Radio Rock Revolution: When you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, there’s always rock & roll you can turn to.
Despite being harshly criticised on its release and being a massive box office flop, Richard Curtis’ hilarious pop movie The Boat That Rocked according to my gospel of pop music is one of the best music films ever about the magic of rock & roll. Yes, it has a imperfect story line and there are maybe too many ideas packed in one singular movie, but at its core it is real.
Radio Rock Revolution, as The Boat That Rocked was renamed in Austria and Germany, is set in 1966, the year of the grand British pop explosion. A time when legendary pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline or Radio London ruled the radio waves since the young ones in the United Kingdom listened to these pirate radios because they played the hottest modern pop music whereas the BBC still was stuck in the boring, outmoded traditional past without nearly any modern pop and rock music on air.
The movie plot circles around a fictitious pirate radio station aptly named Radio Rock and its illustrious crew of eccentric DJs like The Count, a wild American (fantastically played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), the brazen Doctor Dave (Nick Frost), the very shy and highly sentimental Simple Simon (Chris O’Dowd) and the massively popular, super cool Gavin Kavanagh (Rhys Ifans in his prime), who’s been lured out of retirement for this pirate radio extravaganza. Also, on board is seventeen years old young pup named Carl (Tom Sturridge), who has recently been expelled from school because he smoked pot and happens to be the godson of Radio Rock owner Quentin (the brilliant Bill Nighly).
In one pivotal scene, one of fine deleted scenes that didn’t make it into Richard Curtis’ final cut but should have been there, Carl sits on deck of the old, battered ship, that’s anchored in international waters offshore and the platform from which Radio Rock is broadcasting. Carl is listening to DJ Gavin (Rhys Ifans giving the coolest performance he can give), who answers his question why he picked up his DJ Job again.
„That, young pup, is a secret”, Gavin smiles amused and tells Carl an amazing story while the camera follows him to Guatemala: „Well, I went away to discover the meaning of life. I went to Africa, I traversed India, popped in on South America, I took drugs you could not dream of, made from the kidneys of animals you’ve never even heard of, but I still hadn’t found it. And then one day I was in this little bar in Guatemala with this chick who was so beautiful, I mean, it was impossible to talk to her, you just wanted to have sex with her all the time. Anyway, she went for a swim, and I just sat there, and I thought odd, I’ve got money, chicks, drugs, time on my hands, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. And then I noticed that old Guatemalan guy, face like an old shoe, and he walked across the room. And there in the corner, I hadn’t seen it before, there was this jukebox and he put in a coin and he pressed three buttons, and then… “
Boom! The opening beat from Charlie Watts’ drums sets in and The Rolling Stones’ glorious banger Get Off Of My Cloud blasts out of the jukebox. Gavin can’t help but starting to dance and then the old geezer and the young maid, fresh out of the sea, join him to dance, shaking their bodies wild and passionate, that by seeing them dance you feel again how wonderful life can be. When the song ends, the three exhausted dancers hug each other and the old man cries out loud ecstatically, like his life depends on it: “Rock & Roll!”
Then the camera makes a quick turn to the deserted deck of Radio Rock, where Gavin explains to Carl what happened next, a pleased smile on his lips: „I got a ticket home the next day. You see the thing that makes sense of this crazy world is rock & roll. And I was crazy to think that I could ever leave it all behind.”
Well, we do not need to over-analyse anything here. This may not be the whole truth, not the only meaning of life, but after all these years the gist of the matter still rings true to me. Because without the spirit, the power, the magic of rock & roll not only my life would have travelled a different road.
Radio Rock Revolution (The Boat That Rocked), Universal Pictures, 2009
Klaus Winningers Beat 