Musical biopics have really been picking up steam over the last few years.
From Bob Dylan to Queen to Jimi Hendrix, it seems that all kinds of musicians have been
getting their own movies.
But plenty of music legends have still been left out in the cold.
Here are a few of the musicians who really deserve their own movies.
Before they became arguably the most important figures in rap music, Joseph Simmons, Daryl
McDaniels, and Jason Mizell were just a bunch of dudes from Queens who found themselves
enamored of New York's burgeoning hip-hop scene.
Simmons and McDaniels had been acquainted since kindergarten, but were brought closer
by their mutual love of rhymes and the fact that McDaniels had his own turntables.
Resolving to form a group, they figured they'd call themselves The Dynamic Two - until Simmons'
older brother Russell, who had agreed to manage them, put a fork in that idea.
Speaking with the New York Times, McDaniels explained:
"He called and said, 'You're going to be Run-D.M.C.'
It sounded like the worst name in the world.
We said, 'You're ruining us.'"
McDaniels turned out to be wrong.
Recruiting well-known Queens DJ Mizell, the trio blazed a trail with their first three
records, and changed rap forever.
A biopic based on the group could have a lot of fun focusing on all the seemingly career-killing
choices that set them apart.
They eschewed flamboyant, disco-y garb in favor of jeans and leather jackets, stripped
down their music to practically nothing but drums and shouted vocals, and had the gall
to employ elements of rock into the genre before any of their contemporaries.
Of course, there was also enough drugs, drinking, and conflict during their heyday to add some
classic second-act drama, including a late-career turn to religion for Joseph Simmons.
Just don't let Aerosmith play themselves.
Musical pioneers always make for good biopic fodder, and you can't pioneer much harder
than Black Sabbath did.
Formed in 1968 as the Polka Tulk Blues Band, the boys eventually changed their name to
the slightly-less-ridiculous Earth, and were busy blues-ing it up around Birmingham when
fate intervened.
Guitarist Tony Iommi suffered an industrial accident that de-tipped the fingers of his
fretting hand, a career-ending injury for any guitarist - but he compensated by tuning
his axe down a half-step to provide some slack, resulting in a sound nobody had quite heard
before.
Then, singer Ozzy Osbourne and bassist Geezer Butler penned a dark, scary tune entitled
"Black Sabbath" - and, suddenly, heavy metal kicked in the womb.
The band would go on to lay down a path for every metal band since, while simultaneously
puzzling critics, enraging anyone with religious leanings, and doing more drugs than most human
beings can handle.
There's almost too much material for a biopic here; Osbourne's exploits alone are legendary,
but his leaving the band for a stellar solo career - along with the tragic death of his
guitarist Randy Rhoads - could also provide strong dramatic beats, and the tenure of vocalist
Ronnie James Dio in Sabbath deserves a close look as well.
Osbourne's triumphant return to the band at 1997's Ozzfest could even cap the whole thing
off.
With any luck, Ozzy's reality show years would end up on the cutting room floor.
"Gosh, you are so tired.
Come on, seriously, let’s go and lie down-"
[Ozzy Osbourne rambling incoherently]
The raucous, booze-soaked early years of famous bands always make for good biopic material
- and not many bands were more booze-soaked and raucous than Metallica.
They practically invented thrash metal as teenagers, dropping perhaps the most aggressive
musical style anyone had yet seen right on the world's face, and somehow parlayed that
into becoming the biggest band on Earth.
Along the way, the band endured its fair share of drama - because, as the documentary Some
Kind of Monster revealed, the personalities in the band tend toward the petulant and dysfunctional.
This was a band full of flagrant drunks who kicked out guitarist Dave Mustaine for drinking
too much.
Their steady rise to fame was also threatened by a horrific bus accident that claimed the
life of original bassist Cliff Burton.
And then Burton's replacement, Jason Newsted, was also in constant conflict with the other
members, to the point that his contribution to 1988's …And Justice For All was mixed
so low as to be nearly inaudible.
And just when it seemed like they'd gotten as mainstream as a thrash metal band could
get, they hooked up with producer Bob Rock for 1991's Metallica - which, with its slightly
more accessible sound, sold an unspeakable number of copies and made them international
superstars.
And you could probably just fade to black there, because Metallica got a lot less dramatic
once they sobered up.
The story of Van Halen is chock-full of possible avenues for dramatization.
There are the early years, which saw guitarist Eddie Van Halen developing the highly unconventional
playing techniques that would later make him a guitar god.
Then there was the meet-cute with vocalist David Lee Roth, a famously limited singer
who nonetheless absolutely owned the stage; and there was also that early demo, financed
by Gene Simmons of KISS.
These are all great biopic beats, and you could even end the flick with the band achieving
world dominance with their landmark album 1984.
Or, if you wanted a four-hour movie, you could sidle on through to Roth's 1985 fallout with
the band and the tenure of vocalist Sammy Hagar, during which things got a little weird
- and the band became even bigger.
Despite the Hagar years being the band's most commercially successful, they were marked
by the kind of nastiness and infighting that, while unfortunate, does make for great drama.
A biopic could revisit Hagar's dramatic break from the band, the ill-fated and brief tenure
of singer Gary Cherone, the subsequent on-again-off-again with Roth, and Eddie's onstage freakouts.
Of course, after all that, there would be no triumphant finale - since for the last
20 years or so, the band has just kind of soldiered on through tours and albums, whenever
they can tolerate each other long enough to do so.
In contrast to those early years, it's actually been kind of depressing.
Everyone knows Phil Collins is a legend.
But if you only know him for making you wonder what a "Sussudio" is, then you don't know
enough.
Collins is one of the most respected drummers in rock - he manned the skins for Genesis,
a wildly inventive prog-rock band with drum parts that would make lesser drummers put
their heads right through their snares.
Then, when lead singer Peter Gabriel left and took his uber-distinctive voice with him,
Collins stepped up to sing lead - and not only killed it, but took Genesis from proggy
weirdos to one of the biggest pop bands of the '80s.
Of course, we all know that he then went on to an even more successful solo career.
But did you know that he helped invent the gated snare drum sound which practically defined
the '80s?
That innovation is what makes perhaps the single most memorable bar of drumming ever
- on 'In the Air Tonight' - so memorable.
He was also the only artist to play at both Live Aid concerts, performing a solo set in
London before hopping on a Concorde to sing and sit in on drums for Led Zeppelin in Philadelphia.
He's a consummate professional, a badass in some truly unexpected ways, and has more career
highlights than you can shake a stick at.
What more could you want?
Many biopics fascinate audiences because they delve into the personal lives of their subjects,
showing us sides of their favorite artists that they'd never seen before.
But if Prince were ever to be immortalized on film, this wouldn't really be the case
- because Prince didn't have much of a personal life.
By all accounts, the man lived, breathed, and ate music, composing a song a day on average
and rarely ever taking breaks.
With Prince, what you saw was what you got - but his career still contained a wealth
of moments ripe for dramatization.
In his early years, there was controversy over his notoriously dirty mind, brought about
by albums like, well, Controversy and Dirty Mind.
This spiraled into full-blown hysteria when the government of the time went to war with
music, a conflict instigated by the Purple One's so-called "pornographic" lyrics to "Darling
Nikki," from his seminal 1984 release Purple Rain.
After that, he stoked tensions with his label by changing his name to an unpronounceable
symbol.
A biopic could also touch on the hits he wrote for other artists and his many stellar collaborations,
and would surely have to end with George Harrison's posthumous Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame induction
- at which Prince paid tribute with one of the most blindingly amazing guitar solos ever
performed.
"Oh, how rude of me.
I haven't given you enough time to freak out yet.
You may do so now."
The great part about a David Bowie biopic is that it'd be like six different biopics
in one.
You could start off with his early years playing around in local bands - under his real name
Davy Jones, before he changed it to avoid confusion with the Monkee of the same name.
After his first solo album went nowhere, he spent a while at a Buddhist monastery, and
then formed his own mime troupe - and you still haven't hit the really interesting parts
yet.
Throughout the 1970s, Bowie made a habit of completely overhauling his image every time
fans started to think they had him pinned down.
The spacy image of his first three albums gave way to full-on alienhood in the form
of perhaps his most famous persona, Ziggy Stardust.
That lasted all of a year before he glammed it up for his next couple releases.
Then, there was a segue into his slick, businesslike Thin White Duke persona in the late '70s,
a period during which he scored his first number one U.S. hit.
Finally, in the early '80s, he decided to throw off all the pomp and became a full-fledged
pop star, recruiting the legendary Stevie Ray Vaughn to play lead guitar on the monster
smash hit album Let's Dance - which is as good a place to wrap up the story as it is
a great name for his biopic.
In the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody's success, a Bowie-focused movie has actually been announced,
but the movie is unlikely to have any of Bowie's music or the family's blessing.
Any film detailing the life and times of Janis Joplin would have to start from her childhood
- because her life, unfortunately, was famously short.
However, there's plenty to mine for inspirational beats here.
She grew up singing in a church choir, and was bullied throughout school for her weight
and acne - which she later overcame to become one of the most powerful singers of her time.
After a couple of unsuccessful stints in college, she made a name for herself in the early '60s
by sitting in with folk singers and generally blowing them all out of the water.
A performance at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival turned out not to be the big break she needed,
and she almost gave up on music - before being recruited by San Francisco-based Big Brother
and the Holding Company, right before that city's music scene totally exploded.
A return to Monterey for the 1967 Pop Festival finally got the attention of record execs,
and her vocals work on Big Brother's 1968 album Cheap Thrills made her a bona fide star.
Of course, the requisite drugs, alcohol, and infighting all became factors, and Joplin
would only produce two more solo albums before her untimely death in 1970.
It's a classic story of struggle, hard living, blowing up fast, and dying young.
Joplin's big personality and even bigger voice surely deserve the Hollywood treatment.
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