Two music-themed documentaries, one (seemingly) all about darkness and the other (actually) all about light, arrive on Hulu nearly together. “Into the Void: Life, Death and Heavy Metal,” premiering Monday, is an eight-part film — really eight films arranged around the title theme. “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery,” which premieres Sunday, revisits Sarah McLachlan’s late-’90s all-female traveling music festival. From these extremely disparate approaches to subject matter, volume and vocals have been wrought often moving testaments to self-expression, community and finding a voice in a world that might not want you to be heard, or at least to help you do it. You may learn something, or think a little differently about what you thought you knew. Each might inspire a little tear, or a lot of big ones.
“Into the Void” is not a history or a survey but looks at individual cases from across the years and the metal spectrum. Most involve tragic circumstances — early death by accident, suicide or from illness in the most extreme cases — though the approach is more sympathetic than sensational; this isn’t “Behind the Music” or, for that matter, “Spinal Tap,” with its exploding drummers. (All musicians know that everything in that movie — I haven’t seen the sequel yet — is true.) Familiarity with or even interest in metal and its subgenres is not a prerequisite; these are human stories, involving enough on their own.
“Randy Rhoads” looks at the life of the guitar hero killed at 25 in a small plane crash while on tour with Ozzy Osbourne. “Kurt Struebing of NME” focuses on the mentally ill Seattle black metal guitarist and singer who murdered his mother while under the influence but put his life together after eight years in prison, only to later steer his car off a bridge. “Judas Priest on Trial” recalls how the English band was sued when two young fans executed a suicide pact — one successful, one surviving but disfigured — supposedly under the influence of a subliminal message in their music. “Chuck Schuldiner of Death,” is about the influential death metal singer-guitarist who died from a brain tumor as he sought to bring new dimensions to his music. (Those not schooled in the genre might have trouble distinguishing the new dimensions from the old, but that’s on your/my untrained ear.) “Dimebag Darrell” concerns the highly regarded Pantera founding guitarist, murdered onstage by a disturbed fan while playing with his post-Pantera band, Damageplan; but it’s also very much about volatility among bandmates.
“Wendy O. Williams” revisits the half-clad singer of the Plasmatics, who smashed TVs, chainsawed guitars, blew up automobiles in the course of her performances, creating controversy wherever they went. If you saw them, you may have missed the antimaterialist subtext, or the sweet, thoughtful person inside the performer. Williams was sort of punk to begin with, but fully metal afterward. The ending is sad, but somehow, as recounted by surviving partner Rod Swenson, not depressing. “Ann Boleyn of Hellion” is a story of sexism and stalkers, set against the Sunset Strip in its big-haired pomp, focused on a performer that all here agree should have been huge; it goes somewhere sweetly surprising at the finish.
A happy ending also awaits singer/guitarist Nikan Khosravi and DJ Arash Ilkhani of the thrash metal band Confess, in the often nightmarish “Iranian Metal Crusade.” In a country where all metal is underground and a lyric can get you hung, the pair spent 18 months in prison, three in solitary confinement, awaiting trial, before fleeing the country while finally out on bail. If you know your metal subgenres, I won’t have to tell you the country where they wind up.
Obviously, you can’t apply a single description to an entire audience, but for many fans, certainly, metal has provided a sense of empowerment, of belonging, of possibility. So it is for the musician themselves, who all began as fans, and the ones highlighted here took it seriously, youthful indiscretions notwithstanding. (The sex and drugs aspects of rock ’n’ roll are not much discussed; but family is.) Many of the band members interviewed here, some decades after the moment of their greatest success, look back with a bemused sense of proportion and, where appropriate, regret.
There was no metal on the bill at Lilith Fair, or, to judge by Ally Pankiw’s film, anything in the way of ego or arguments or any sort of bad behavior, backstage or before it. (Compare and contrast it with the disastrous Woodstock ’99, with its sexual assaults, vandalism and arson.) The challenges of sending a first-of-its-kind giant traveling show into the world without knowing whether the world would show up are duly recounted. (“It felt like we were building the airplane while we were already flying it,” says production manager Catherine Runnals.) But “Building a Mystery” is primarily a celebration of a success — and why not?
“Lilith Fair came from a very radical place,” says Ann Powers, former L.A. Times and current NPR music critic. “But in the moment if felt totally mainstream, totally in the center, and that was its power.”
The festival was built around solo artists, female singer-songwriters, who were having a moment; nevertheless, it was a time when promoters wouldn’t even put two women on the same bill and radio stations were loath to play female artists back to back. Lilith, for Adam’s mythological unsubmissive first wife, with Fair standing for equal, beautiful and a celebration, was a wild idea made reality, and one whose success would propel it through three summers, from 1997 to 1999. Main stage performers at one time or another included Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega, Erykah Badu, Natalie Merchant, the Indigo Girls, Missy Elliott, Paula Cole, Jewel, Emmylou Harris, Liz Phair, Bonnie Raitt, Chrissie Hynde, Queen Latifah and Sinead O’Connor — not just Girls With Acoustic Guitars.
Simply by existing, it was a magnet for mockery and criticism, in the press — on morning radio and late-night television. Even some participants were at first unsure of whether they wanted to be there, though to judge by their recollections, everyone succumbed to the good vibes and the atmosphere McLachlan set. (“Less competitive, and a little more considerate,” remembers Raitt.) Offstage there were birthday cakes and dance parties; onstage there was collaboration. (Outside there were anti-choice protesters; bomb and other threats were a constant.)
A 2010 revival was unsuccessful; dates were canceled for low ticket sales, though with the likes of Cat Power, Janelle Monáe, Brandi Carlile, Metric, Mary J. Blige and Tegan and Sara joining the returning veterans, it would have been a good day out. Now, when women dominate popular music, a Lilith Fair might not seem as culturally necessary; but those were different times,
Dan Levy, a producer, attended. “I was 12 or 13 at the time, still in the closet and had been bullied, and never really felt safe anywhere that I was because I wasn’t being myself,” he recalls here. “And you look around and you see people smiling and laughing and holding onto each other, and you just had people that were being themselves, celebrating themselves, it felt this kind of quiet revolution. I was like, ‘What is this freedom?’”
“They were coming to support an idea,” says Phair, who credits Lilith Fair with her decision to carry on playing. “I can be safe, I can be respected, I can be open… That was a very Sarah experience.”
Good music too.
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