Joe Cocker: Mad Dog With Soul

EAGLE VISION

7/10

More help from his friends, please! Respectful rise/fall/rise documentary of a lost superstar, reports Mark Bentley.

- Mark Bentley

FOR about six months at the turn of 1970, Joe Cocker was the biggest male rock star on the planet. Buoyed by the global success of that song, the Beatles throwing material at him, and a performance of wild-eyed, tie-dyed intensity at Woodstock, the game was his to lose. That he did, and so spectacularly, is the subject of this fascinating new documentary, told chronologically and unshowily. The theme is hard to miss. The talent was there; the ability to control it categorically not.

On Cocker’s death in late 2014, Paul McCartney paid tribute to his “mindblowing” version of “With A Little Help…” (“He totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was forever grateful”). The talking heads assembled here are testament to the reach and respect Cocker commands. Billy Joel, Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Glyn Johns, Rita Coolidge, Michael Lang and more offer differing perspectives on Cocker’s legacy, but all agree on one thing. That voice – a primal, gravelly, intense, unearthly thing – was one of rock’s greatest, most distinctive instruments. Long-standing Sheffeld mucker Chris Stainton (who was there at the rise of the Grease Band, threw up from the chopper at Woodstock, and is the clearest-eyed chronicler on show) puts it more prosaically: “His was the voice most blokes would love to have after they’d drunk three pints.”