FM: I understand what you're saying...
BN: It's like for me...I grew up after Jimi Hendrix, I liked a lot of his music, but what really got me into Hendrix was watching old Hendrix footage. And thank God there is still some great footage out there. Jimi was obviously very visual, and I could watch that footage over and over again.
FM: I'll tell you my theory on that...I think when you look at older film footage of these kind of guys, you get the feeling that you're kind of a voyeur, like your looking into a secret thing. It's like being onstage while the band is playing. And that's because those bands really were just doing their thing and we really were being voyeurs - we were watching how they do their thing. With a lot of the bands today, you get the feeling that they are selling you something...it's all shot from the front all perfectly pristine, it's like your looking at the jacket of the book rather than the contents of the book. Unfortunately the industry has moved bands in the direction of like, 'okay boys, let's go sell these guys our band!' It's almost like selling soap!
BN: I totally agree, but my theory is that sixteen year-old kid fed-up with being force-fed all that corporate MTV crap might have that same voyeuristic feeling watching old Mahogany Rush concert footage as what I or you might have had from watching old Hendrix video footage.
FM: Well, that's exactly what Jim West is thinking. He's looking at it the same way you're looking at it, and I've said to him 'since I don't know about this as well as you guys do...you go out and do it.' I'm sure Jim is thinking of the live DVD very much the way you are, I told him to go with the idea and hire the right people to capture whatever it is he needs to capture. I told him he should just put a bunch of dummy cameras at our next 20 shows and don't tell me which is the real camera, and I think that might be the answer. The problem today with music videos, even performances on shows like Letterman...it's kind of like those car commercials. You ever notice the only car shown on the road in those commercials is the car they are selling you? They're really spoon-feeding you this unreal version of what the car really is, and I think it's the same in rock and roll these days...people are lip-syncing and they got all these dancers and all kinds of stuff in the background. I don't know, maybe I'm just old-fashioned...
BN: I agree with you 100 percent and I think a lot of people would agree with you. The music business these days is all about money rather than art. I agree with you in that I think the video age, with the emergence of MTV, has ruined a lot of it...where the main focus has become more on the visual aspect than the audio and it became image over talent. And that really became relevant in the video age. But I think old archive video footage is a different story...
FM: I would hope they would bring me Martin Scorsese, who directed The Last Waltz for The Band, to direct it. He really did a great job on that film! Basically, what I'm saying is, keep me out of the decision making process, let me just be the player. Even you could direct it better than I could, you can direct this DVD and come out with a better, more realistic film than I could because you already understand what you like about it. For me, I'm still not sure if it's the right thing to do so how could I possibly make a good one [Laughs].
A Conversation With FRANK MARINO Page 7