Documentary recalls Rick James
The best documentaries tell you things you didn’t know about their subjects and make you think differently about them. “Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James” (9 p.m., Showtime, TV-MA) more than qualifies.
Offering a wealth of contemporary interviews, period footage and original animation to visualize undocumented moments, “Fury” will inspire old fans to dust off their vinyl and young fans to edit their Spotify playlists.
The film also grapples with one of the great myths of pop culture: that there is “white” and “Black” music. That may be the way music has been marketed from the time of “race” records to Pat Boone appropriations and MTV segregation, but the biography of Rick James, of all people, shows that music, and even funk, is refreshingly colorblind.
Born in 1948 and raised in socially segregated Buffalo, New York, James reached draft age during the Vietnam era. Finding military regimentation not to his liking, he followed thousands of other draft and war resisters to Canada. The musically gifted James found fellow travelers in Toronto and formed a band, the Mynah Birds, whose members included Neil Young and Bruce Palmer, later a bassist for Buffalo Springfield.
In a vintage interview, James recalls being mugged by local racists, only to be rescued by a group of white guys who happened to be in another group called the Hawks, later to be known as the Band, Bob Dylan’s backup musicians.
James’ story is one of spectacular talent thwarted by a penchant for annoying those in charge. After an altercation with the manager of the Mynah Birds, the authorities were alerted to James’ AWOL status, earning him a year in the brig. After his spectacular (but hardly overnight) success in the late 1970s with “Mary Jane” and “Super Freak,” James all but assaulted the head of Motown, who retaliated by ignoring the artist and putting his effort into promoting Lionel Richie. Riding the crest of superstardom in the early 1980s, James essentially declared war on MTV’s lily-white playlist, alienating the corporate big shots there who decided to relent and “integrate” their format, but to do it with the seemingly safer Michael Jackson.
After a fallow period, James was perturbed when MC Hammer lifted parts of “Super Freak” for his hit “You Can’t Touch This,” but ended up making more money from the sampling rights than he did on the original record.
“Fury” is nearly two hours long. Sadly, entirely too much is devoted to James’ self-inflicted demons, his abuse of women and cocaine, time behind bars and early death in 2004.
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