Crazy Words, Crazy Tunes

Still Crazy (1998) is kind of a funny movie. I’ve seen comparisons to This is Spinal Tap, but it’s nothing like that. Maybe Almost Famous is closer. It’s a movie about a (fictional) band from the 70s getting back together in the 90s.

The backstory: At a big festival in the 70s, the rock band Strange Fruit is planning their last gig. The weather is bad and the band is basically electrocuted off the stage. They split up and go their separate ways - the guitarist to his death by overdose.

Now: The son of the festival promoter recognizes the band’s keyboard player, Stephen Rea, in Ibiza (he’s stocking the condom machines at the restaurant, but don’t let anyone know). The son proposes a re-union at the festival, if Rea can get the rest of the band together.

Rea goes to Juliet Aubrey, the band’s road manager/gofer, now a corporate drone at a hotel. He talks her into it - maybe partly because he has a thing for her and he’s Stephen Rea. So they go find the rest of the band.

• Jimmy Nail is the bass player, now fixing slate church roofs 
• Timothy Spall is Beano the drummer, a fat git working at a nursery (plants, not among children!)
• Lead singer Bill Nighy, who has a country manor and a sexy wife who has got him clean and sober
• Billy Connolly, their old road dog, shows up on his own (and also narrates)

They need a new guitarist, since the last one... is no longer with them. They pick a Hans Mattheson, whose a hot guitarist who doesn’t seem to mind the personality clashes - at first.

To get ready for the festival, they do some touring - starting with some pretty dire clubs, including a houseboat in Amsterdam. We get to learn about the band - Nail is permanently pissed off, Ray is a basket case, Beano is a happy idiot on the run from Inland revenue.  Rea is in love with Aubrey, but she is still in love with the missing guitarist. She also has a daughter, Rachel Stirling, who is not too psyched about touring with a bunch of wrinkly rockers, but maybe sees something in Mattheson.

The reason for that Nighy is so fragile is that he replaced the band’s first singer, who was the guitarist’s brother, but he died. Nighy felt he never lived up. Then the guitarist died, and everything went down the tubes. Like the tour, which has some good dates and bad dates, and finally flames out before the festival. Now comes the SPOILER.

The guitarist, Bruce Davidson, isn’t dead. He has been hiding out in a sanitarium, because he doesn’t want to die like his brother. He comes back and the band gets back together. But will he be strong enough to get on the stage?

Now, this isn’t quite a comedy. There aren’t any jokes about amps that go up to eleven, or cures stuffed in trousers. There is some character humor, like Rea being a condom refill tech. When Aubrey catches him checking out the condom machine, strictly as a professional, she thinks he’s just a gross man slut. Nighy is the best at this - he goes for a very goth, costumes and makeup style in a band that seems to be more straight rock. He’s also older than the others (50) and more conscious of it.

Of course, there’s Robinson, mostly seen in flashbacks acting trippy and wild, or felt as an absence. Like Sid Barrett (“Wish You Were Here”), Peter Green, or Roky Erickson (RIP) he represents the people who couldn’t handle the game and the fame. And that brings me to my final comparison: Eddie and the Cruisers.