Born to Boogie

Born to Boogie is a 1972 British film of a concert at the Empire Pool starring T. Rex, Marc Bolan, Ringo Starr and Elton John.^[1] Directed and produced by Starr, the film was released on The Beatles' Apple Films label.

Born to Boogie consists of concert footage of two shows at the Empire Pool, Wembley, London in March 1972, excerpts of studio scenes with jams of Bolan, Starr on drums and Elton John on piano, filmed at the Apple Studios in Savile Row, London,^[2] and various vignettes reminiscent of The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, shot at Denham and Tittenhurst Park, Sunninghill. The Tea Party sequence was filmed at John Lennon's estate in the same spots as Lennon's "Imagine" video was filmed.

The UK premiere was held at Oscar's Cinema in Brewer Street, Soho, London, on 14 December 1972,^[2] attended by T. Rex, Starr and John.

The film was released on DVD in 2005 including the two London concerts in full plus footage presented by Bolan's son Rolan, but none of the addiitional material. The 2005 cover and DVD animations were designed and produced by Bose Collins.

Edsel Records released the film on DVD and Blu-ray in 2016.^[3]

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Although Marc Bolan at one point describes Born to Boogie as "a piece of rock-and-roll entertainment", Ringo Starr's film proves to be considerably more than just a portrait of another successful band. If its live sequences obviously owe a lot to Pennebaker's Monterey Pop (the model for many recent rock films), Born to Boogie also looks further back, to Dick Lester's Beatles films and even to the teen musicals of the late Fifties. It is Bolan rather than T. Rex who provides the film with its focal point. From the opening credits – where a still of Eddie Cochran is followed by footage of Bolan bursting into action for a live performance – it's apparent that he sees his music as both a homage to the great solo rock artists and a continuation of their tradition: he performs his own version of Chuck Berry's celebrated duck-walk in "Jeepster" delivers a faithful rendition of "Tutti Frutti" (with Elton John hammering away on the studio piano), and recreates Hendrix's orgasmic routine for the climactic "Get It On", running a tambourine up and down the fret of his guitar before finally tossing it into space. But what raises the film beyond straightforward musical reportage is the way Ringo has linked the concert footage with a number of scenes which could loosely be described as English surrealism, quirky mid-Sixties vintage, and for which the closest parallel is with the Beatles' own Magical Mystery Tour. Surrounded by cut-outs of his star and transparent helium balloons, Ringo (dressed eccentrically as a cat) fools around with Bolan on a deserted airstrip; the two of them conduct a Mad Hatter's tea party in the English countryside, with a waiter serving up hamburgers to a party of nuns, while Bolan – backed by a string quartet – slides into an acoustic version of "Get It On"; and there's also a ubiquitous dwarf with a passion for eating the wing mirrors off cars as well as the odd amplifier. Ringo has succeeded in integrating these images into the overall texture of the film, which emerges not – as one might have expected – as a slightly incestuous exercise by two star musicians, but rather as a representation of both the potential and the possible limitations of its subject."^[4]

• Born to Boogie at IMDb

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