Parky At the Pictures (11/9/2026)

(Reviews of Just an Illusion; Everybody Digs Bill Evans; and Don't Forget About Me. Eddie Cochran)

JUST AN ILLUSION.

Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have been making films together for over three decades. They will forever be known for the multi-award-winning drama, The Intouchables (2011). But there has been much to ponder in their other features, Let's Be Friends (2005), Those Happy Days (2006), So Happy Together (2009), Samba (2014), C'est la vie! (2017), The Specials (2019), and A Difficult Year (2023), although not all have reached UK cinemas. They return with Just an Illusion, which draws on their adolescent memories and is dedicated to the fathers they lost during filming.

Twelve year-old Vincent Dayan (Simon Boublil) shares a bedroom in a high-rise apartment on the outskirts of mid-80s Paris with his old brother, Armand (Alexis Rosenstiehl). He's forbidden to touch the stereo system Armand uses to make dupe tapes of his favourite British indie bands and they fight when Vincent is caught playing Imagination's `Just an Illusion'. Parents Yves (Louis Garrel) and Sandrine (Camille Cottin) are first-generation immigrants from Morocco and Algeria respectively and both work, when not endlessly bickering. Yet, while he puts on a suit each morning to fool the kids into thinking he's not been fired as a junior executive, she is making plans to keep ahead of the secretarial game by learning how to use a computer.

Yves dislikes the estate handyman, Étienne Berger (Pierre Lottin), who has put him in a distant parking space and always makes a dig about how useless he is around the house when he comes round to do repairs. Unable to stand the arguing and the fact that his appeals for his own room always fall on deaf ears, Vincent spends a lot of time with his friend, Nino Bernini (Samuel Maïmoun), whose parents (Augusto Fornari and

Giorgia Sinicorni) always kiss voraciously when he gets home from work.

Vincent also has to go to the large house where project partner Anne-Karine Duchesnay (Jeanne Lamartine) lives with her folks (François Raison and Adèle Jayle ). She doesn't know he exists, however, and Vincent is mortified when her snooty father catches him sniffing his daughter's lipstick, which he had found in a desk drawer while trying to find something to blot the ink he had spilt while working on the project alone (because Anne-Karine doesn't want to collaborate). He manages to steal the lipstick and a passport photo and convinces his pals that she has kissed the back of the picture for him. On the way home, however, he sees his father sitting mournfully in a café and Armand breaks the news that he has lost his job and is trying to keep it from them to save face.

Vincent's and Nino go to the video shop with Oussman (Demba Diaw) and Thierry (Lilian Wallet) to rent Dino Risi's The Easy Life (1962) and Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (1966) in the hope of conning the elderly woman on the counter (Agnès Boury) that The Golden Bush is a Western not a porno. Thierry manages to smuggle it out and they settle down to watch it, with Oussman on watch at the window for any returning adults. However, Nino's mother gets in unseen and they scramble to get the Lelouch into the VCR and have to sit and watch it with her because it's one of her favourite films.

Running home in the rain, Vincent has to turn down Anne-Karine's request to borrow his kagool, as he's hiding the video. He finds Berger preventing Rabbi Abourmad (Rony Kramer) from entering Block B because he looks suspicious and the caretaker distrusts all religions. The rabbi has come to give Vincent instruction for his forthcoming bar mitzvah, but he slopes off into the kitchen in search of cake, while Vincent hides the tape in a chess set while rehearsing his speech.

That night, he asks his mother if he's French, Jewish, or African. She tells him he's all three, as she thinks fondly of the lifestyle she left behind after Sephardic Jews were advised to emigrate to France after the Algerian War. Meanwhile, Yves has a man-to-man chat with Armand about the 6000 franc cash stash in his closet and borrws 700 to tide him over after he establishes that he sells bootleg compilations on cassette.

Sandrine has borrowed a PC from work and Yves resents Berger touching her hand on the mouse while showing how it works. He also feels crushed when a job he wants is gone before he can apply. However, he enjoys eavedropping when Vincent comes home to find Anne-Karine waiting in his room. Claiming Armand's music for his own, he gives her a free gig tape and persuades her to stay and chat when he hums her Francis Lai's Oscar-winning `chabadabada' theme. Sandrine comes home and argues with Yves about which film the song comes from, only for them to smile when they hear Vincent repeating Sandrine's lines about leaving home in 1962 to convince Anne-Karine that he would be the perfect boyfriend to annoy her racist father. She leaves calling him `Moshe', while he uses her middle name, `Geneviève', in response and they trade beaming smiles.

Desperate to impress her, Vincent tries to steal a trendy jacket from Lucky Look in the mall and the kindly owner (David Ayala) calls his parents rather than the police. He lets him off with a warning because of Yves's situation and he apologises for withholding his dismissal and tells him not to mention the incident to Armand. When Sandrine catches up with them after signing some papers, she asks Yves if he was hard on the boy and he says he was firm enough. In the car home, she puts her hand on his on the gear stick, as the colour drains and a Lelouch moment plays out to a melancholic trumpet refrain. At the car wash, she squeezes his arm and reassures Yves that he will get his status back. But she has to go for a new challenge herself, as she doesn't feel valued after 15 years with one firm.

As Francis Cabrel's `Mon place dans la trafic', Yves waits for an interview in a crowded room with men of all ages dressed in his sand-coloured macintosh. Eventually, he runs away and spends the afternoon slumped in his car. As he slouches home, Sandrine dusts and dances to `I'm So Excited' by The Pointer Sisters and the sight of her bopping joyously prompts Yves to drop his briefcase, pull off his mac and jacket and jig around with, before they end in a hug fuelled by forgotten times and a need for consolation.

When Armand is grounded for getting poor grades, he is forced to help Vincent with his project. However, he tries to convince his sibling that François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl are holding hands in a photo because they are the first gay world leaders. As Armand and Vincent fight over Anne-Karine's photo, she delights in the fact that her Joy Division tape was recorded over some bar mitzvah chants and this drives her father wild. Meanwhile, Vincent's parents are squabbling over family members and the guest list for Vincent's big day.

In an effort to cheer Vincent up, Yves buys a pink puffa version of the jacket he wanted (complete with flying duck logo) and dyes it black in the bath. However, Vincent has discovered that his father has loaned his chess set to the rabbi and goes into an elaborate sofa mope, during which his parents have a rat-a-tat quarrel about how much to tell a tweenager about the meaning of existence. When they fall silent, Vincent declares that he thinks he might be the Messiah and asks if he can consult Rabbi Abourmad to put his mind at rest. However, he fails to find the chess set.

Vincent and Anne-Karine then get into trouble because of the Mitterand/Kohl reference in their project and both sets of parents are summoned to the school. Waiting in the corridor, Anne-Karine admits she thought Vincent was a dipstick, but now thinks he's rather cool. Their hands touch and she notices he starts trembling. They close in for a kiss, but M. Duchesnay comes storming out of the principal's office and drags her away. She looks back with a grin and (to the tune of 10cc's `I'm Not in Love') Vincent imagines her at the end of the table, as the family indulges in a dinnertime slanging match.

All attempts to call Anne-Karine are interrupted by her father pulling the plug. Moreover, when Thierry gets the chess set from the rabbi, they find Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925) in the box. While they work out what's going on, Yves gives Sandrine a lift to her interview during a public transport strike. Already cross because Berger noticed her new hairdo when Yves didn't, she loses patience and rushes off, leaving him stuck in a traffic jam. He then hears his name being called on a radio jackpot show and Berger picking up the phone in the flat, where he's fixing the dishwasher. He gives the right answer and Yves locks himself out of his car while doing a celebratory jig.

Berger comes to help him and Yves agrees to call him Étienne rather than using his surname. As they chat, Duchesnay pulls up and orders Yves to stop Vincent calling his daughter. He refuses to bow to a fascist and Berger backs Yves up when he stands his ground. However, when his parents pick him up from school, they ask him to leave Anne-Karine alone. Vincent launches into a tirade, in which he accuses Yves of stealing from Armand and Sandrine of snooping like the KGB. Instead of reacting to her son's outburst, Sandrine picks up on Yves giving Armand empty cheques and he is furious because he was going to break the jackpot news but now can't be bothered.

With Vincent hiding out with Nino, Yves comes to see him and Signora Benini feeds him. When her husband comes home, she asks him to see if he can find Yves a job. But he recognises a fellow face-saver and they are chatting in Italian when Sandrine arrives with news that she has got the job and is now an executive herself. Yves kisses her passionately and proudly. But they can't rouse Vincent from his torpor, even though they have a fold-up bed fitted into a sitting-room bookcase so that he can have their room to himself.

On hearing that Anne-Karine is being sent to boarding school, Armand offers to help his kid brother. He gets a dedication played on the radio so that she knows to look out of her window and see Vincent standing beside a Tartuffe poster at the bus stop. With her mother keeping her husband occupied, Anne-Karine sneaks out to kiss Vincent in the rain and laugh when the dye runs on his jacket. She likes the pink and he puts it round her when she shivers. Armand has also got them tickets to a rock against racism gig and Sandrine sees them being interviewed on TV. Luckily, Yves has taken a sleeping pill, but she slaps Armand's face for letting Vincent loose on the night before his bar mitzvah. However, he tells her that first love matters more than family duty and hugs her because he knows she's not ready to let go of her little boy yet.

Next morning, Anne-Karine sleeps on Vincent's shoulder on the first train back to Paris and Sandrine creeps back into bed when she sees him enter the courtyard. She overhears him practicing his speech as he dresses. He declares his love and gratitude, while also thanking Armand for watching his back and Yves for being his role model. Berger gives them a wave, as they walk in slow motion towards the car and the film ends on a montage blending home-movie clips of childhood with scenes from the bar mitzvah and a final shot of a Anne-Karine. And the whereabouts of The Golden Bush are amusingly left a mystery.

Deftly remaining the right side of sentimental, Toledano and Nakache's first venture into the past makes for a charming rite of passage. But it's also a sharp snapshot of immigrant life in 1980s France and an affectionate recollection of the ups and downs of family life at any time. Drawing on their own experiences, the co-directors (writing with Nathalie Hertzberg) weave through the episodic scenario an affecting sense of close-knit domesticity that is all the more engagingly authentic for the kvetching that is as much a part of Yves and Sandrine's relationship as the kissing. It's nostalgic not naustalgic.

They are superbly played by Louis Garrel and Camille Cottin, with the former carrying off a soup-strainer moustache, bubble perm, and king-sized specs with insouciant aplomb. She ably conveys the pressure placed on a working mother, who is expected to cook and clean while her menfolk never think to lift a finger. But Cottin also displays the kind of get up and go that has long since got up and left Garrel, whose efforts to maintain his place as the man of the house while feeling devalued and depressed make him the melancholic Gallic cousin of the recession-floored Scouser Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale's Boys From the Blackstuff (1982).

The sequence in which Garrel stews in a waiting-room, while Cottin dances through her chores is the highlight of the film. But the kiss in the rain tops the one in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), as the dye from Vincent's coat runs down his fingers and splodges on to the couple's training shoes. Simon Boublil has the face of a synogogue choirboy and he never looks more cherubic than when he's daydreaming about Jeanne Lamartine. Considering they are both debutants, they make a lovely pairing, with the realisation exchange outside the principal's office being likely to revive memories of school crushes for many viewers. Notwithstanding the closing image, one is left to suspect that the romance won't go past that one perfect night, as her bigoted father will do his utmost to keep them apart. But they will always have Paris.

Alexis Rosenstiehl brings quirky charm to the underwritten role of Armand, with his hair-pulling tussles with Vincent ending wittily with a `let go' countdown. François Raison makes a splendidly detestable villain, while Pierre Cottin drolly turns Yves's bête noire into an unexpectedly winning ally. Indeed, everyone in the supporting cast succeeds in creating an authentic character, as Toledano and Nakache explore everything from race and faith to class, neighbourliness, sibling rivalry, adolescent curiosity, social consciousness, inclusivity, and the perils of parenting. Nothing is over-egged, with observational nuggets studding the action like the hits on the exceedingly well chosen songtrack. Jean Rabasse's interiors are equally apt and restrained, as are Isabelle Panettier's costumes, which resist the temptation to mock the excesses of 80s attire.

Augustin Barbaroux's watchful cinematography and Dorian Rigal-Ansous's measured editing confirm the universal excellence of the craft contributions. Toledano and Nakache (who cameo in the chastely brief glimpse of the porno) won't have shaken their reputation for producing feel-good cinema. But there are worse things to be known for and, while the chances of a sequel are remarkably slim, few would complain.

EVERYBODY DIGS BILL EVANS.

Despite the intriguing innovation of Patience: After Sebald (2012) and Innocence of Memories (2015), Grant Gee is best known for his rockumentaries, Meeting People Is Easy (1998), about Radiohead, and Joy Division (2007). Prior to The Gold Machine (2022), however, he tried his hand at non-fiction with Judith (2020), a 45-minute thriller about ensnaring a sexual predator. Now, Gee has made his feature bow with Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a biopic of the troubled 1960s jazz pianist that allowed Gee to exploit his actuality skills and brought him the Best Director prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

Intercut with the credits, the opening sequence takes place on 25 June 1961 on the small stage at the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York, where bespectacled pianist Bill Evans (Anders Danielsen Lie) relishes improvising in complete sync with bassist Scott LaFaro (Will Sach) and drummer Paul Motian (Boz Martin-Jones), as they play `Jade Visions', one of the sublimely mellow numbers that will be immortalised in the albums, Sunday At the Village Vanguard and Waltz For Debby.

Ten days after the gig, however, 25 year-old Scott is killed in a car crash and Bill retreats to the spartan apartment he shares with on/off lover, Ellaine Schultz (Valerie Kane). She has left to stay with her sister by the time that Bill's concerned older brother, Harry (Barry Wild), comes to invite him to stay for a few days with his wife, Pat (Katie McGrath), and their young daughter, Debby (Tallulah Cavanaugh), who had inspired Bill to write his most celebrated track.

Pat is pleased to see Bill and, when she asks after Ellaine, Harry conspires in a fib about why she couldn't come. She determines to feed him up, while Debby urges him to play her tune. Feeling hemmed in by cosy domesticity, Bill sneaks away one night and tracks Ellaine to a hotel room, where they shoot up heroin and lament that their relationship doesn't run more smoothly. Harry hears his brother creeping back home and confides in Pat that he's worried he will destroy himself.

Alone while Pat gets ready for work, she tells Bill that Harry has yet to settle in New York after having left Baton Rouge, Louisiana to become a music teacher. He had been a more promising music student than Bill and Pat confides that he's envious of his success, despite being wholly supportive. When they share a bag of clubs to play golf together, Harry sympathises over Scott's loss, as he knows how crucial he was to the trio's sound. But his hints that Bill needs to rouse himself and get back on the ivories (`I can't watch you make nothing of something') provokes him into needling Harry about his own musical frustrations.

Pestered by Debby into playing her song, Bill manages a few lines of the introduction before stopping. He has a restless night and (aware that he's shooting up in the bathroom) Harry decides that he has to ask him to leave in order to protect his daughter. Buying him a ticket to Florida, Harry sees Bill off on the train to stay with their retired parents, Harry, Sr. (Bill Pullman) and Mary (Laurie Metcalf). The former meets his son at the station and begins bickering the moment he gets home with the latter, who fusses over Bill and reassures him that `Sometimes an intermission is part of the music.'

No reason is given for the tension between Harry. Sr. and Mary, but they continue to snap at each other in a civilised manner over dinner. Bill asks his mother for a sleeping pill to help him make it through the night, but she sees him writhing with withdrawal symptoms. He makes it through cold turkey, however, and is grateful to his mother for not prying when she comes to sit beside him on the garden bench. A pianist herself and her sons' first teacher, she remembers how he had spent hours watching his brother intently during his lessons and had gradually come to surpass him (in fact, Evans mastered several other instruments).

Over-fond of a drink and adept at seeing only what he wants to see, Harry. Sr. is more buttoned-up when it comes to emotions, even refusing to acknowledge that he's not enjoying his retirment reward for a hard life. But he still informs Bill that it suits him having him around (`I like to talk, your mother's tired of listening, so bingo!). They play golf together, but he can't shake his unspoken sense of disappointment (with his son and his own existence) or coax his son into having a beer with his lunch. One night, Bill feels the need to escape the strained bonhomie and finds a local bar, where he is recognised by the bartender while playing pool by himself. His enthusiasm for the album, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, makes him feel better about himself. But he's reluctant to return with his father, who get drunk with some pals and belts out `Danny Boy'. Slumping down at the table, Harry, Sr. confesses to Bill that his mother deserves better than to be stuck with an uncouth blue-collar bore from New Jersey. But his candour is rewarded when Bill returns home to play the piano, while his parents listen in silence in their bedroom.

Feeling ready to perform again, Bill returns to New York after the family listens to his new album. Harry, Jr. collects him from the station and drives him to his apartment. Bill finds a note from Ellaine and we witness a conversation in which he thanks her when she tells him she loves him. A colour flashforward to 1973 shows Bill break the news to Ellaine that he has found a younger partner who can give him a child. Heartbroken that her inability to conceive has cost her the love of her life, Ellaine steps off a platform under a Subway train.

Back in monochrome, the brothers discuss the new album. Harry acknowledges that replacing Scotty is going to be tough because they were so simpatico that hearing them play feels like eavesdropping on a perfect conversation. When he meets Pat again, she reveals that the self-defeated Harry has been struggling with his mental health and another flashforward (to 1979) shows Pat finding her husband's body after he has shot himself in the head after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. A colour sequence set in 1980 follows on to show a bearded Bill coughing up blood in a car with his girlfriend, Pennie (Juliette Crosbie), who breaks down after he is wheeled away on a gurney and fails to respond to treatment.

The colour segments and the passages of stylised cutting to offer a subjective perspective as Bill's emotional state waivers are perhaps the least effective gambits that Gee employs in telling a desperately sad story, in which psychological fragility is exacerbated by parental detachment, sibling rivalry, addiction, abusive co-dependency, and overwhelming grief. But Piers McGrail's monochrome cinematography and Adam Biskupski's measured editing enable Gee (who based himself in County Cork) to convey and contrast the ambience of the cramped New York apartment and the uncluttered Florida retirement home.

Working from Owen Martell's 2014 semi-fictionalised novel, Intermission, Mark O'Halloran

has produced a perceptive screenplay full of memorable exchanges that is, nevertheless, tantalisingly short on backstory details and (considering the jazz milieu) Black characters. Nothing is said about Bill Evans's career prior to the launch of his trio, while the nitty gritty about Harry, Sr. and Mary's relationship is overlooked. Those in the know about Evans's time with George Russell and Miles Davis may be able to pick up on the nuances, but the crushing despair that he feels on losing Scott LaFaro might have been even more impactful if reference had been made to why his in-tunedness was so significant.

The sketchy nature of Bill's encounters with Ellaine work better, as their relationship was based on their highs and lows. But the scenes are played with an aching sense of helplessness between Norwegian star Anders Danielsen Lie (who does his own piano playing) and Northern Ireland's Valene Kane. Indeed, all of the performances are first rate, with American veterans Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf squabbling with excruciating precision while doling out a tough love that doesn't quite avoid reproval, while the Irish duo of Barry Ward and Katie McGrath are compelling in their efforts to help Bill while also trying to protect each other in what they recognise is a losing battle whose consequences they dare not contemplate.

When the Production Code ruled Hollywood, jazz biopics centred on a titan's struggle to get his sound accepted. Since Clint Eastwood's Bird (1988), however, the emphasis has been on addiction and creativity and this sensitive, sincere, and sophisticated film deserves to be added to that pantheon, if only for pitching Evans's trauma in the same melancholic register as his art. The hypnotic prologue should also send viewers in search of the three-disc set that brings together the two vaunted Village Vanguard albums with the unused tracks that were recorded during the five Sunday sets that ended their two-week residency.

DON'T FORGET ABOUT ME. EDDIE COCHRAN.

Forty years ago, Rob Lowe was being lined up to play the lead in the biopic, Summertime Blues: The Eddie Cochran Story. The film was never made, although Jerry Zaremba essayed Cochran in Steve Rash's The Buddy Holly Story (1978), while Stray Cat Brian Setzer took the role in Luis Valdez's Ritchie Valens biopic, La Bamba (1987). The mantle passes to Jack Harris in the reconstructions in Kirsty Bell's Don't Forget Me. Eddie Cochran, although this isn't the first documentary about the influential rock`n'roller who died far too young, as the BBC followed its excellent 1982 Arena study, Three Steps to Heaven with the less substantial Cherished Memories in 2001.

Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota on 3 October 1938. Sister Pat Hickey speaks fondly of `the baby and our precious one', as she recalls being raised with siblings, Bill, Bob, and Gloria by their parents, Alice and Frank Cochran. Narrating, Jack Harris as Cochran remembers calling his mother `Shrimper' because she was so small. He also mentions his first musical memory, `Hot Pretzels' and its B side, `Beer Barrel Polka', by the Glahé Musette Orchestra, led by accordionist Will Glahé. Niece Pat Lindner remembers her uncle picking her up and whizzing her through the curtains so she could pretend to be flying through clouds.

Shortly after brother Bill had given Eddie his first guitar, the family moved to Bell Gardens, California in 1952. Rockabilly guitarist Darrel Higham speculates on the influence of country music on the teenager, who liked to go out into the desert and fire his gun. Sister Pat reveals that he was once accidentally shot in the leg by his brother Bob, although Eddie took the blame. He was a good student at school (listing `boys glee' as his favourite subject), but he was only interested in playing his new Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body guitar.

Ronnie Wood and Albert Lee reflect on the joy of owning your first proper guitar, while Keith Richards and Peter Frampton disclose that Cochran had his Gretsch fitted with a Gibson pick-up. Joe Brown, who toured with Cochran in 1960, remembers how willing he was to share tips with other musicians. Greg Harris from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame discusses Cochran's session work in the mid-1950s, while the narration runs us through the formation of The Cochran Brothers with (no relation) Hank Cochran. During a period of breakneck touring, they met Elvis Presley in Nashville and Eddie became determined to follow in his footsteps (although Ray Charles was a bigger musical influence). A couple of singles were released on Ekko Records before Cochran hooked up with songwriter Jerry Capehart and he signed to Liberty Records in 1956. Film director John Waters delights in declaring that this was also the label of Patience & Prudence, the child singers whose conductor father, Mark McIntyre, had worked with Frank Sinatra.

In 1956, Cochran was invited to appear in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It, alongside Jayne Mansfield. Cliff Richard, Suzi Quatro, and E Street Band bassist Garry Tallent extol his rendition of `Twenty Flight Rock', while sister Pat proudly explains that he wore a shirt belonging to her husband, Hank, in the picture. Actor Nick Moran and lyricist Tim Rice briefly dissect the song before we're whisked on to Howard W. Koch's Untamed Youth (1957), in which Cochran sang `Cotton Picker', wearing a flat cap. He was still only 18, however, and had no say in `Sittin' in the Balcony' becoming his first Liberty single. Nevertheless, it reached No.18 in the Billboard Hot 100 and Waters and Frampton recommend it.

Around this time, Cochran started writing songs with brother Bill and on-off girlfriend Sharon Sheeley. He also struck up a friendship with Gene Vincent, who became a regular touring partner. Kiefer Sutherland (who inherited the 80s biopic after Lowe left under a cloud) expresses his enthusiasm for Cochran and the fact he relished earning beans for working his socks off. As The Fall's Brix Smith recalls, Little Richard got religion during an Australian tour and left Cochran and Vincent stranded when he swore off rock.

This left them free to come home and gig across the States on a hectic schedule that pianist Karim Kumar and Yungblud conside naive. We hear quotes from letters penned by the likes of Louise Lawson, who was a member of the fan club administered by Alice and Gloria. Cochran was forever on the phone to his mother (Frances Barber) telling her how things were going and promising to give her a better life. We learn that he loved fan mail and encouraged girls to write to him. Such innocent affability and genuine interest in his fans was typical of the good guy image that Lawson reckons was reinforced because there was more access to stars in those days than there is now.

Keith Richards, Alice Cooper, Rod Stewart, and Primal Scream bassist Simone Marie Butler all comment on Cochran's looks and stage presence, while Suzi Q, Sting, and Billy Idol confide that he had an accessible everyman vibe that persuaded fans that they could be just like him. It also made him popular with other musicians and Sutherland tells the story of Cochran sitting in a deli in the wee small hours teaching Buddy Holly how to push strings in the new style rather than slide notes as old jazz guitarists had done.

In 1958, Cochran released `Summertime Blues' and country singer Kimmie Rhodes joins the chorus of approval, while Bob Harris calls `C'mon Everybody' the true anthem of 50s rock music. Tim Rice marvels at the sophistication of the lyrics, while Yungblud highlights the anger in songs that summed up the teenage experience. `Nervous Breakdown' and `Something Else' are also cited as major influences on a range of speakers, including Roger Daltrey. Yet, while the music made an impact, it did Cochran no harm to be handsome and Mike Read recalls how Phil Everley had told him that the girls knocked other acts aside to get to their hero. Alice, however, warned her son against spending so much time chatting to fans on the phone, as he has better ways to spend his time and money.

Filmed in a week by Paul Landres, Go, Johnny, Go! (1959) proved to be Cochran's last feature, despite his hopes to become a good actor. He fooled Freeman Hover into playing frequent Cochran requests during one evening show and the DJ threatened to play the 1956 Cress Records single `Skinny Jim' (which Cochran had disowned) in revenge for duping him. The track amuses Sutherland because it's so risqué for its times, but Higham notes that Cochran always had his eye on the future rather than the past.

Shocked by the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper, Cochran started having premonitions about his own early death and decided he wanted to come off the road and spend more time in the studio, as a producer as well as a performer. He recorded `Three Stars' to commemorate them and nephew Bobby Cochran (himself a fine musician) recalls how low the tragedy laid him.

Cochran spent the summer of 1959 in the recording studio and Smutty Smiff outlines how he pioneered double-tracking during these sessions, during which he also played bass, piano, and drums. Others, including Brian Setzer, commend innovations such as the unwound (or unwrapped) third string, which made a big impact on George Harrison when he saw Cochran live at the Liverpool Empire in March 1960. By this time, the likes of Cliff, Marty Wilde, Joe Brown, and Vince Eager had picked up the rock baton (after it had been dropped in the States after Elvis went into the Army) and they were all influenced by Eddie Cochran.

Drummer Clem Cattini remembers how random touring schedules were at that time and Daltrey comments on the grim digs that musicians stayed at. An exhausted Cochran was keen to come home, but Alice coaxed him into staying on and forgetting about what had happened to Buddy Holly. She also advised playing it by ear where his romance with Sharon was concerned. A consultation with fortune teller Gypsy Rose Lee confirmed his fears that he wasn't going to make it home and so he jumped at the offer from teenage taxi driver George Martin to drive him, Sharon, and Gene Vincent back from their last gig in Bristol to London for their afternoon flight home on Easter Sunday, 17 April 1960.

The cab crashed when it hit a lamppost near Chippenham and Cochran was thrown from the backseat and suffered fatal head injuries. He was 21 years old. As Sting plays `Three Steps to Heaven', sister Pat recalls the pain of bereavement and how the family didn't come together for almost two years after the funeral, at which Alice had collapsed against the coffin. She moved into Eddie's room and made a shrine of his belongings. Bobby reckons it was unhealthy, but he can understand how hard the loss hit her. Richards remembers how hard the deaths of Buddy and Eddie had been on kids like him before shrugging, `It's only rock'n'roll.'

Brix Smith reveals that PC David Harman took Cochran's guitar back to the police station and he went on to be Dave Dee from Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky. Mick & Tich. She also notes that Marc Bolan had looked after the Gretsch as a stagehand at the Hackney Empire (and he had also died young in a car crash). Suzi Q gets goosebumps and Mike Read marvels over how different eras of rock history overlapped in those instances.

Linda Perry then describes how Paul McCartney played `Twenty Flight Rock' to impress John Lennon at Woolton Fair in 1957 and we see Macca retelling this Beatle origins story on several chat shows. Furthering the influence factor, we see The Who do `Summertime Blues' (as Daltrey distances the band from rock`n'roll) and Sid Vicious doing `C'mon Everybody' and `Something Else', which left their mark on Tim Burgess of The Charlatans and Yungblud, who comes up with the stunning revelation that his idols had their idols and so on down the line. Who knew?

As Mick Jagger and Billy Idol belt through their versions of `Twenty Flight Rock', Maxwell D. says it's great that songs can filter down generations and Keith and Ronnie concur that Cochran riffs and tricks helped shape British music in the 1960s - which Alice Cooper notes made Americans realise what they had been ignoring for so long, especially when it came to rhythm and blues. Sting also highlights how Buddy and Eddie made The Beatles want to record their own stuff and that transformed how popular music was generated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perry laments that the age of the rock star seems to have passed, as so much modern music is packaged to suit social media conversations. She hopes people rediscover Cochran to kick-start a new era of creativity and others hope that he can be rediscovered. Sister Pat thanks Kirsty Bell for the chance to put her brother in the spotlight and say how much his family loved him. Brix Smith refers to him adding `Don't Forget Me' to his autograph and guests ruminate upon his reasons before some discuss how they would like to be remembered, with the responses of Daltrey and Yungblud being the most telling, as the former doesn't care and the latter cares too much.

Given how little performance footage has survived from an era when live shows were rarely archived, Kirsty Bell and editor Brad Watson have done a fine job in giving this profile a visual energy to match the dynamism of Eddie Cochran's music. In the absence of interview clips, Bell has relied heavily on her stellar line-up of talking heads and they don't let her down. Some of the younger contributors have little of interest to impart, while Rod Stewart is disappointingly self-referential. But Brix Smith and Linda Perry provide some neat continuity links, while old hands like Tim Rice, Alice Cooper, Ronnie Wood, and the ever-wonderful Keith Richards are on fine form, although they might have gone into greater depth about Cochran's innovative guitar playing and pioneering studio experimentation. Bell might also have allowed the odd song to play a little longer and she might also have alighted on lesser-known gems like `Mighty Mean', `Slow Down' (both 1956), `Jeannie Jeannie Jeannie' (1958), and `Pink Pegged Slacks' (1960).

More might have been made of the memories of Vince Eager, Marty Wilde, and Joe Brown, as they all shared bills and buses with Cochran and Gene Vincent and their insights into seeing him play live would have been invaluable. It's a shame the George Harrison mention is so short, as he was the only Beatle to see Cochran on stage. However, Ringo Starr would have played on the same bill at Liverpool Stadium on 3 May with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. As it was, Gene Vincent had recovered from his injuries in time to play, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe all in attendance. As Bell has a section of the direction Cochran might have gone had he lived, this snippet might have made the cut, as it reinforces the influence that Eddie and Gene had on Merseybeat.

The sweetest interviews are with Pat Hickey, who fondly recalls her baby brother lobbing popcorn at her at the cinema when she was on a date (shades of Billy J. Kramer's `Little Children'). Her pride in his legacy and her gratitude at being able to celebrate his all-too-short life are adorable and more than atone for the rather tacky use of Sting singing `Three Steps to Heaven' over her recollections of Eddie's death. Speaking of which, Bell is guilty of playing to the cool kids in showing the Sex Pistols version of `C'mon Everybody' while ignoring the Showaddywaddy cover of `Three Steps to Heaven', which reached No.2 on the UK chart in May 1976.

She also fails to pull off the reconstructions, with Frances Barber being glued to her phone and armchair as Alice and Jack Harris making a better fist of narrating than he does of striking Cochranesque poses. Thank goodness Bell restricts his replication of the trademark stage moves. One can only wonder why she didn't make more of Cochran's three film appearances, as he performed a full song in each and off-cut footage may still exist for `I Remember', which was omitted from Go, Johnny, Go! Maybe the rights to full songs were too prohibitive, but no better examples of Cochran in action have survived.

For all the grouches, this is a sincere and worthwhile bid to remind modern listeners of the debt their heroes owe to Cochran and his ilk. Perhaps somebody might like to follow the example of Ethan Silverman's AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex (2022) by having today's stars put their own imprint on a favourite Cochran song? It would be worth it just to see what Yungblud chooses. Maybe a duet with Joe Brown. And could we finally get Richard and Richards together on the same track?