Rockol Tracks: Whitney Houston and why the music biz will always love biopics

Rockol Tracks: Whitney Houston and why the music biz will always love biopics

The international movie business brings out biopics of dead music legends the way Spotify followers compile playlists.

And Whitney Houston and Aaliyah are just two of the recording icons whose life histories are currently being prepared for the big and small screens.

The life of Houston, which is scheduled to premiere next year on US-based international TV network Lifetime, should make great drama. As one of the greatest recording stars of all time, Houston shot to fame as an ingénue and continued to grow even bigger with sales of more than 200 million records. In addition, she starred in equally big movies. But that same life was blighted with a turbulent marriage to R&B/hip-hop singer Bobby Brown and drug addiction.

The as-yet untitled biopic is to be directed by Angela Bassett, who was nominated for portraying rock queen Tina Turner in the highly gritty What’s Love Got to Do with It.

Biopics (biographical movies) are the film industry’s alchemy for bringing the dead (or the fading careers of live artists) back to life, warts and all.

They introduce a new generation to acts who belted out the soundtracks to their parents’ youthful days.

Biopics are also effective marketing vehicles for driving back-catalog sales.

Music fans flocked into cinema theaters to watch award-winning box-office hits like Ray (about soul legend Ray Charles), Walk the Line (country-music icon Johnny Cash), What’s Love Got to Do with It (rock queen Tina Turner), La Vie en Rose (France’s celebrated Little Sparrow Edith Piaf), Control (Joy Division’s tragic Ian Curtis) and the more recent Get on Up (eminent soul meister James Brown).

Also in the movie-production pipeline is a biopic of Brooklyn-born Aaliyah, the “princess of R&B,” who died at the very young age of 22 in a 2001 plane crash. By then, she had sold more than 50 million records worldwide.

She started gaining attention at only 12 years old, nabbed a multi-million-selling album by the age of 15, collaborated successfully with pioneering hip-hop producers Missy Elliott and Timbaland, and starred in a high-profile action movie called Romeo Must Die.

But her short personal life was not scandal-free, making it an ideal biographical motion picture. The movie, also for Lifetime, is scheduled to debut this fall.

Music entrepreneur/producer Sylvia Robinson is going to get the big-screen treatment via movie producer, Paula Wagner, formerly business partner of Hollywood star Tom Cruise. Wagner has acquired the movie rights to the life of the woman known as “the mother of hip hop.”

Robinson, who died in 2011 at the age of 75, founded Sugar Hill Records, a label that has gone down in history for bringing out The Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight. It is considered to be the first rap recording to go mainstream, selling more than 8 million copies in the US alone.

Wagner is reported to have been intrigued by Robinson’s success in the overwhelmingly male-dominated industry, especially when she started in the 1960s. She set up Sugar Hill Records after co-founding the New Jersey-based All Platinum Records with her late husband. The movie’s release date is yet to be finalized.

But Wagner should have a lot of material to work with. The roster of artists Robinson worked with in the role of songwriter/producer range from Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg to Ike &Tina Turner and Kid Rock.

For punk fans, Oscar-winning Hollywood director Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Good Fellas, Mean Streets and Wolf of Wall Street) has been linked to a biopic of The Ramones.

Johnny, Tommy, Joey and Dee Dee Ramone (who were not related) died between 2001 and 2014. Despite their ragtag image associated with punk, The Ramones added clean-cut Beach Boys-type harmonies to their loud, fast and furious sound. And, as with several high-achieving rock groups (including The Beatles, Beach Boys, The Police), the intensity of their work caused massive amounts of friction among members of The Ramones. After all, they are said to have toured incessantly for 22 years.

When Scorsese’s interpretation of The Ramones phenomenon comes out in 2016, it will coincide with the 40th anniversary of the band’s debut album Ramones and single Blitzkrieg Bop, released by Sire Records in 1976.

The director should know how to interpret the inner workings of a once living rock band. Scorsese has directed a host of rockumentaries that include The Last Waltz, which covered a farewell concert by eminent Canadian rock group The Band; No Direction Home: Bob Dylan; Shine A Light, which focused on The Rolling Stones in concert; and George Harrison: Living in the Material World, which tracked the career of The Beatles’ lead guitarist.

Of course, the concept of biopics constantly raises questions. Cinemas and movies are for entertainment. Is the screen portrayal of a currently or once living person faithful to the truth or to the spirit of the truth? That is a question that bothers both fans of the artists, living relatives and the artists, should they still be alive.

Hollywood superstar Clint Eastwood has just completed the movie version of Jersey Boys, about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, which Valli himself has endorsed. Meanwhile, a biopic of Freddie Mercury continues to be delayed, almost a year after it was confirmed. It seems reproducing the true story of artists for the screen can provide dramatic tensions of their own.

[Juliana Koranteng]