Thursday, September 30, 2004
After the tour, the film footage became the subject of court battles.
By DEBORAH HORNBLOW
HARTFORD COURANT
Grow your hair, put on your love beads, don't bathe for a day or two and hop aboard the "Festival Express," Bob Smeaton's nostalgia-tripping music documentary.
Based primarily on footage shot in grainy 16 millimeter in the summer of 1970, "Festival Express" is a celluloid record of a five-day cross-Canada tour that carried a passel of musicians -- Janis Joplin, the Band, the Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy, the Flying Burrito Brothers and others -- from one lollapalooza gig to another between Toronto and Calgary.
As Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh later puts it, the trip was "a train full of insane people careening across the Canadian countryside making music night and day -- and then occasionally we'd get off the train to go play a concert."
The 12 Canadian National train cars became a traveling jam session, and over the course of 2,100 miles, the musicians played and drank and drugged together, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to spend time together in lieu of waving from separate tour buses.
Some problems
Regarded as "paradise" and "heaven" to the musicians, the tour was fraught with trouble from other angles. Early on in Toronto, the peace and love generation was outraged at the $14 admission price (read that and weep, today's ticket buyers).
They refused to pay the tariffs, requiring the promoters to hire mounted policemen -- "pigs," in the parlance of the day -- and ultimately take huge losses. But instead of stopping the tour and cutting their losses, the promoters let the train roll on at their expense, even making one unscheduled stop for alcohol refueling at a liquor store.
What the film does not tell you is that in the aftermath of the tour, the film shot during the train travels became a bone of contention among the promoters, the filmmakers and investors.
Court cases ensued, and in the decades-ago settlements, the film stock was dispersed among interested parties. It was only after the acrimony subsided in the '90s that the reels were pulled together.
Work to be done
Director Smeaton, who won a Grammy in 1996 for his work on television's "Beatles Anthology," was brought in, and the work of making the footage viable -- or at least viewable -- began.
A lot of the scenes were shot out of focus, suggesting that the cameramen were also riding high aboard the train, and the audio tracks did not always sync up with the visuals.
Many years and helpful technological advances later, and decades since it happened, Smeaton's "Festival Express" finally arrives to pay homage to the rockin'-est train that ever crossed Canada.
Smeaton's documentary juxtaposes the footage with interviews with some of the surviving travelers, including promoter Ken Walker, Lesh, Dead guitarist Bob Weir, Sylvia (of Ian and Sylvia) and bluesman Buddy Guy, all of whom talk about ridin' that train, high on alcohol, pharmaceuticals and mostly the chance to play and jam together.
Sometimes the screen is divided into halves, with a talking head on one side and footage from the tour on the other.
At other points, the screen fills with a close-up image of a performer -- say, Joplin, who, only two months from the great hereafter, unleashes "Cry Baby" in a performance that crystallizes the size of the talent that was lost.
Other musical highlights include onstage performances by members of the Band, rollicking their way through "The Weight" and "I Shall Be Released," and jam session outtakes of the Band's Rick Danko singing "No More Cane on the Brazos" accompanied by Garcia, and Garcia and Joplin playing and singing together in the train's crowded, smoky musicians paradise of a lounge.