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Is there a legend greater than that of Creem Magazine? While the annals of rock and roll history are littered with tales of debauchery and the fantastic, legendary rises and catastrophic falls, heroes, villains, and outcasts, Creem managed to embody this all more spectacularly than any of the legends they covered—many of whom are legends only because they were covered in Creem.
They set the standard not just for how rock was covered but for what rock was. Rock is dirty, raw, untamed, irreverent, electric, passionate. And so was Creem. Rising from Detroit in the late-60s, they were the perfect mix of working class midwestern angst and spite, social awareness, and taste making who left a mark so wide and so deep that their direction affects music still to this day, 30 years since they officially shuttered (and near 40 since they were relevant).
Creem banged out musical magic from desks and typewriters, living the rock dream with the written word as hard or harder than the acts they wrote about. They drank and partied and fucked and destroyed and moved and rocked louder than almost any band that existed during their 15 year heyday. You want to impress the fans? Fuck Rolling Stone. It was Creem or die.
Boy Howdy: The Story of Creem Magazine is a loving look at the wild years of Creem’s infamous heyday. From their inauspicious beginnings to their ascent to the heights of rock and roll Olympus. Using unseen recorded footage and interviews with former staff and a who’s-who of rock icons, we witness Creem under the guidance of publisher Barry Kramer, and go behind the scenes not just of the magazine but of rock and roll itself.
Watching or reading anything about Creem today feels like an implicit indictment of modern rock writing. The fury of their irreverence was and is unmatched; in today’s ecosystem of clicks and self-promotion it’s nigh impossible to reach the audacious heights they reached in their heyday. Everything is too guarded and polished—a lot like rock itself, these days—to achieve the kind of meaningful meaninglessness they always did.
In a lot of ways, they were right place right time, though that’s never explicitly stated in Scott Crawford’s documentary. Detroit in the late-60s was an absolute powder keg of race and social tension, rising animosity, and musical ferocity. The crossover of late-era Motown and the proto-punk fury of MC5 and the scene that surrounded them swirled into an incomparable mass of perfection that will, in all likelihood, never be replicated.
In a way, the story of Creem is the story of late-20th century America. It’s difficult not to notice this in Crawford’s film, though the focus is never off Creem. The magazine was as much a response to the culture as it was an impetus of culture—even as they eschewed the ideas of culture’s wider importance. While the interviews in Boy Howdy tell the tale of wild debauchery and astounding feats of journalistic courage, they also hold up a mirror on the state of the culture at the time.
It’s impossible to think of a single publication doing as much as they did for a particular scene in today’s culture. Today, even thumbing your nose feels like a marketing decision. Today, we build brands and conventions. It’s hard to imagine a publication where rock stars like Alice Cooper or Iggy Pop would go just to hang out. It’s hard to imagine a publication that would, in 40 years, inspire the likes of Kirk Hammett, Chad Smith, Keith Morris, Joan Jett, and Michael Stipe to talk about it in a movie.
Though its slim, 70 minute run time feels a bit too rushed, it also feel almost perfect. Boy Howdy goes deep where it needs to, shallow where it ought to, and maintains a steady beat of irreverence that captures the feel of Creem perfectly. It’s wonderful love letter to a singular publication that proves why Creem was the cream of the crop.
One Response
I’d quibble with the blithe dismissal of Creem’s relevance in the ’80s. For those of us who were punk kids in the early-to-mid ’80s, when low-budget zines were our only other source of info about what was happening, Creem was the sole glossy that would regularly feature the Huskers, Meat Puppets, Black Flag and the rest of the SST bands, along with the Buttholes and other more fringey stuff. They had the budget and writers to do justice to these bands in an accessible publication, when Rolling Stone wouldn’t go near any of them. It was a real lifeline, especially to those who were stuck in the suburbs.