Fishbone and the Chili Peppers were the forefathers of the LA Funk Metal scene. Behind the amazing music the band have seen their fair share of good times and bad. Lev Anderson & Chris Metzler have spent the last four years creating Everyday Sunshine: The story of Fishbone, one of the best musical documentaries of recent times.
Flush the Fashion spoke to Lev and Chris ahead of Fishbones upcoming appearance at SXSW this Thursday (with Wu-Tang Clan) and a screening of the movie.
Were you big fans of Fishbone before you did the film?
Chris: Lev’s dad was an eclectic music lover and bought the first Fishbone record. He liked it so much that he then took him to see a Fishbone concert when I was 10 years old.
As you can imagine he jumped around a lot to Fishbone’s music at that age and as a result he has been a fan of the band over the years, including a college radio interview he did with them in the mid-90s.
Lev: As for Chris, I met him at a film festival party here in San Francisco and he told him about this music documentary he wanted to make, Chris wasn’t so sold on the idea as both of them agreed that most music documentaries suck. Chris really liked the backstory about these 6 Black kids from South Central-Los Angeles that got bussed to the White suburbs and quickly fell in love with Punk Rock.
Smitten with the story we decided to go see the band perform here in San Francisco a couple of weeks later and approached the band that night after the show to see what they thought of the idea and it soon transformed from just an idea and into an actual film project.
The film has an ‘access all areas’ feel, did the band ask for anything to be removed?
We had a very open and collaborative relationship with the band, particularly the film’s main characters, original members Angelo and Norwood.
We toured with them on the road 24 hours a day for months in the US and Europe, went surfing with Norwood in Santa Monica, and grocery shopping with Angelo.
They let us go everywhere with them and in fact wanted us to capture the details of the life they live making their art and music. The band never asked for anything to be removed so they were very understanding of what kind of story we were trying to tell. If anything, they thought we should add more, but of course that would have made it a 10 hour film, so we had to cut it off somewhere.
How has the film been received at the festivals?
In addition to screening at 50+ film festivals and winning several awards, the film has been well-received by audiences at festivals despite the fact that many people in the audiences hadn’t even heard of Fishbone.
We think all kinds of people can identify with the human side of the story so we’ve enjoyed great crowds. It’s even better when the band can perform as they did on a Sunday night in St. George, Utah where sober patrons from age 15 to 80 were dancing along with the band. The weirdest mosh pit we’ve ever seen.
- 1
- 2