Margaret Brown:
Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (USA, 2004)
Production: RakeFilms
99 min - DVD. English.
"Sometimes I don't know where this dirty road is taking me, sometimes I can't even see the reason why / I guess I keep on gamblin', lots of booze and lots of ramblin', it's easier than just waitin' around to die". That's Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997) singing his song Waitin' Around to Die, possibly the best song in the world. And oh yes, did the man gamble, booze and ramble. Even his childhood was a constant chain of relocations, and it certainly contributed to his nagging feeling of not belonging that in his twenties he received electric shock treatment, losing his memory in the process. Out of his studies he gained nothing at all, but out of his music he did: it became both his saviour and his demon.
Townes Van Zandt was a songwriter whose material often hovers somewhere between country, folk, blues and pop, occasionally even above them all. Their melancholy force and heartbreaking beauty have lost nothing of their moving power, making him a cult legend. His own recordings never topped the charts, but have later been made hits by such names as Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan and Norah Jones. But Townes was, after all, never even interested in becoming a star. All he ever wanted was to write songs and to live them, from one performance to another, without ever compromising.
The life and works of this intelligent and spirited, but danger-driven and tragic soul are honoured in Margaret Brown's Be Here to Love Me, a documentary full of intriguing interviews (along Van Zandt himself also his friends and family get to have their say, and such names as Kris Kristofferson and Steve Earle bear witness of Van Zandt's musical influence) and never before seen performances.
The film is full of feeling, authentic and thought-provoking, just like its protagonist. Townes Van Zandt died of a heart attack at home on a New Year's Day, according to some stories a bottle of vodka in his hand and his daughter Katie Belle by his side. His great hero Hank Williams had died on that same day 45 years earlier. Coincidence, of course, but there's nothing to add to that.
