Good Rocking in Store

By JAY COCKS

Two TV shows take on 25 years of R 'n' R

Shapes up like a wild weekend. On Friday, Feb. 9, ABC will lavish two of its primest hours on a high-velocity history of rock 'n' roll from way back then to right now. Two days later, the same network will devote most of its Sunday-night schedule to a dramatic biography of Elvis Presley. The show portrays the first--and maybe still the greatest--of the epic rockers with a dash of eccentric imagination and a large portion of compassion. ABC has high hopes that its weekend of rock will pile up Nielsen points during the February "sweeps" period, and that is something of a signal. Rock 'n' roll, roughly 25 years old, has endured, mutated and flourished. Only one thing has changed. Rock started as rebel music. It has been big business for years. This weekend is a reminder that it has slipped smoothly into the cultural mainstream.

Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll, a time capsule of peak moments and joyous traditions, is also a first-rate primer of rock history. Malcolm Leo and Andrew Solt, who produced, directed and co-wrote the show, pay particular attention to getting the roots--in country and rhythm and blues--right. Before they talk about Buddy Holly, they show Hank Williams. Elvis storms on only after due notice has been paid to Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Muddy Waters and Ray Charles. To underscore the point, and to illustrate how threatening this music once seemed, Leo and Solt include some footage of angry parents, disc jockeys breaking rock records, and assorted other representatives of a concerned older generation, including a member of the segregationist White Citizens' Council, denouncing the music with considerable heat.

Trouble was, they could never match the heat of the performers. Hetling is that the early rockers come on as strong now as they ever did. Berry, doing a mean strut and split to Sweet Little Sixteen; Jerry Lee Lewis, ripping through a typically delirious rendition of Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On; Holly, singing Peggy Sue straight into the TV camera as if he wanted to short out the cathode-ray tubes: nothing cute, quaint or antique about any of this.

The footage that covers the early years is rare (some of it never seen before) and so red-hot that subsequent performers run the risk of coming off like contestants in a charade contest. Dylan, the Stones, the Beatles, the Who all carry the weight of tradition with ease. But Elton John, performing in concert, sounds as if he's singing in a record-your-voice booth; Janis Joplin, desperate to please, sings blues with the synthetic soul of a Broadway belter; Linda Ronstadt's coy version of a great Jagger-Richards tune might more appropriately be retitled Fumbling Dice. Thoughts of decadence and decline occur; Donna Summer appears. But then Jimmy Cliff shows up, singing The Harder They Come, and the balance is redressed. By the time the show ends, with a flourish from Elvis Costello and a blast from Bruce Springsteen, you know the future is in good hands.

Easy enough to pick a quarrel with a show like Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll: Where are Sam Cooke and the Drifters? Why not Van Morrison, Jackson Browne and Creedence Clearwater Revival? But the show gets all the major points straight and covers a lot of territory without stinting on either energy or spirit. Heroes will also be an eye-opener for kids whose idea of the '50s is a lot of chorus boys in black-leather jackets. For those with longer memories, this is less an occasion for reminiscence than for celebration.

The long shadow across Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll, of course, is Elvis Presley. He gets a whole segment to himself, which includes his first Hollywood screen test, an appearance on the Milton Berle show and the great title number from Jailhouse Rock. In Elvis!, directed by John Carpenter and written by Anthony Lawrence, he is also treated well but the shadows deepen even further. He becomes the classic figure of American success: famous, frightened and mother-fixated. The movie catches Presley's suicidal insulation, the shifts of mood and all his uncertainty, manages to make his success seem ultimately stultifying without ever inviting pity. Just as important, he is not treated either as a cultural icon or as some sort of bloated, junked-up superstar, but simply as he was, a great singer whose life grew beyond him, and out of control.

The movie sets itself a lot of tough marks, especially since the film makers, anticipating sticky negotiations, did not try for the rights to any Presley vocals. However, the singing by Ronnie McDowell is gilt-edge counterfeit, Elvis' sound carefully shaped and reduplicated by Felton Jarvis, Presley's own producer at RCA. There is also a starring performance that is quite literally phenomenal. Kurt Russell, a former minor-league baseball player who has done most of his acting on TV and in obscure Disney features, does not attempt an Elvis impersonation, although he moves with gymnastic ease and I curves his lip well. Russell plunges deeply into Presley's psyche, bringing all the talent and all the obsession right to the surface. He and Director Carpenter contrive an introduction that eerily sets the tone of the movie and fixes their subject all at once: his I shadow deep on a white wall, Presley sits alone in a dark Las Vegas hotel room, dressed all in black, watching television from behind dark shades, waiting for the night and his first show. It's good drama and good rock 'n' roll.

Both shows are a reminder of how deeply rock has penetrated and modified American popular culture. At the core of the vast rock audience is still the generation that first heard the music, that danced to it, changed with it, married to it, and died to it in Viet Nam: a generation that has never outgrown, will never outgrow the music. A group called the Showmen said it best, and most simply, in a tune that Heroes uses as a theme: "It Will Stand."

--Jay Cocks

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.