Cry Your Eyes Out with ‘A Band Called Death’

In 2009, Drag City released For the Whole World to See, seven blistering songs recorded over 30 years earlier by a trio of Detroit-bred brothers called Death. A New York Times article from that year outlined the unbelievable story behind the album: in the mid-seventies, Death blended the sounds of the Who, Hendrix, and Alice Cooper and cranked it up another notch, creating some of the first recorded specimens of punk rock. As if that weren’t impressive enough, the members of Death were African-American, breaking new ground in a genre that had been dominated by white people since the fifties. Label executives, including Clive Davis, liked the music but balked at the name, which David Hackney, the band’s guitarist and visionary, refused to change.

So the band’s demos were shelved except for two songs self-released on 45, and Death faded away. Bobby and Dannis Hackney started a reggae band. David, a heavy drinker and smoker, died of lung cancer in 2000. Eight years later, through a combination of luck, social networking, and record collector tenacity, Death’s music started circulating again. This lead to something musicians only dream of: an out-of-the-blue call from a record company. Within a year, Death’s music was finally out, and before long the surviving brothers were playing to packed houses, finally reaping some of the glory that the late David Hackney had foreseen — as he’d told his brothers, “The world’s gonna come looking for the Death stuff.”

So if the music is out there at last, its history etched in the Times archives, why see the documentary? I wish I could say that A Band Called Death was loaded with Super-8 footage of the Hackney brothers pounding out their songs in the second-floor bedroom of their parents’ house, but the visuals we get from that period consist mostly of black and white photos shuffled, reused, and twerked in a sort of faux-3D Ken Burns style. Most of the film consists of interviews with Bobby and Dannis, both of whom are warm, funny, and articulate. They will probably make you cry a couple of times.

The documentaries that hit me the hardest, from Don’t Look Back to Anvil: the Story of Anvil, are the ones in which the story keeps unfolding in front of the camera. A Band Called Death captures a freshly reincarnated Death, minus David, playing “Keep on Knocking” and “Let the World Turn” to pogoing crowds all over the country. I feel like a jerk for saying it, but the movie’s payoff is not here. The original lineup’s furious delivery, that extra attack that might just have helped transform rock n’ roll into a world-changing new sound a few years later, is missing from the reunion footage.

Some of that energy is recaptured by Rough Francis, a Death tribute and a band in its own right, which features three of Bobby’s sons. I defy anyone to remain dry-eyed through the scene in which Bobby and his wife watch their sons burning through the Death songs onstage. But man, playing as hard as Death did on those 1975 demos requires something more than filial bonds, although that’s a big part of it. Maybe the original Death depended on all the rejection they faced — as Bobby says, “rejection for our name, rejection for our music, rejection for the fact that we were black playing and rock n’ roll, rejection for the fact that our music was too fast, rejection for…so many rejections!” And how do you pay tribute to something like that in the face of widespread, if delayed, acceptance?

Two days after I saw A Band Called Death, my Alt Citizen colleague Rebecca An steered me toward a Brooklyn metal band called Unlocking the Truth. Like Death, the band is made up of black kids working within a predominantly white genre and channeling the ensuing scorn into their music. And like Death, they’re tight as shit; the songwriting isn’t there yet, but these guys are still in grade school. So see the documentary if you want a sweet, well-told story whose message is laid out early on, in the form of some advice the Hackneys received from their father: “Back up your brother.” But if you want a taste of the fierce rock n’ roll that’s at the core of that story, buy For the World to See, and seek out Unlocking the Truth next time they set up in Times Square.

Who Should See It: Lovers of punk rock in need of a good cry.

Who Shouldn’t See It: Those who prefer dramatic, high-octane rock documentaries, e.g. Dig!, Last Days Here, and Some Kind of Monster.

 

The documentary available on VOD and for digital download, and Death with be playing some shows in support of the film! Catch them live if you can!