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Vinyl Review

Published

11 years ago

February 26, 2016

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Rock Folly

♦ Tripwire sent senior writer Andrew Colman with his rolled-up dollar notes and his silver business card case to review the first two episodes of HBO’s new Vinyl TV show, created by Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter. WARNING: Spoilers ahead in his review

Vinyl episodes 1 &2

Directors: Martin Scorsese, Allen Coulter

Stars: Bobbie Cannavale, Paul-Ben Victor, PJ Byrne, Max Casella, James Jagger, Juno Temple

There’s no doubt that Martin Scorsese has considerable pedigree when it comes to projects about rock ‘n’ roll – The Last Waltz, his film about The Band’s last hurrah, was a grassroots tour de force, and there were plaudits for his George Harrison biopic. And of course there’s his landmark movies, such as Goodfellas, which swapped the usual bespoke score for a rock and pop soundtrack, with no shortage of songs by his co-producer Mick Jagger’s band. Couple these two knowledgeable souls, both of whom were most certainly there during the classic rock era, HBO’s vast budget, and returning Sopranos maven Terence Winter helming the spectacle, and another televisual triumph for the original cable TV station did seem inevitable. A blending of Performance, Mad Men, and every good rock horror show from Gimme Shelter to err, The Song Remains The Same was anticipated – after all, the project occupies a vaguely similar milieu to The Sopranos. What we actually get is everything thrown at the screen in a blur of nostalgia and mythologising, with none of the academic hallmarks that HBO is known for among the X-rated fare – context, character development and subtlety.

It’s as if the producers were so determined to make the viewer aware that this series is set in the early 1970s, that they forgot that visual and referential bombardment only disconnects from the narrative – no slow burn or build-up, as with previous ‘60s retro-drama Mad Men. The story focuses on Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale), a somewhat diffuse record executive, and his sex and drugs-fuelled meanderings through the classic rock museum. His desperate need to save his company, American Century, from corporate takeover is met with strong resistance from his put-upon colleagues Zak Yankovich (Ray Romano) and Skip Fontaine (J.C. MacKenzie). He is ably abetted by his equally feral assistant Julie Silver (Max Casella) along with his lieutenants in the A & R department, who he casually bullies whenever he’s in the mood. Plus there’s mercenary office girl Jamie Vine, played by Juno Temple, who may be the best thing about the show, and Devon Finestra (Olivia Wilde), Richie’s wife and conscience.

The show’s pilot, running at an elephantine 110 minutes, doesn’t take long to throw the viewer in at the deep end. Our hero Richie, rather inevitably coked to the gills (this is HBO, after all) narrates a brief flash-forward regarding his Damascene moment at a New York Dolls gig at the Mercer Arts Center. From there, it’s back to several days earlier, where the story’s motor appears to be ensuring that Led Zeppelin stay on the company’s books to make everything saleable to German-owned multinational Polygram. Whatever. So we get a Robert Plant lookalike (with the wrong accent and characterisation) wandering around backstage at Madison Square Garden ( a swipe from actual footage of the real Zep), mocking Richie, whilst in the background there’s Ian Hart pretending to be Zep’s gangsterish boss Peter Grant, again lifted from that footage. He sort of looks like Grant, and even sort-of sounds like Grant, except he’s nowhere near enormous enough. He’s also trying too hard. Which could be a metaphor for the show.

From there, it’s all early ‘70s-agogo, with cast-members name dropping furiously (even Abba gets a mention), whilst trying to kick start a drama that isn’t really all that palpable. There are flashbacks to the early 1960s and 1967, which get very confusing at times. Perhaps the most focused sub-plot (for want of a better term) is the backstory concerning Lester Grimes (Ato Essandoh), a talented young blues singer who befriends Richie, who then proceeds to undermine him artistically before betraying him by selling his contract off to the Mafia. This thread is an authentic sliver of Americana, replete with slightly caricatured Jewish label owners and predictably goonish Italian mobsters. However this, along with other plot-strands, never does enough to bring much into focus in what is the most self-indulgent series in living memory.

Characters enter the fray without so much as an entrance or introduction, and then disappear just as quickly, leaving the viewer to pick up the pieces – there’s Andrew Dice Clay’s astonishingly florid, splenetic turn as the monstrous “Buck” Rogers, radio station owner, who turns up out of nowhere in a sea of cocaine psychosis and Fellini-esque depravity and then is quickly dispatched in a scene that may be strangely familiar to Scorsese fans, and then is never brought up again. Then there’s the moment where Richie meets his wife at Andy Warhol’s Factory, with (of course) the Velvet Underground in tow – what is not clear here is which year we are in – it can’t be 1973, as the Velvets were long gone by then – the relentless buttressing from one year to the next dispelling any cohesion. The most anachronistic element of the ensemble however is the appearance of the Nasty Bits, fronted by James Jagger (I wonder how he got that role?) – a risibly generic English punk band who seem to have time-travelled back from four years later and are in the wrong country for their parochial whitterings – a conceit so vapidly disingenuous, you wonder what Mick and Martin were thinking – guys, either stay loyal to rock history or stop using actors playing real-life rockers throughout the show. Another problem here is that all the “rock stars” involved are played by people who are obviously far too young to have been around the tics, cadences and argot of the era, so what we mostly get is a panoply of flat cover versions. Plus rock crowds (cf the Dolls gig) didn’t look like that back then!

In among the maelstrom of cosplaying extras there is Richie, a man so servile to his existential needs that he is constantly teetering on the brink, only to superhumanly survive against all odds – even being buried by the collapsing Mercer Arts Center doesn’t diminish his ardour. It’s a typical turn from Cannavale – all big acting, scenery-chewing and lurking, jittery menace – psychotic one minute, calm the next. But he is nevertheless very good, as are nearly all the rest of the main cast, and given the opportunity (assuming the grand guignol gets pared down) he could excel in the role. Ray Romano, Olivia Wilde and Juno Temple are also all top draw, the latter by far the most believable member of the cast, who genuinely inhabits the mores, flakiness and amorality of the time.

It’s not that this vanity project (let’s be frank here) doesn’t have potential – on the plus side, the clothes, the décor, the attitudes, the promiscuity and the beards are all present and correct in their bell-bottomed, wide-collared glory. And with this being HBO rather than AMC, there’s an awful lot of swearing and nudity, which is somewhat key in this tale of excess. Cannavale himself looks somewhat reminiscent of Warren Beatty circa Shampoo, for what it’s worth. There are one or two great moments in the pilot – such as when Richie, burnt out and shattered, surveys the New York streets, teeming with partying detritus, from the back of his cab – a dreamlike sequence that draws you in but doesn’t last long enough. There’s plenty of episodes to go, and a second series has indeed been ordered, natch, so one wonders after the emetic nature of the first two instalments whether we will see a proper quality drama emerge, and how on earth the writers will manage it. As a certifiable rock nerd I will be watching, if anything to see how many howlers are in the plot, but mainly because with all this talent on board at some point the mud that’s been thrown at the wall will have to stick. Plus an actor playing David Bowie is in an upcoming episode, so I’ll stick around for that. He can’t be any worse than the guy who played Lou Reed.

ANDREW COLMAN