Muscle Shoals

A music documentary rarely does anything other than bestow praise on its subject so you expect endless tributes of what makes the music recorded in Muscle Shoals different to the Memphis, Stax or Detroit sound. But this admiration would no doubt be used if the same people were interviewed for documentaries about the Memphis, Stax or Detroit sound. Candi Staton opts for the generic "(music) comes from the heart," and Bono expectedly goes for the poetic, "songs (that) come out of the mud." Keith Richards, interviewed on what looks like a throne, delivers up the equally elusive "a sound you were going for but couldn't find anywhere else."

This is all nice but despite the famous faces lining up to extol the virtues of Fame, who along with the rival Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, is the reason for this documentary, director Greg 'Freddy' Camalier can't quite nail what separates it from the pack: if you don't have the experienced ear of a sound engineer, or even a muso, could you really hear a consistency in sound in Land Of A 1000 Dances, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, Wild Horses and When A Man Loves A Woman et al?

Where Muscle Shoals excels, and where it differs itself from other documentaries, is its human interest angle. Camalier does all the right things - a strong narrative that takes us from the early sixties and that first recording of Arthur Alexander's You Better Move On right through soul, southern rock with Lynard Skynard, and on to Jimmy Cliff - but throughout the director consistently dips a toe into studio owner Rick Hall's life, which turned out to be quite the tragic one, and his pain when house band The Swampers split from the studio; the white rhythm section was coaxed away by Hall's one-time friend and business partner Jerry Wexler to create a rival studio across town.

It loses the run of itself when it veers off to take in Helen Keller's story, who was from the area, but it gets back on track with some great footage of The Stones, looking sick and wild recording Wild Horses. Wilson Pickett cuts an entertaining figure too, although his involvement here is culled from a documentary recorded years before. A must for music fans.