At the Band Aid concert held the same month each and every act at the London concert was from the British Isles while over 30% of the acts appearing at the JFK stadium were Brits. One week in July 1985 had eight of the top ten acts in the US billboard charts by Brits while 40% of the billboard 100 were by British artists. In terms of record sales they were the golden age of British musical export. Noel Gallagher follows this caption by saying " The eighties were f*** all " - NO THEY WEREN`T. The very first caption is from Alistair Campbell needs clarifying : yes in 1996-97 Britain was exporting music ( To the USA )again but this was only down to a select handful of artists namely The Spice Girls, Bush, Elton John, The Prodigy and Radiohead and in no way was this period a golden age for British record exports. If you do read newspapers you`re misinformed " and that`s the problem I had with LIVE FOREVER, if you`re uninformed about Britpop you`ll be misinformed if you use this as your starting point, dangerously misinformed. There`s a saying that " If you don`t read newspapers you`re uninformed. It does work reasonably well despite this but it is more an enjoyable jaunt down recent key moments in recent UK pop history rather than a comprehensive or insightful documentary. It is funny and interesting and it is a shame that it couldn't have done more with the delivery to produce a more cohesive documentary. It is still worth seeing though if you know the music and the period. The talking heads are interesting but only their contributions don't dovetail together that well instead each of them is worth seeing but they don't help the film move forward in fact the film very much just relies on the passage of time as its driving force, which was natural to a degree but it does get a bit "this happened, this happened then this happened" in a way. The film also fails to really get to grips with the whole sense of impact that the time had it does it to a degree but not as much as perhaps the subject deserved. It remedies this problem towards the end but for a big early section it is like a love letter to Blair's Britain. Of course their was a connection but it was nothing important or socially meaningful, it was merely Blair jumping on a bandwagon and being seen with the people of the day something he continues to do whatever the popular trend is. However what was a problem for me was the film's failed attempts to link the music with the politics of the time. Many viewers have complained that many bands have been left out, which of course they have, but I didn't think that this was a major problem because the film was going for a general sweep and thus got the main players. This is all well and good but it isn't enough to hold the whole subject together and the lack of cohesion is a bit of a problem. On one level the film did work because it does have plenty of little nuggets and amusing moments courtesy of the main contributors. I had hoped the documentary would capture the sense of time and place, act as an introduction to those not around and evoke memories from those that were a big ask perhaps but it has been done before with other subjects.
Sold to me as a good movie by another user I was looking forward to seeing this film as I was a teenager in the 1990's and did love the music. Featuring contributions from many of those involved, this documentary looks back at the period, the music and the politics. Against a backdrop of Tory government, the energetic and youthful bands of Oasis, Blur, Feeder, Pulp, Suede and so on dominated UK music sales and became inexorably linked to the rise of the ambitious and youthful New Labour political party, sweeping to power as led by Tony Blair.
In the mid 1990's British music exploded within the country to produce an unique scene called "Britpop".