To some music fans, one of the curious things about the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Feet From Stardom” was the decision to include Darlene Love in that film about background singers. Love, after all, was the lead singer on classic hits like “He’s a Rebel,” “A Fine, Fine Boy,” “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” and many others – she didn’t get the credit she deserved but she was one of the great lead singers in rock and soul history, so what was she doing in a doc about background vocalists?
One answer to that question is that because she didn’t get credit, Love had to support herself singing backup for years. But the question has also become moot, because Love now has her own movie that puts her front and center: “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been,” which had its world premiere on Monday at the Toronto Film Festival.
With Barry Avrich’s documentary assembled from the usual parts – testimonials from admirers, new talking-head interviews, archival footage and some new performance – the power of the film lies not in how it was made or what it does, but in who it’s about. Love is a magnificent singer who has a hell of a story to tell, and whose performance is riveting whether it comes from “Shindig!” in the 1960s, David Letterman’s show in the ’90s or filmed segments from the Power Station recording studio more recently. And if you need more than that, you’ve come to the wrong movie.
Love is a force of nature, but one whose force was suppressed for much of her life. Her parents were deeply religious and didn’t allow her to listen to secular music, but she eventually became mildly successful in a singing trio, the Blossoms, that brought a little touch of gospel to the work they did for everybody from Sam Cooke to the Beach Boys to Bobby “Boris” Pickett. (Yes, she’s on the novelty hit “The Monster Mash.”)
She got pregnant at 17, carried the baby to full term and then lost it, and was pregnant again three months later. She fell in with brilliant but domineering producer (and decades later, convicted murderer) Phil Spector, who changed her name from Darlene Wright to Darlene Love, used her to sing lead on the hit “He’s a Rebel,” paid her $3,000 and then put the name of a different group, the Crystals, on the record. She finally got her own billing on “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” and then on the titanic Christmas song “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” – but immediately after that record came out toward the end of 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Spector withdrew the record. Two months later, the Beatles hit and there was scarely any room on the charts for American groups.
The list of luminaries who testify to Love’s greatness in the film includes Paul Schaffer, Steve Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen, David Letterman, Marc Shaiman and Cher, the last of whom hung out in the studio, watched Love record and says “everybody was terrified of her.”
She sang with Frank Sinatra, with Elvis in “Change of Habit” and then with another Sinatra, Nancy, who got some flack for booking the Blossoms as her opening act for a stint in Las Vegas. “People would say, ‘Are you crazy? Why would you do that? She sings circles around you!’” Nancy says, grinning. “I know that. Shut up.”
But Love went through bad times with her three children, two of whom spent time prison. When she couldn’t get work singing, she cleaned houses, until Steve Van Zandt persuaded her to move from Los Angeles to New York and get back in the game. There was a key showcase at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village, then the off-Broadway and later Broadway musical “Leader of the Pack,” in which she was treated as a conquering hero every night. And then there were the yearly appearances on Letterman’s Christmas shows, making her a pre-Mariah queen of Christmas.
The film gets downright celebratory, but it’s not just because good things happened to Darlene Love after decades of not-so-good things happening. It’s also because the movie captures her in her element in the recording studio, ripping through new performances of “We Can Work It Out,” “He’s a Rebel,” “A Fine, Fine Boy,” “Christmas Baby Please Come Home,” “River Deep Mountain High” and the recent anthem “I Know Where I’ve Been.”
You could consider those the icing on the cake of “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been,” but they’re also a big reason to watch it, and to be confident that at the age of 85, there’s more where that came from.
