The 1964 World’s Fair in New York saw the launch of colour TV, IBM personal computers, the Mustang Ford and, just in time for the Beatles first tour of the USA, a new development from the Eastman Kodak company, Super 8mm film.
Since that point rock ‘n’ roll and the Super 8 were inseparable. It’s hard to think of any British band touring the States that wasn’t photographed at some point or other earnestly documenting their tour bus adventures with their own handheld movie camera. By the time he joined Lush in 1992, bass player Phil King was already a veteran of Felt, Biff Bang Pow and the Servants and naturally had a Sankyo Super 8. Now, with Brian Gates, he has edited footage shot on tours of England, America, Europe and Japan thorough 1994 – 1996 into a kind of dream journal of life in a rock band at the end of the twentieth century.
What’s uncanny is how the pale grainy 8mm black and white stock renders so much of the material out of time. Footage of the Seattle Space Needle or the Chrysler Building, Cadillacs and doughnut stores, feels like it could have been shot any time between the late ‘50s up until last week. Only the very specific historical references – a poster for the second Frank Black solo album, a bill showing Lush supported by Weezer, a magazine feature on Ice Cube – pins it to a particular historical moment.
It was certainly a weird moment for Lush. The film opens with footage from the launch of Split, in the summer of 1994, a couple of months after Parklife and a couple of months before Definitely Maybe were to transform the landscape of British indie forever. It’s not Lush’s first rodeo by any means. You can see the rush of new corporate money flooding into the business – Lush have their own black cab plastered in 23 Envelope typography, taking them on a tour of London landmarks (including a still woebegone Battersea Power Station in the days before the Sky Pool). But posing for photos in empty swimming pools they don’t seem thrilled at the prospect.
The footage is soundtracked by the rueful songs the band were promoting at the time – from “Lovelife” (“We blow around like tiny leaves in a big storm”) to “When I Die” (“Curse the English day / For what it forces us to say”), but there’s barely any footage of the band performing. Instead here are the inbetween days, loading up flight cases, rolling down the interstates, taking time out for the tourist pleasures of a ferry across the San Francisco Bay or a trip up the Empire State Building.
Emma Anderson mostly looks bored, Miki Berenyi is game to cartwheel for the camera, but the only one who seems to be truly enjoying the ride is Chris Acland, the band’s livewire drummer. The camera clearly loves his floppy indie fringe, shades and leather jacket – this seems a life he was destined for, posing for pics by the pool, signing records for fans, dressing up as a werewolf and being serenaded by Elvis impersonators. You can practically see the fun draining from his body as the film progresses, returning from west coast palm trees to the bare branches of a north London winter.
Chris tragically took his own life in October 1996, shortly after one final tour of America and Japan and the film is dedicated to his memory. As well as serving as a beautiful testament to his life, the film feels like a very timely eulogy for a lost world of rock ‘n’ roll – of weekly music papers, expense accounts and transatlantic flights – that feels more distant than ever.