VINYL ILLUMINATES ROCK BOBBY CANNAVALE A HIT IN TELEVISION DRAMA
New Scorsese, Jagger series illuminates rock world in the ’70s
Vinyl Debuts Sunday, on HBO Canada
Martin Scorsese says the first episode of Vinyl is “like a soundtrack.”
It could be Scorsese’s soundtrack, or my soundtrack, or yours.
But in the context of the story, it’s the soundtrack of lead character Richie Finestra, played by Bobby Cannavale. It plays internally to Richie as it plays externally to us.
Scorsese and Mick Jagger are among the executive producers of the 1970s-set Vinyl, and Scorsese also directed the first episode, which debuts Sunday, on HBO Canada and HBO in the U.S. Scorsese was in Toronto for a première screening of Vinyl on Wednesday.
“When rock ’n’ roll hit, when I was 13 years old (in 1955), the music becomes part of your life,” said the 73-year-old Scorsese. “As they always say, ‘It’s in your blood.’
“What that means is that you hear it all the time, and you see life around you played to that music, in a sense. And so I wanted to create something like that in the pilot (of Vinyl), and in (subsequent episodes), too, where it’s not a conventional narrative.
“That music becomes part of the narrative, but the whole narrative is like a piece of music.
“It’s almost like Richie’s soundtrack. You are hearing his soundtrack. You are hearing what he hears in his head, whether he wants to hear it or not. Sometimes, he may go off and think about when he saw somebody perform. But I don’t even want to be that literal.
“It should be like a piece of music and should be cinematic in that respect, where maybe you see the performance, like Ruth Brown, or Bo Diddley, or Otis Redding. But it isn’t really seeing them.
“It’s being immersed, sort of, in the spirit of their music. That was the idea for me.”
Vinyl largely zeros in on the rock world of 1973. It was an era when both Led Zeppelin and Donny Osmond ruled big chunks of the record-buying market, and the seeds of punk and rap and hip-hop had been planted organically.
Richie Finestra is the founder and president of New York City-based American Century Records, a once highly successful company that now is struggling. Through many years, Richie slowly became more and more of an executive, at the expense of having a close connection to the music that drives any record company’s success or failure.
With his label on the verge of being sold to foreign interests, Richie experiences a series of lifealtering events.
Also starring Ray Romano, Olivia Wilde, Juno Temple and Jagger’s son James, among many others, Vinyl is based on an original idea by Mick Jagger that both he and Scorsese assumed would be a feature film. But both the film industry and the television industry changed, making it more financially logical to play Vinyl as a TV show.
“It was a natural for us at some point to try to do something together,” said Scorsese, referring to himself and Jagger.
Scorsese also was an executive producer on a previous HBO series, Boardwalk Empire, which wrapped up after five seasons in 2014.
“Certainly I’ve already, in the first season (of Vinyl), been even more involved, I believe, in these episodes, in all stages of the production, working in the tone meetings and sessions,” Scorsese said.
“Of course, I continue working with the music, because this goes back to when I first started using recorded music in Mean Streets in 1973.
“This is something that’s very natural to me, and it’s very close to my heart. So I intend to continue to be very involved in as much of the episodes as possible, and I hope that I can work out the time to direct a few more.”
I’m sure everyone involved would like to get that on tape.
Or at least on Vinyl.
“It was a natural for us ... to try to do something together.” ť MARTIN SCORSESE ON WORKING WITH MICK JAGGER