Creem: America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine is a sprawling, irreverent, touching and problematic look at the rise and fall of the first formidable alternative to mainstream music journalism. In its 20-year run, Creem’s staff elevated the hardcore Detroit punk rock scene while being punk themselves — cussing each other out, beating each other up and, in two major instances, dying way too young.
Directed by Scott Crawford (Salad Days), the documentary is rich in gossip, photos, video clips and punchy animation that imbue the magazine with a crass cool that will inspire hardcore rock fans to hunt for surviving copies in every nook of the web.
Record store owner Barry Kramer founded Creem in Detroit in 1969, not long after Rolling Stone emerged in San Francisco. Creem’s office opened in, according to local DJ Dan Carlisle, “a decrepit, war zone of slums,” flipping a Midwestern middle finger to Rolling Stone founder/publisher Jann Wenner’s “establishment” counterculture aesthetic and to coastal elites in general.
Creem focused on counter-counterculture bands like the MC5, Iggy and the Stooges and Alice Cooper. Among its contributors was acidic music critic Lester Bangs, journalist-turned-filmmaker Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) and cartoonist Robert Crumb, known as “R. Crumb,” creator of iconic characters such as Fritz the Cat, the Keep on Truckin’ strip and Creem’s mascot, Boy Howdy.
Unfortunately, the eccentric Crumb doesn’t participate in the documentary, but Crowe does, along with GenX fans like Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and REM’s Michael Stipe, plus many wide-eyed devotees. Actor Jeff Daniels recalls the magazine’s allure, “Buying Creem was a little like buying Playboy — you didn’t want your parents to see either one of them.”
Daniels’ take makes sense: Even though Creem had many women staffers, it’s recalled as a “boys’ magazine” that was sexist, homophobic and often just plain mean. Jaan Uhelszki, a co-producer of the documentary who was also one of Creem’s women writers, shrugs: “It was the ’70s. I mean, there weren’t the same filters there are now. I mean, kill me.”
It’s also notable — and disappointing — that Black people’s perspectives are largely absent from this film. Creem was born in one of America’s Blackest cities, but aside from adoring commentary from journalist Scott Sterling and brief reverential nods to artists like Parliament-Funkadelic and the Motown roster, people of color aren’t shown speaking about Creem’s, or even Detroit’s, history. What a missed opportunity to deepen this story.
Creem, much like punk itself, began its spiritual decline as the 1980s unfolded. Kramer, its bombastic visionary publisher, died by suicide at age 47, in 1981. Bangs died a year later, from a drug overdose at 33.
The magazine shuttered in 1989, leaving a legacy of chaos and cool, wonderfully captured in this film. And, in true Creem fashion, the documentary ends not with remorse or regrets, but with a dig at the intelligence of Ted Nugent.
Kramer and Bangs would have wanted it that way.
Available to rent starting Aug. 7 via grailmoviehouse.com
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