John Scheinfeld (‘What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat and Tears?’ director) on the fall of one of music’s most popular bands [Exclusive Video Interview]
Blood, Sweat and Tears were arguably the biggest rock band in the world in 1970 — until they weren’t. The rise and decline of one of music’s most acclaimed and popular artists is the subject of director John Scheinfeld‘s new documentary “What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat and Tears?” The film — part biography and part political thriller– documents the fallout of the band’s decision to to perform a series of concerts behind the Iron Curtain. As Scheinfeld says in an exclusive video interview with Gold Derby (watch above), “They were cancelled long before we knew what that term meant.”
Scheinfeld began working on the film after having lunch with the band’s co-founder and drummer, Bobby Colomby. He began learning about the band’s meteoric rise to fame; their 1970 self-titled album won the Grammy for Album of the Year over such classics as The Beatles‘ “Abbey Road” and Johnny Cash‘s “Johnny Cash at San Quentin” albums. After learning about their equally rapid decline, Scheinfeld asked Colomby the question that gives the film its title.
As he began to learn about the band’s ill-fated trip to Eastern Europe, Scheinfeld quickly realized that the film would be more than a standard music biography about the band’s history. “The history is almost secondary here,” he says. “What really is important is tracking the events of 1970, not only what happened to the band, but what was going on in the country and in the world at the time.”
The film contains previously unreleased footage of the band’s performances in Eastern Europe, something Scheinfeld says was crucial in order to appreciate both the band’s talent as musicians as well as the tragedy of their fall from grace. “If we couldn’t understand the heights that they had reached,” he says, “we could not appreciate and feel as emotional about the depths that they went to after this story took place.”
Scheinfeld’s films, many of which have focused on music heavyweights like John Coltrane, Harry Nilsson and John Lennon, examine the intersection of pop culture, society and politics. That intersection, Scheinfeld argues, is key to finding a subject worthy of a feature length documentary. “I always try to find an interesting story that you don’t know about somebody or something that is well known,” he says. “I think that makes the story much more rich and textured and multi-layered, because you really want it to be worthy of being on a big screen.”
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