THE MAN WHO FILMED THE SIXTIES' DEATH RATTLE

Last week I wrote about Message to Love, the documentary that watched the hippies burn. Because I love it so much I got in touch with Murray Lerner, the film's director and sucked his dick over the phone and then turned it into an interview for you to read. Here it is.

[caption id="attachment_19562" align="aligncenter" width="572" caption="Murray Lerner (left), with Ken Russell"]

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Vice: Hi Murray. How did you get on board with the promoters to make the Message To Love ?
Murray Lerner: They had come to America to try and get a star for the previous festival. And they got Dylan, by a fluke. And that made the festival famous. The person who helped them get Dylan was a guy called Bert Block, who is the recurring cynical-agent guy in the film. He knew me and liked my film about the Newport Folk Festival [Festival!], so I said, "oh, how about making another film?" I flew to England to discuss it. And little by little, I inched my way into making it.

Did you always know you wanted to make a film about the behind-the-scenes business end of things?
I had the idea of showing the tensions that were developing between the commercialism of the music and the idealism of the music. I wrote it down, so I have evidence of that. It was just my thinking, based on watching the scene evolve and via my Newport film. I wanted to capture the change in that movement as it moved into the year 1970, fueled by ambiguity and contradiction generated by the 60s. I went there a few weeks before and stayed a few weeks after and tried to document the spirit of the times and the culture of the kids. I concentrated on trying to show the behind-the-scenes activities. I pre-rigged the offices of the promoters, so whenever there was a crisis, they called me and I recorded it. They were part of it - they may say they don't like that now, but at the time they liked that bit a lot. So we got fascinating and unusual contrasts between the music, which was great, and the tensions of setting up a festival.

Did you like the Woodstock film?
I thought that Woodstock put a gloss on it that I didn't agree with.

Would you say yours is the dark half of that film?
In a way, but of course it's also just realism. Reality is not a nightmare. But if we have a dream, it's always going to be shattered if that dream is unrealistic, I think. Unfortunately, I believe that continues today. But that's a bigger story.

Looking back on the 60s, and especially in Message to Love , I'm always amazed by the groupthink of the kids.
When you get a large group together like that, there's a ripple effect, peer pressure, when they're all trying to fit in with what their feelings should be. I mean, the cost of getting into the festival was £2.40. Even then, that wasn't a lot of money and I'm sure most of those kids could've afforded it. I think the idea of making it free was more about getting together in a communal way and feeling excited about being part of a mass movement. A lot of kids told me that the main reason for coming to a festival like this was to be a part of something, to mix with kids who were like them. I actually have that in one of my interviews. Also, I think they promoters misread the audience. They definitely didn't know how to do crowd control. Rikki Farr made one blunder after another so far as I was concerned.

I think Farr comes off as basically earnest.
Oh yes, but he was bewildered as to how to deal with it. I don't know if anyone could find any way to deal with it, frankly. Screaming at the crowd, I don't think does it. Saying: "We've lost money, we're open to creditors" is just going to fuel their cynicism. I don't think he knew how to phrase it so that it would chime with the kids.

Did you get on with the promoters?
During the filming I got on with them. Subsequently, we had our issues.

How so?
I think they were greedy about the film. They wanted to make as much money as possible for themselves. Remember that they had six corporations set up, they were pretty smart with money. They had set up separate corporations for each aspect of the festival: the tickets, the food, the drink. I have footage of them talking to their bankers and all that, which they let me do, which they liked me to do! I have a lot of unusual stuff, which I never used, about mortgaging things twice.

Were you sympathetic to the hippy movement, or were you there more as an anthropologist charting it?
I think I was very sympathetic to it. Then I got disturbed by how it had degenerated into a commercial event. I think a lot of people tried to make money out of it. I don't know how far the movement got in actually furthering its principles. When they did the Woodstock film, some so-called hippies threatened to bomb the shows because the makers had made so much money out of it. The filmmakers claimed they hadn't made much money, but actually they had. Unlike my film.

Yes. I guess the operative question then is why it took you 25 years to get a release?
It could be that I'm a bad salesman. On the other hand, I had a demo reel that excited everyone. But at the last minute studios often withdrew because, well, there were several reasons. Oddly enough, they were worried Woodstock was already out and it was too late to make a film about that. And the artists, two or three years later, weren't as commercial as they had been. It seems strange now – now, they're classic-rock, but back then, they were just not as sellable. Oddly enough, people didn't think Hendrix was so successful. Also the combination of what I wanted to show, I think disturbed people in the music business. They said it didn't, but it did. They didn't want to show the business side of the industry, and I insisted on that. And I insisted on the music. I had one person who wanted to back the film, if it was just documentary footage – I said no. I'm trying to revive it. It has something of a cult following.

Like Noel Gallagher.
Yeah. Oasis called, and they said they wanted three soundbites to use in their song ["Fucking in the Bushes" ]. I wish Oasis were more successful at that time! If only it was "Wonderwall". So, I wrote an Oasis song, in a way.

The old duffer you dub "The Commander", who talks about how "behind the hippies is black power, and behind black power is Communism." What a great line!
It is a great line! All of it seems eccentric and stupid now, but back then there were very powerful people who felt much like him. When he says it's "the death of Anglo-Saxon civilisation as we know it", I think there were plenty people around back then – an establishment – who would've echoed his sentiments and tried to suppress the movement. They didn't win it that time; let's hope they don't win now.

Were you shocked by the hippy who you film talking about giving his four-year-old son acid and pot?
Yes. But I didn't express it as shock. I let the audience make that judgement. I'm glad you mentioned that. It's a good simple icon of what was happening. He's so collected and calm, but people's ideals were running out of control.

Bloody hippies.

GAVIN HAYNES