When the Beatles first arrived in America they told the press that they wanted to see Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. “Muddy Waters, where’s that?” a reporter asked. Paul McCartney reportedly laughed and said “Don’t you know who your own famous people are here?”
There’s little debate over the fact that many African American musicians enjoyed success in the U.K. when they couldn’t find it in their home country. The success of blues artists after the Second World War paved the way for Tamla Motown, which promoted its new label with a 1965 lineup that included Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, the Miracles, the Temptations and the Supremes, plus British hit-maker Georgie Fame.
Out of that movement and the mod scene sprang Northern Soul, a localized movement that sprang up in small clubs and embraced obscure soul music from across the pond.
Writer and director Elaine Constantine tells her coming-of-age story through a musical lens, setting it in a fictional and bleak working-class town in North England town in the early ’70s.
John (Elliot James Langridge) is a secondary school student, a loner straining against the wishes of his teachers (Steve Coogan, among them) and parents (Lisa Stanfield, Christian McKay). The only one who understands him is his grandad (well-known Brit comedian Ricky Tomlinson).
After being pressed into going to the local youth club one night, John meets Matt (Josh Whitehouse), an aspiring DJ with some truly mad dance moves. The two bond over obscure music, amphetamines and their small-town malaise. “It’s the great thing about soul music: you listen to the lyrics in all them records and they talk to you.”
They travel to all-night dance clubs — the precursor to raves — and John quits school. He’s got an eye on a pretty nurse (Antonia Thomas), the only black girl he knows. John and Matt make plans to visit America, return with a trunkful of obscure records and evangelize Northern Soul to the masses. (Back before Amazon, that’s how it worked, kids.)
“Forget the top 10,” says John. “It’s all propaganda. This is underground, but it’s going to be massive.”
The film has it all: sex, drugs and soul music, plus a bromance that won’t quit. The story is admittedly slim, suffering from an almost nil female presence and too strident focus on John and Matt, forsaking other characters.
But the dancing. The dancing! It reportedly took years to get the leads and hundreds of extras comfortable with the athletic dance style (which seems to suggest that white, British kids gave birth to early break-dancing).
Constantine, a renowned photographer, knows just how to frame all that balled-up teenage angst unloosed on a springing dance floor. John’s transformation from nerdy loner to hip soul sensation is good old-fashioned fashion fun. And there’s enough energy in the lead performances and the throbbing soundtrack — featuring the Salvadors, Edwin Starr, Joe Tex and the likes — to see us through.Â
Northern Soul screens at the Rio Oct. 23 and 24.
