Aretha’s Lost Concert Film
After 46 years, fans can see the making of 1972’s ‘Amazing Grace’
After 46 years, fans can finally see the making of the late legend’s 1972 landmark, Amazing Grace.
In January 1972, Aretha Franklin returned to her church roots, recording a gospel album over two nights at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles. Amazing Grace, the resulting double LP, went on to sell 2 million copies and become a landmark in Franklin’s career. Bassist Chuck Rainey noticed a camera crew scurrying around during the shows, but wasn’t sure why it was there. “We weren’t told anything,” he says. “We were just musicians all-in with her. You [assume] they’re doing something for posterity.”
In fact, director Sydney Pollack had been hired to shoot the performances for a feature film, but the footage was never released — until now. Nearly 50 years and many legal and technical issues later, Amazing Grace, an entrancing 90-minute documentary on the making of the album, is on its way to theaters. “It’s her with her piano, an organ and a choir, saying very few words and focusing on her singing,” says Franklin’s niece Sabrina Owens. “Those nights weren’t just singing in the church — it was work. And she would go into a zone when she was working.”
The Warner Bros. film division initially bailed on Amazing Grace because the sound and the footage had not been properly synced due to an equipment problem at the shoot. Decades later, former Atlantic A&R executive Alan Elliott bought Pollack’s footage from Warner Bros., and used digital technology to complete the movie. “I always had faith and love for the recordings,” says Elliott, who first heard about the lost Amazing Grace film in a 1990 conversation with Franklin producer Jerry Wexler. “And I accepted the awesome responsibility of this premier document of American popular music — and knowing that if I didn’t do it, it would not get done.”
But when Franklin heard about the project in 2011, she sued him, kicking off years of court orders and counteroffers. At one point, Elliott says, her camp’s asking price for the rights to her performances soared to as much as $5 million. “But think about this,” he adds. “She’s the Queen of Soul, and they fuck it up. And now they sold it to this guy, and she has no idea who he is.”
In 2013, Elliott finally received a document he’d long sought: a 1968 contract between Franklin, Atlantic and Warner Bros., in which she gave away her film rights. With that, Amazing Grace was supposed to premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in 2015 — until Franklin’s lawyer obtained a court order to halt that plan. Subsequent festival screenings in Toronto and Chicago were also canceled, and Franklin won her case in court. “It was pretty deflating,” says Tirrell Whittley, a veteran marketing executive who is one of Elliott’s producing partners. “There were moments when we were like, ‘Maybe this isn’t meant to be.’ ”
Owens says that she’s not sure why her aunt blocked the release of Amazing Grace for so many years. “It might have been technical things,” she speculates. “She was a perfectionist. Or maybe it was because they could never negotiate the terms.”
Elliott, meanwhile, suspects that Franklin had mixed feelings about Pollack’s film, which she had hoped would help launch a Hollywood acting career. “My sense is that she was very upset that the film company had messed up this huge opportunity to make her a movie star,” Elliott says. When Owens told him of her aunt’s health issues, he put the movie on the back burner out of respect.
Franklin didn’t leave behind a will when she died in August from pancreatic cancer, but her four sons have been designated her heirs, with Owens as executor. She says the family is looking into unreleased recordings, but otherwise they have few concrete plans. “We’re not rushing to do anything else right now,” Owens says. “We’re taking our time.”
Yet after a private September screening in Detroit for family members, the Franklin estate decided to make an exception for Amazing Grace. “Seeing the movie helped us to heal,” says her nephew Vaughn Franklin. “You miss her calls and texts, but when you see her on the screen, you feel like she’s still there.” Adds Elliott, “It took a long time to get to that happy ending, but it’s a happy ending.”
DAVID BROWNE
“I always had love for the recordings,” says producer Alan Elliott. “And I knew that if I didn’t do it, it would not get done.”