The Best Rock Band Documentaries Ever Made

The best rock documentaries catch bands at the exact moment the mythology starts cracking. You get the songs and sold-out shows, but you also get bruised egos, terrible decisions, money problems and musicians discovering that being in a famous band doesn't make being around each other any easier.

And some of these films have aged better than the albums they were made around.

Five Rock Documentaries That Actually Deserve the Reputation

1. The Last Waltz (1978)

Martin Scorsese filmed The Band's farewell concert at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on November 25, 1976, then turned it into the standard every concert documentary has been chasing since. Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrison and Muddy Waters all appear, which would be enough to carry a lesser movie.

But The Last Waltz works because Scorsese gets close. Robbie Robertson looks like a movie star. Levon Helm looks like he's working for every note. And when the guest list threatens to turn the evening into a celebrity parade, the playing pulls it back into focus.

Released theatrically in 1978, the film currently holds a 98% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. That's a useful number, but the real test is simpler: nearly 50 years later, people are still arguing whether anyone has made a better rock concert film.

2. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)

A documentary about Metallica making St. Anger sounds like something designed for committed metal fans. Instead, directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky ended up filming one of the strangest workplace dramas ever put on screen.

Jason Newsted quits. James Hetfield enters rehab. The remaining members hire therapist Phil Towle. Lars Ulrich and Hetfield sit in rooms discussing feelings and creative control while one of the biggest metal bands on Earth struggles to finish an album.

The film runs 141 minutes and was released in 2004. It's uncomfortable because Metallica lets the cameras stay when most bands would suddenly remember they had somewhere else to be.

You don't need to like St. Anger. In fact, the documentary may be more interesting if you don't.

3. DIG! (2004)

Ondi Timoner followed The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols for seven years, filming the friendship and increasingly ugly rivalry between Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor-Taylor. What begins as a story about two ambitious bands turns into a study of talent, self-sabotage and what happens when your idea of artistic purity collides with the music business.

Timoner had an absurd amount of material to work with. The original film was assembled from thousands of hours of footage, and DIG! won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004.

Its 20th-anniversary version, DIG! XX, returned to Sundance with previously unseen material. But the original remains wonderfully messy. Nobody involved seems capable of behaving normally for long.

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4. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Yes, the band is fictional. It still belongs here.

Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap follows an aging British metal band through disappearing audiences, backstage arguments, disastrous stage props and venues they can't find their way out of. The joke works because almost everything feels one degree away from something a real touring band would do.

Released in 1984, the film has a 98% Rotten Tomatoes critics score. Musicians including Sting, Slash and Jon Anderson have reportedly recognized uncomfortable pieces of real rock life in it.

That's why the movie hasn't become a period-piece curiosity. Watch enough genuine music documentaries and you'll start noticing Spinal Tap everywhere: the guitarist explaining his equipment too seriously, the manager pretending the tour is going brilliantly, the argument nobody outside the band can understand.

And, of course, the amplifier goes to 11.

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5. Get Back (2021)

Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back takes footage shot during the January 1969 sessions that eventually produced Let It Be and turns it into something much more revealing than a standard rise-and-fall biography.

You see four extremely famous people working. Sometimes they're inspired. Sometimes they're bored. Sometimes Paul McCartney appears to pull a song from nowhere while everyone else sits nearby.

Its length is intimidating, with the three-part series running close to eight hours. But that's also why it works. There's enough room for ordinary conversations, dead time and tiny changes in mood. The Beatles stop looking like historical figures and start looking like colleagues who know each other's habits a little too well.

That makes the rooftop performance hit harder. You haven't simply watched a famous concert clip. You've watched them drag themselves all the way to it.

Why You Should Care

You don't need to know every album or former bassist to enjoy these films. The best rock documentaries are really about friendship, ambition, jealousy, work and what happens when a group of people has to keep functioning after success makes walking away much more complicated.

Start with The Last Waltz if you want great performances. Pick Some Kind of Monster if you want uncomfortable honesty. And watch DIG! when you're in the mood to see how quickly artistic ambition can turn into chaos.

What to Watch Next

If these leave you wanting another night on the tour bus, put Stop Making Sense (1984) first in the queue. Jonathan Demme's Talking Heads concert film strips away most of the backstage drama and concentrates on the increasingly elaborate performance, beginning with David Byrne walking onto an almost empty stage with a guitar and a boombox.

Then try Gimme Shelter (1970), the Rolling Stones documentary built around their disastrous 1969 Altamont concert. It's much darker, and knowing where the story is headed doesn't make the footage easier to watch.

For something more intimate, go with Amy (2015). Amy Winehouse wasn't a rock band, but Asif Kapadia's documentary understands the same uncomfortable relationship between talent, fame and the people standing nearby while everything gets harder.

The great music documentaries don't make fame look particularly desirable. They make you understand why people chase it anyway.