Robin Trower is a very talented British guitarist, and was regarded as an equal to his peers in composing, progressive, blue/rock, fusion. These days I gather he is regarded as a hendrix/gilmour copy cat. In truth he was their equal, and very much at the forefront of developing that style/genre. I believe Hendrix was a fan actually.hansolo wrote:I'm not buying the-Rhoads-family-wanted-a-Randy-documentary-but-it-was-poor-editing defense... Who's Robin Trower?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH8F1t0fmyc
As far as the documentary goes, poor editing is probably a bad description, used by an audience who don't know the language of media. I'm not going to sit here and cuss something I haven't seen, but I had some concerns over the direction the project seemed to be taking, and maybe some of those fears were accurate.
As I've said I think the project lost sight of it's demographic. If you just want to have someone 'explain' in musical terms that RR was great, Troy Stetina would be perhaps the most qualified person for the job imo, or even our own CaptMatt could do it. Hearing that other famous guitarists got 'excited' by Randys playing might polish some fan pride, but it really contributes nothing. Maybe the Producers got carried away at the prospect of all the famous names they could meet on the project.
I think it's more likely that Peter or someone else started to view the project as something that could do well at festivals, and reach a mass audience the way other niche documentaries have (Grizzly Man for example). People like John 5 were perhaps a desperate attempt to give the thing contemporary relevance and draw in a larger viewer base. The project should have just been a story about Randy, maybe the production lost sight of that, and started to consider how it could enhance their own careers. That's harsh to say, but they could well have started to envision how the project might turn out, rather than follow it along its natural course. Documentaries shouldn't be forced and maybe they let themselves get carried away. Or maybe the project was heading somewhere they hadn't anticipated, and they wanted to fight the tide?
I also wonder if they tried to bring too much production value to the project. I remember seeing some pictures where they seemed to have two or three broadcast cameras... for a sit down interview. Just seems like a waste of money to me, not to mention all the extra time it would take in post. And by their own admission, it sounds like they overshot. Dunno, personally I would have gone about such a documentary in a totally different fashion, but that's just my sensibility.
In the end I think 'editing' is a poor description, direction may be better. From what I remember of the trailer it seems more likely that the film was simply too invested in saying 'Randy was great' rather than making any meaningful statements with regards to 'why he was great' or 'who he was'.
I have no real idea what motivates the Rhoads family stance towards their boys legacy, but if anything I've just said is accurate they would probably be disappointed with the outcome. I can only imagine they hoped for an intimate, accurate portrayal of Randy and that isn't what they got.
Rob