The Greatest Night in Pop

Rather than watch 1965’s “The Greatest Story Ever Told” on Easter Sunday, I watched “The Greatest Night Pop,” along with My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife, and a few Friends of the Blog. Our viewing choice was hardly any less apropos if you believe, as some culture writers would, that celebrities are the morally bankrupt modern world’s true religious icons. After all, the title of Bao Nguyen’s Netflix documentary refers to the one-night recording of the famous, partially infamous “We Are the World” charity single of 1985 in which scores of celebrated musical recording artists gathered in Los Angeles to record a track drawing attention to the famine crippling Africa, which is why they christened their uber-supergroup, of sorts, as USA for Africa. Whether “We Are the World” made it good on its benevolent intentions is a question I cannot really answer in this review not least because the movie itself barely mounts a case as the song being a genuine force for good, just proffering a few broad statistics, boilerplate observations, and perhaps most revealingly, Kenny Loggins noting that he “wasn’t that aware of what was going on in Africa, but, at that time, whatever Michael (Jackson) did turned to gold.” No, given that Lionel Richie, the song’s co-writer along with Jackson, and driving force in its recording, functions as executive producer, “The Greatest Night in Pop” becomes a victory lap. And yet, if that slanted perspective naturally call this whole enterprise into question, the peek behind the curtain is so good, that it’s difficult not to come away entertained, if not also a little in awe that the whole thing happened in the first place.

For starters, did you know that “We Are the World” was recorded the same night as the 1985 American Music Awards? The same American Music Awards where Lionel Richie not only won seven times but hosted? Hosting an awards show is an exhausting process in and of itself and then afterwards Richie, exhausted, went to a recording studio and exhausted himself all over again by wrangling 50 of the biggest egos on the planet. That’s insanity. That’s like if after hosting the Academy Awards, Jimmy Kimmel went and tried to herd 50 standup comedians into recording a standup record to benefit [insert your preferred current global crisis here]. Maybe even more impressive than that, though, is how the song that Richie and Jackson wrote, and that crucially, Quincy Jones produced, never became a muddled mess but found a way to incorporate all those voices by utilizing their strengths in all the right places, effectively transforming pop music’s best and brightest into a genuine choir, and dispensing a compelling argument that made me reconsider my longtime blithe dismissal of the track.

Above all, “The Greatest Night in Pop” is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes footage and more often than not, Nguyen makes the most of it. Not just in granting a figurative backstage pass with intimate glimpses of so many pop superstars just sort of milling around like hesitant kids on the first day of camp, but in demonstrating how “We Are the World” was much less lightning in a bottle than into the wee hours of the morning blood, sweat and tears. Bob Dylan, reduced to so many severe, sweaty close-ups, virtually drowns amongst his peers before rising to the occasion for his solo and the hero’s journey of Huey Lewis, to quote My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife, when he is asked to pinch-hit as one part of a three-part melody for no-show Prince and becomes to this doc what Elaine Stritch was in trying to nail “The Ladies Who Lunch” in D.A. Pennebaker’s “Original Cast Album: Company” (1970). That direct cinema documentary utilized Pennebaker’s preferred fly on the wall approach, one that Nguyen rejects, preferring to interject all manner of talking head interviews, repeatedly yanking us back into the present. It’s not a wrong approach, really, frequently enjoyable, even insightful. And yet, it also comes to feel like something is being left on the table, layering an unmistakable sense of post factum varnish epitomizing “The Greatest Night in Pop” as a final accounting for the historical record rather than a living, breathing document of history as it is being written. 

Good Ol' Freda

For the majority of “Good Ol’ Freda”, our faithful narrator, Freda Kelly, the longtime secretary of The Beatles, is seated on the non-descript couch inside her own home, recounting her entire eleven years lending crucial aid to John, Paul, George and Ringo. As she does, the film continually illustrates and highlights her stories with all manner of black and white stills of The Beatles themselves, often in what appear moments of good cheer rather than disaffected posing, as if Freda herself is flipping through an old family photo album. And that is the sensation “Good Ol’ Freda” yearns to elicit – listening to a family member tell tales.

Freda makes clear that first and foremost she was a Beatle fan, standing with all the other shrieking girls, albeit more composed and a bit further back, at the Cavern Club in her and their hometown of Liverpool. A friend formed a small-time Beatle fan club and Freda helped, until the friend flaked out and Freda took over. That was how she first entered the world, until The Beatles got a bit bigger and producer Brian Epstein needed a secretary for his quartet. Enter: Freda. And there she would remain for all eleven years of the band's epic run.

The surviving members of The Beatles, crucially, correctly, are never interviewed (though Ringo pops up momentarily over the closing credits). Well, their story has been told an untold number of times, and the point here is not to look through that lens yet again. A few others – like Paul McCartney’s grandmother and Freda’s own daughter – appear on camera now and again, but they are more like the relatives in the other room adding their two cents unasked.

It is important to state the politeness of “Good Ol’ Freda.” The film’s material leans heavily toward the earlier years, when The Beatles appeared like matching moppets, as opposed to the later years when discord was rampant and psychedelic was the word du jour. Then again, as The Beatles popularity took off and they moved band operations from Liverpool to London, Freda remained behind, doing her job and running the fan club out of the old offices. Perhaps she missed much of the strain. Perhaps she simply wished not to rehash it. Big revelations, by which I mean SHOCKING (!!!) revelations, will not be found in any capacity.

Fairly early in the film Freda drops quiet hints at relationships, maybe with one Beatle, maybe with more. The director, off camera, presses her on this, but she refuses to indulge on that topic, coyly replying “That’s personal.” And I suppose such a moment would rule most documentaries out of order. But I would hesitate to label “Good Ol’ Freda” a documentary, at least not in the way that we typically think of documentaries. The point here is not to dig up dirt or dissect a band that has already been dissected for decades, but simply to reflect. It is A Remembrance, and Freda Kelly is editing the remembrance for the filmmakers.

The film paints Freda Kelly as a woman of great privacy and independence. She still works nine to five, six days a week, her daughter tells us, and never cashed in on her fame. She keeps four boxes of mementos in her attic, not much more. Many of her current day friends, we learn, had no idea who she once was and what she once did. She simply doesn’t talk about it, not on account of shame or regret, but because, well, that’s personal.

I watched “Good Ol’ Freda” the same day I first read of emerging reports that the late Brittany Murphy may or may not have been poisoned, digging up the dirt from the grave of the deceased (figuratively), refusing to give her peace or privacy even in the afterlife. Freda Kelly is here, graciously, to remind us that we all, even the rich and famous, even the biggest band in the whole wide world, deserve a semblance of privacy too.