The Apple TV+ documentary series “1971” opens with footage from 1970’s Kent State student protest that ended when the National Guard fired on the crowd, killing four. Of course, there would be no 1971 without 1970, and no 1970 without 1969—and so it goes.
The ambitious eight-episode production by Britain’s Asif Kapadia (who directed the documentary on singer Amy Winehouse, Amy) is really a history of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s whose focus continually pivots to 1971. Rock music is the through-line as the art form that not only represented the era to listeners but set the agenda in large measure. The Manson Family pops up during the series, as does the “Jesus movement,” but it all comes back to music, whether “Helter Skelter” or Jesus Christ Superstar. Kapadia was born in 1972 and has no personal memory of the images and voices he chose, yet he must have been conscious while growing up of the ongoing ripples and ramifications of what had recently gone down.
Was 1971 the year the Revolution almost succeeded—or was it already running on empty? “1971” offers differing impressions. In that year, John Lennon and Yoko Ono landed in New York ready to storm the castle, and activists broke into an FBI office, stealing documents proving that the agency was conducting covert operations against “subversives,” yet cynicism and fatigue set in as the ‘60s ended in mayhem. The Summer of Love had nurtured Charles Manson and the mythology of Woodstock gave way to the deadly reality of Altamont. Kapadia samples footage of The Rolling Stones fleeing Altamont Speedway by helicopter after the Hells Angels (the Stones hired them as security) turned on the drug-addled crowd at the free music festival.
And yet, as the documentary shows, 1971 brought Marvin Gaye’s extraordinary album What’s Going On?—a musically seductive questioning of where society found itself as the upheaval continued and the Vietnam War dragged on. His silken singing reached audiences sick of hearing shrill voices rising from the streets.
“1971” doesn’t present this in a chronological narrative but as an aural and visual montage. Songs are matched with still photos, voiceovers (recorded then and now) reflect on archival footage, ideas and images float in and out as the narrative weaves through and around its titular year. 1970 saw the “hard hat riot” with New York City construction workers attacking antiwar protestors and in 1971 the Attica prison uprising was brutally repressed by New York State Police. They are separated by several episodes in “1971” but linked at quantum level by the political hostility that poisoned the air in the early ‘70s. A new civil war? Observers on all sides were talking about that possibility in the U.S. and many scenes are devoted to massive protests met by club-wielding cops. Kapadia doesn’t neglect his British homeland, showing how the colorful party of the ‘60s faded into the grey reality of enduring poverty and anger for many of the country’s subjects. Glam rock became one way to escape the bleakness.
The “drug culture” was a phrase heard often in those days and the subject factors into “1971.” Included is an interview with Frank Zappa, condemning drugs for their debilitating impact on individuals and—episodes later—Richard Nixon declaring the War on Drugs, ostensibly for their debilitating impact on society. Drugs soured the creativity of several prominent figures in late ‘60s music. “1971” shows the once vibrant Sly Stone retreating into sullen seclusion, recording alone at home, disconnected from his band and losing his ability to discern brilliance from discombobulation.
But there is also footage of Lennon and Ono working in their English country home on the 1971 album that became Imagine. George Harrison was on hand—triggering an audio-visual digression on the Beatles’ breakup—but so was producer Phil Spector, welcomed in those days as a benign if eccentric genius, not a murderer. Lennon always had something to say, and one comment is especially relevant to the socially networked world of 2021. “Humans always tend to talk about rubbish,” he said. Now more than then, the world has become a planet-size landfill of trash talk.
There are odd omissions: “1971” mentions The Osmonds but not The Jackson 5, but the documentary is not an effort to compile a comprehensive history. The series’ strength is its idiosyncrasy and imagination. “1971” stands out from the dull gaggle of recent documentaries that pad out interesting subjects with pointless meanderings as if the directors are paid for length, whether they have anything to say or not. Always in motion, and always interesting, “1971” has few if any dull moments.
