Author: brucehhackett

Questions of a thousand dreams

Posted on by brucehhackett

“What’s all these crazy questions they’re asking me?”

Popular music lyrics, in ’60s and ’70s rock music especially, seem to ask a lot more questions than they provide answers.  They offer possibilities, theories, even concrete statements, but they mostly pose “what ifs” and open-ended queries of all kinds.

Lyrics through the years have asked hundreds of questions — questions that have obvious answers or hoped-for answers.  For instance, consider the multitude of songs with questions about emotional relationships:  

“Can I just make some more romance with you, my love?” (Van Morrison, 1970)

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God only knows what I’d be without you

Posted on by brucehhackett

imgres-2Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles.  Diana Ross as Billie Holiday.  Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin.  Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison.

These are just a few of the amazing performances we’ve seen in the movie genre known as the biopic, or biographical film.  It’s been around since the beginning of motion pictures, focusing primarily on historical figures, presidents, authors, actors and other celebrities.  Biopics on popular music figures first emerged in the late ’50s and early ’60s, with Hollywood treatments of such luminaries as Benny Goodman, Hank Williams and the like.  But things didn’t really get rolling until the ’70s, when biopics of Billie Holiday (“Lady Sings the Blues,” 1972), Woody Guthrie (“Bound for Glory,” 1976) and Buddy Holly (“The Buddy Holly Story,” 1979) were nominated for, or won, Academy Awards for the star or the film.

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