Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll nostalgia

Two rock geezers, strolling down memory lane in two recent documentary films.

Yet each is separated by decades, by worlds, and by life experiences.

One is James Murphy, the protagonist of the rock documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits. The other is Ginger Baker, septuagenarian drummer from Cream and Blind Faith, in the documentary Beware of Mr. Baker.

Murphy, 40-ish when the film was made to showcase his “farewell” performance with the band LCD Soundsystem, is shown in many backstage moments: cuddling his dog, shaving his graying beard, making coffee. These moments are set in the minimal white background of his NYC apartment, where he is preparing for a Madison Square Garden show that will signal his “retirement” of the band and a portion of his life.

Murphy, whose résumé includes turning down a job writing for Seinfeld in the early ‘90s (he didn’t think the show would become a hit), turned his attention to turntables and DJing, and eventually had hits such as Losing My Edge (the video of which features Murphy’s deadpan face staring at the camera reciting “hip” musical antecedents while a hand repeatedly slaps him). LCD Soundsystem became a much bigger deal, and Murphy — between scoring movies such as Greenberg — became a rock star beloved by New York City hipsters and, indeed, hipsters around the world.

Onstage, Murphy shows off his singing chops, and the band — which features members of Arcade Fire and Reggie Watts on selected numbers — is a big collective experience that arguably lifts the songs above dance club hits to something even better.

The inevitable question — framed by Stephen Colbert on his cable show the night before the Madison Square Garden gig — is why stop now? “You’re a rock star. You’re not supposed to walk away from fame and fortune and partying and debauchery.” Murphy says that he wants to do other things. “Like what?” asks Colbert. “Make coffee,” Murphy deadpans.

There’s something cloying about Shut Up and Play the Hits, because it presumes that watching Murphy make coffee in his apartment is interesting to the unfamiliar viewer. It presumes that scenes of him wrestling with his pug dog add up to a human profile. There are requisite scenes with guest hipster journalist Chuck Klosterman, who is shown cornering Murphy in a Brooklyn bar with a microphone, asking the inevitable questions about “what next” and “what qualifies as important in your life.” And Murphy, who’s only reached the midlife mark, doesn’t have any easy answers for Klosterman; nor should he. What comes across best in the documentary is the live show itself: the way the moment is captured, even as it’s experienced and savored, even as it slips away into history and into documentary. The show ends with a wild version of Harry Nilsson’s Jump Into the Fire, showing once again that Murphy’s tastes were impeccable, even if the hipsters claimed him too early as their own.

While accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award for your career in rock — even if you did start late and chose to retire when the hair started going gray — seems a tad premature, some rock stars possess more lives than a wily cat — even while most observers presumed they’d never live past 27.

That would be the case of Ginger Baker, offered up for our viewing judgment in Beware of Mr. Baker, Jay Brugel’s documentary on the troubled and troublesome legendary rock drummer. It opens with the wild-eyed percussionist assaulting Brugel with a cane as the journalist is leaving Baker’s South African property. “Ginger Baker just hit me with a cane,” Brugel announces, and he seems almost proud to show the camera his bloodied nose.

Baker is a bit like a caged animal, even while shown resting in his easy chair, chain smoking, and indulging Brugel’s stroll down memory lane — a walk that includes tales of Baker’s first encounter with heroin, with Eric Clapton, with Jack Bruce. What emerges is a much longer lifeline than Murphy’s, with plenty of room for mistakes and missteps. The myriad musicians who turn up on camera praise him as a monster drummer — the inventor of progressive rock, jam rock, heavy metal, etc., etc. — but submit that, as a person, he could be a human wrecking ball. Ex-wives and damaged children show up to further this impression. It must be said that Ginger Baker has always courted just this type of controversy. Even as he claims he’s “broke” and used up, unable to touch his drum kit — which is shown in poignant, silent cutaways — you know that this is just one side to his personality.

At first, it seems Brugel (who did a profile of Baker for Rolling  Stone before pitching the film to the reclusive drummer) is trying to reduce the legend to a mere caricature: indeed cartoons interspersed throughout show Baker using his fists in anger, rowing an African slave ship, and tooling down the highway in a convertible while groupies service him in the front seat. There’s even a bit of masochism in the way Baker is shown constantly berating Brugel on camera, and Brugel seems happy to accept the abuse. Because it makes for good drama.

But these images add up to a more rounded portrait, because Baker himself is more than just an intimidating exterior. He never seems more in command — more necessary — than when he’s behind a drum kit, weaving an extended polyrhythmic solo from his four independent limbs.

Arguably, Baker took his grounding in jazz drumming (learned from British player Phil Seamen, Max Roach, Elvin Jones and others), added a strong dose of African polyrhythm, and transplanted the whole thing into a rock trio atmosphere: the result was Cream, the first rock band in which each member was content to solo simultaneously at great length — the result could either be cacophony, or musical ecstasy to those who dug free jazz. It couldn’t last, and Baker simply went on to the next chapter, and then the next; one year he’s playing with Fela Kuti’s band in Lagos, the next he’s in the studio with Public Image Limited, laying down monster beats with John Lydon and Steve Vai (this chapter in Baker’s CV is inexplicably glossed over). A predilection for expensive sports cars and Argentinean polo horses might account for his relative “poverty” in recent years, but in some ways, you just know it’s the story that Ginger Baker wants the world to see. Just another side to a perplexing human puzzle.

In a way, the confessional rock documentary is a strange modern invention. Whether it’s Metallica members talking about their group therapy sessions, Ozzy in family moments on TV, or Madonna manufacturing backstage controversy in Truth or Dare, it all seems beside the point to show us that rock stars are regular shlumps, just like the rest of us. What transcends — and indeed, where their fame should arguably rest — is what transpires onstage. And in both Shut Up and Play the Hits and Beware of Mr. Baker, those moments are what really matter. Screw the reality TV moments.