August 13, 2020

Some of our dream rock documentaries

We've all seen documentaries and TV specials exploring the influence of a band or solo artist, full of sordid stories told via contemporary interviews, archival footage and photo montages, all designed to explain their legacy.

The new documentary The Go-Go's, now airing on Showtime, follows that blueprint with a nuts-and-bolts history lesson on the titular California pop band, still the only all-female group to top the album charts with songs they wrote and played themselves. It's a tried-and-true formula, one that has also been applied in recent years to Linda Ronstadt, David Crosby, Leonard Cohen, the Band, Nina Simone and more.

We racked our brains and came up with some artists we'd most like to see get the bio-doc treatment, from unheralded geniuses to cultural juggernauts with killer backstories.

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Nathan Weinbender and Dan Nailen
FLEETWOOD MAC
The central contradiction of Fleetwood Mac is that their drug-fueled, contentious behind-the-scenes drama inspired some of the smoothest soft-rock of the '70s. Perhaps enough has been written about the band's most famous iteration, fronted by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, but imagine a multipart documentary spanning the many iterations of Mac — its early days with blues guitarist Peter Green at the helm; the tumultuous, stadium-filling era of Rumours and Tusk; the 1990s comeback all the way up to the last few years, which found its members still squabbling publicly. (NATHAN WEINBENDER)