"I Had Way Too Much Information!"
SUMMER OF SOUL distilled cultural history and musical revelation in a mindblowing brew. First-time director QUESTLOVE talks to DAVID HUTCHEON.
YOU WEREN’T alone if you had never heard of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, or seen the glorious sets by its headliners, including Stevie Wonder, The Staple Singers, B.B. King and Sly & The Family Stone. Although most of it had been filmed, and the rights-holders spent years trying to interest national TV companies, the footage sat on a shelf, forgotten in the shadow of the Woodstock behemoth. Little bits escaped – MOJO remembers finding the whole Sly & The Family Stone set on YouTube – but, for the world at large, this six-week celebration (June 29August 24) of arguably the most fertile period in African-American music might never have happened. Enter Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson, best known as the drummer with The Roots, the Philadelphian hip-hop veterans (and house band on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), and a DJ, author and record collector of note, but not, until now, a garlanded film-maker. The result combined extraordinary performances and vibrant politics, as a spine-tingling Nina Simone urged revolution from the stage and vox-popped gig-goers questioned the point, and the cost, of the Apollo 11 moon landing – the big news elsewhere in the world. “Black man want to go back to Africa,” says one spliff-toting wag. “White man’s going to the moon. I’m a stay in Harlem with the Puerto Ricans, have me some fun!”
Summer Of Soul is MOJO’s Film of the Year…
(Yelling) JESUS CHRIST! MOJO is one of my favourite periodicals, so the fact all these accolades are raining down on me… I do not take it for granted, man. I appreciate this. Thank you, thank you so much.
How did the film land at your door, because you’re not known as a film-maker?
It’s funny you say that, I tried to tell my producers the same thing, but they didn’t take no for an answer. They knew I had it within me to tell the story. Then on March 15, 2020, when America came to a halt, I thought, “Right, that’s it, no more movie, I’m off the hook.” But they doubled down: “Nope, we have all the time in the world, let’s roll up our sleeves and figure this out.” Then a weird thing happened: as we were editing, we realised that we are living in the same circumstances that were happening in 1967, ’68 and ’69, that caused the concert. So it became a different film. What I intended the film to be pre-pandemic was slower, slightly more nuanced than the urgent, packed-with-information version you’ve seen.
With all that spellbinding footage, it must have been easy to put it together.
I had way too much information! You guys are seeing less than 20 per cent of what was under the hood. My first draft was three hours and 25 minutes. There’s a whole comedy component that we didn’t even touch, including the only documented full performance of Pigmeat Markham in Harlem. There were massive hits. There was much more gospel. The psychedelic stuff: The Chambers Brothers did a crazy, 14-minute version of Time. There are moments where it mirrored Woodstock, but we wanted to keep those comparisons to a minimum. People ask me all the time, “What’s going to happen to the rest of the footage?”
What’s going to happen to the rest of the footage?
I’m certain that, eventually, it’s going to make the rounds, there’s so much more. I didn’t want to overwhelm people.
Some people objected to the subtitle (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised). What was that about?
People had tried to negotiate to get the footage before, and deals either fell short or fell apart. Anyone who tried to bring the film out earlier, more power to them, but some people missed out on a payday. When I came on board, in 2017, that footage was still in the basement. No production company wanted to take it on. They thought licensing would be a nightmare.
The vox pops, particularly critical statements about the moon landing, which coincided with Stevie Wonder’s show, are eye-opening.
There’s a moment when Gene Key, Stevie Wonder’s musical director, says to him, “You’re singing here in Harlem; meanwhile, there’s a man on the moon,” and the audience starts to boo. In the mid-’70s, my teachers taught me that [the moon landing] was to be celebrated. Our researchers found footage from CBS News – they went to the Harlem Cultural Festival to interview people to see how they felt – and it was filed under “Black People’s Feelings On The Moon Landing”. Once we’d uncovered that, we all agreed it had to be shared because I personally did not know that.
Any plans to make another film?
My next project is on Sly & The Family Stone. Speaking of MOJO, one of the most gripping articles I ever read was about [bassist] Larry Graham’s last night in the group. I knew that these two weeks in 1969 were the most important of Sly’s life, playing Harlem in preparation for Woodstock, which would make him a household name. I obsessed about that, then I got a call from [rapper/writer] Common, and his production company owns the rights to the group’s life story. “You want to direct it?” The one thing we do have in the can is about seven hours of Sly talking. He’s clear, he’s lucid, he’s very sharp and on point. He was beyond a game changer, he was a paradigm shifter, and there’s a lot to unpack there. I can’t wait to dig into it.
Any Roots news?
We are past the halfway part of the 17th Roots album. It’s on its way.
Did you buy much music in lockdown? You reputedly have a collection of 70,000 records…
Oh, it got a little out of hand, I’m kissing 200,000 now. I was running out of space, so I bought a farm. A lot of colleges are shutting down, and when colleges shut down, jazz stations shut down. I’ll get a phone call from people saying: “We have more than 40,000 records in our library and they’ll go to trash, and I don’t want to see that. Do you want these things?” A lot of widows contact me, 80-year-olds who were married to men who owned warehouses with 60,000 jukebox 45s…
Is there one record you desperately want?
There was. My Tonight Show producers found the one I’ve been looking for all my life. There’s a version of Sly & The Family Stone’s Stand! that does not have the funk bit at the end. Sly took a test pressing to the Whisky A Go-Go in Hollywood in 1969, but the kids weren’t impressed. So he adds that 30-second funk ending, as an afterthought. He tells Epic to destroy all the original 45s, but they accidentally pressed both. For my birthday, Jimmy Fallon got me one of the original versions. And now I have that I literally want nothing in the world. I’m now collecting horrible covers of Michael Jackson’s Rock With You and cheesy versions of Stevie Wonder’s I Wish.
What’s the best thing you’ve heard all year?
I can not scream loud enough about Sault. I’ll relax some days by driving for three-four hours listening to their records. Mariah Carey asked me: “Have you heard this group called Sault?” Johnny Marr just randomly hit me up, like two years after we last spoke, telling me: “This is a band I think you should get into, man.” I’m like: “I’m already there.” But for Johnny frickin’ Marr to be a Sault fan… that’s the most mind-blowing shit ever. I love them to death.