane crash, or I just didn’t feel like it was time for me or for my story to be told.
“It was my manager — who’s been with me from the very, very beginning, which is 30 years now — that said, ‘Look, you have a powerful story. You have seen your business change. You have grown most of your life in the world of music and in the world of being well-known for that, and you have a story to tell. And it’s time for you to tell that story.’ ”
Besides “All I Wanna Do,” “Sheryl” expectedly covers such Crow hits as “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Strong Enough,” “If It Makes You Happy,” “Everyday Is a Winding Road,” “My Favorite Mistake” and “Soak Up the Sun.”
Crow said, “When ‘All I Wanna Do’ came out, we’d already been out (touring) for a year before that song won the Grammys and really put us on the map, and then we had to tour for another year and a half. And we started sort of reworking that song and making it fun and cool, but people didn’t want to hear it that way. And this was a very big lesson for me: People want to hear it the way they hear it on the radio.”
For as many times as she has played her popular tunes, Crow maintains it makes her happy to still draw upon them.
“It’s been one of the prides and joys of having this extremely long career that the people that started out with me are still in the picture. We went through all the hard times, the low points, the high points … and we’ve come out of it kind of like these wise, old (folks) sitting on the rocking chair on the front porch, talking about the young people.”