Pop Culture Pick: The Ventures: Stars On Guitars
Rock out with the musical pioneers
Image Credit: Staci Layne Wilson
Welcome to Pop Culture Pick, a catch-all for subjects I want to highlight outside of the usual weekly Weekend Watch columns. In this edition, grab your guitars and prepare to rock out with a pioneering musical group.
Depending on your age and/or your musical inclination, you may not be completely aware of The Ventures. I’ll be the first to admit that I couldn’t have picked the group’s members out of a line-up. Yet you’ll almost certainly know their music, as they have one of the most iconic, memorable sounds out there. Channelling jazz and rock tunes through (at first) a two-guitar style, they evolved to become an instrumental combo that has pumped out some truly great tracks.
Not sure you’d recognize their work? Try the likes of the Hawaii 5-0 theme, Walk Don’t Run, Wipe Out and so many more. As one commentator in the documentary remarks, they’re the band that launched a thousand others. Fine-tuning the art of interpreting others’ songs into their own style so that the results sound even better, the group founded by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle in 1959 have gone on to huge success, and even when the pioneers of surf music’s wave crested and broke in later years, they remained huge in Japan and family members keep the group alive to this day. And they can thank family for this documentary, written, directed and produced by Wilson’s daughter, Staci Layne Wilson. She has rounded up folk famous folk to wax rhapsodic about the Ventures’ influence, including Billy Bob Thornton, Jimmy Page, Lalo Schifrin, John Fogerty, Randy Bachman and more. And they have been influential – their style reverberates through many other players and styles.
Yet The Ventures’ story, for all its musical interest, might not have felt like the most dramatic to bring to screens, mostly because there’s little dirt to dig up. There are some of the traditional career roadmap points (and roadblocks, their early days marked by negative responses from record companies and others), but these were not overly dramatic men driven by addiction issues or prone to huge blow-ups. They went through several drummers (though not exactly in the Spinal Tap style) and their careers have been marked by tougher periods on tour away from their families.
This is a warm, personable documentary, yet avoids the pitfalls of lionization that could result from a family member behind the camera. Don is a friendly storyteller unafraid to tell the true story of what happened with the group, and the film traces the legacy of The Ventures with a keen eye and open ear.
It’s worth a watch, even if you only know the group via their music – and I’m happy their story has finally been told.
The Ventures: Stars On Guitars is available on DVD and VOD now.