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Joe Cocker’s ‘Mad Dogs & Englishmen’: Inside the Triumph and Trauma of a Legendary Tour

By David Browne

David Browne

When singer Rita Coolidge attended the premiere of Mad Dogs & Englishmen , the 1971 doc that chronicled the Joe Cocker –fronted tour of the same name, the experience was far from celebratory. “I started shaking and crying and it all came back to me,” she says. “I got up and left and got in my little VW and drove home. My friends were so worried about me that they followed me. I don’t know if I’m over it yet.”

Although it’s become something of a footnote in pop history, the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour was historic: It captured British soul singer Cocker at the peak of his career, and its joyful blend of gospel, soul, blues, and every other type of Americana powered the double album that documented the 1970 run into the Top 10 (with Cocker’s remake of the Box Tops’ “The Letter” also a hit). It also made a star out of bandleader Leon Russell, who exuded bad-boy cool on screen. But the run of shows was also fraught: An already frazzled Cocker was frustrated that Russell was in command, drugging and partying were daily occurrences, and out of the blue, drummer Jim Gordon, then Coolidge’s boyfriend, punched her so hard that she slammed against a wall.

The saga of that tour — and a tribute concert that reunited many of its participants — is newly told in Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen,  a doc that will premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival later this month before arriving for a limited theatrical run in October via Abramorama. Directed by Jesse Lauter, the film time-shifts between the 1970 tour (with clips from the first Mad Dogs movie), footage from the commemorative gig at the Lockn’ Festival in 2015, and interviews with the surviving players of the original shows. Also offering insights are Steve Earle and manager Jon Landau, who each caught a Mad Dogs show back in the day, and longtime Rolling Stone  writer David Fricke.

But given the often dramatic and sometimes disturbing back story of the tour, what started as a straightforward film about that moment in time and the 2015 reunion became more than that. “While they were filming, they realized there was more meat on the bone than we thought,” says Derek Trucks, whose Tedeschi Trucks Band, co-fronted by his wife Susan Tedeschi, served as the backing band at the tribute gig. Of the sometimes unsettling moments that the movie explores, Trucks says, “It’s a tough place to go, but if you avoid that stuff, it starts to feel disingenuous at times.”

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The Mad Dogs tour was chaotic both on paper and in practice. Cocker, already coping with an overwhelming wave of post-Woodstock fame, was told by immigration authorities that he had to tour right away or lose his working papers. Coolidge says the actual reason was the dark underbelly of the sometimes mobbed-up music business. “It wasn’t so much about not working in the States but, ‘If you don’t do this tour, you’ll get your legs broken,’ ” she says. “That was common knowledge in the group — that threats had been made that if Joe didn’t do the tour, he would be hurt.”

With only a week to prepare, Russell was hired to pull together a 10-piece band — and a 10-person group of backup singers called the Space Choir — and rehearse for the 48-show run. Cocker, Russell told RS in 2015 , “was pretty wrecked when we started out. I said, ‘Does it sound good to you?’ and he said, ‘It never sounds right to me.’ I didn’t know how to take that. So I said, ‘Shit, I’ll just do whatever I want.’ ” The tour manager, Sherman “Smitty” Jones, was a former pimp, and Cocker was seen tossing down any and every pill given to him on the way to the stage. “It was party-party-party,” says Coolidge, who says she abstained from most of that. “They were having orgies every night. I would hear about them the next day.”

By the end of the shows, Cocker was fried and broke. “Joe was just worn out and so beat up and penniless,” Coolidge says. “The heart went out of him for a while. He just disappeared inside himself.”

The Tedeschi Trucks Band, which had modeled itself after the size and horn-rooted arrangements of that ensemble, had long wanted Cocker to join them onstage and perform cuts from throughout Cocker’s career. All involved had finally settled on doing such a show at Lockn’ in 2014 — part of the festival’s tradition of presenting a special, one-time get-together each year. Cocker bowed out at the last minute, but a few months later everyone knew why; he had been battling lung cancer and died that December. Tedeschi and Trucks decided to proceed with the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tribute plan anyway, to honor both the album and Cocker.

When the notoriously reclusive Russell agreed to come aboard, having previously joined the Tedeschi Trucks Band onstage, others expressed interest. “I was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough of us left alive to make it worth the while,” Coolidge laughs. She also adds, more seriously, “I also knew Leon was having some pretty serious health problems. I was concerned about him being put in a position that would tax his frailties.”

But by showtime, the lineup included former Mad Dogs like Coolidge; singers Claudia Lennear, Pamela Polland, and brothers Daniel and Matthew Moore; keyboardist Chris Stainton; and percussionists Chuck Blackwell and Bobby Torres. (Gordon, currently in prison for killing his mother, was not invited, and the tour’s other drummer, Jim Keltner, respectfully bowed out in light of his disinterest in traveling.) As Tedeschi Trucks booking agent and movie co-producer Wayne Forte says, the criteria for inviting players was “healthy, alive, and not in jail.”

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The nearly four-hour Lockn’ show went off with few hitches; Warren Haynes, the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson, and Widespread Panic’s John Bell filled in for Cocker at various points (Dave Mason also sang lead on his “Feelin’ Alright”). At the last minute, Russell agreed to reprise “The Ballad of Mad Dogs & Englishmen,” the solo Russell studio recording heard in the original doc. Despite his health issues, which led to his death in 2016 after a heart attack, Russell held up for the entire show and, despite his surface crustiness, marveled at the stability of the Tedeschi Trucks lineup compared to the original Mad Dogs crew. “Leon was shocked by how long we’ve been together,” says Tedeschi. “He said, ‘How do you keep nine or 12 people together this long?’ They did it for a year and they had to all take time off.”

During interviews for the documentary, some of the tour’s tangled personal relationships emerged. “There were so many different undercurrents of emotions we weren’t aware of,” says Trucks, “but we could feel it.” Numerous hookups are hinted at. Coolidge, who was in a relationship with Russell before the tour, says the two had overcome their past difficulties. “In the years right after the tour, I’d see him and he would pretend I wasn’t there — he would look right past me,” she says. “He finally relaxed, one or two of his marriages later. Things got resolved over the years.”

When Cocker crashed hard after the tour, some of the criticisms were leveled at Russell, who more or less ran the shows. In Learning to Live Together , Russell, who could be guarded, addresses the backlash he experienced, saying he wished Cocker had come to his defense. “I could definitely sense resentments for it, like he almost couldn’t win in that situation,” says Lauter. “Doing this show was almost like his way of healing his relationship with Joe. That’s why I titled the movie Learning to Live Together . Everyone had musical and romantic and business relationships, and you pick up on how everyone was trying to figure it all out back then.”

Adds Lauter, “When it comes down to it, the film is ultimately a story about the great generational bridge and healer that is music. We knew it the moment the band started playing ‘The Letter,’ the first song at the first rehearsal, and you could hear Claudia’s backing vocal cut through the Space Choir. All the resentments, past drama and trauma were out the window.”

The movie’s dramatic highpoint arrives when Coolidge recalls the moment Gordon punched her in a hotel, after he’d invited her to step outside a room where a party was going on. “I know people are tired of talking about the #MeToo movement,” Coolidge says, “but it was very real, even back then, and it’s important to talk about that stuff. As a child I was never hit by an adult, or by anybody. Jim was four times my size and I was 100 pounds; he could have pinched me and it would have been enough. I had a huge shiner and I had to go onstage with it. Everybody knew it. I needed them to be part of my protection since I couldn’t do it myself.”

Forte says there was talk of how much of the backstage drama, including Coolidge’s unsettling story, to include. “There was a lot of conversation going back and forth: Is all that going to be a potential downer?” he says. “You don’t want to have people walk out of the movie depressed. But I, for one, felt it’s part of the story. It needed to be in there.” Adds Tedeschi, “It’s real life. Things happen and people like to know about someone who has gone through those things and made it through the dark side. It’s not all bad and dark.”

Transforming footage old and new into a feature film proved to be a daunting task, which accounts for the six-year delay between concert and movie. Unable to find a big-money investor, the producers raised more than $700,000 from various parties, then spent two years clearing the rights to songs by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and others whose tunes were performed on the Mad Dogs & Englishmen album. Lauter had hoped to include some of the rumored hundreds of hours of outtakes from the original doc (which Russell, in the movie, wryly calls “300 hours’ worth of really X-rated stuff”), but those were never unearthed. (Whether those reels were misplaced or perished in the 2005 fire at Universal Music’s storage facility remains unclear.) Learning to Live Together only includes portions of the Lockn’ show, but Trucks says a live album of the complete show will be released at some point.

Coolidge, at press time, had not yet seen the film. But it seems unlikely that her traumatic experience at that premiere, 50 years ago, will repeat itself. “We’re a lot older, so there were no triggers,” the now–76-year-old singer says. “I didn’t feel like I was really back there. Hopefully you gain some wisdom and grace with age. Looking at it from this part of my life, I really valued the experience. I remembered the good parts and have no regrets.”

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Mad Dogs and Englishmen: the chaotic, violent, drug-addled Joe Cocker US tour of 1970

As a new film celebrates the legendary post-woodstock tour, and its tribute concert, jim farber talks to original performer rita coolidge and director jesse lauter about ego clashes, bust-ups, jealousy and why cocker went off the rails, article bookmarked.

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M ore than 50 years have passed since the tour known as “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tore its way through America, leaving a legacy that’s at once starry and troubled, vaunted and pained. “That tour just wore me out,” says Rita Coolidge, whose appearance on it led to a highly successful solo career. “I don’t think anybody could have survived another trip out like that. They would have been dropping like flies.”

At the same time, Coolidge says, “many days I wake up thinking about that music and how amazing it all was.”

Small wonder the “Mad Dogs” tour – fronted by Joe Cocker and backed by a cast of nearly 50 singers, players and hangers-on, including classic rock linchpins Leon Russell , Bobby Keys and Jim Keltner – became enshrined as one of the most exciting live events of all time. It’s legendary enough to have inspired a 2015 tribute concert, led by current US stars Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, which boasted many of the surviving artists from 1970, including Coolidge and singer Claudia Lennear, pianist Chris Stainton and creative czar Russell, who made his last major appearance at that show, before his death in 2016. Now, five years later, director Jesse Lauter is releasing a new film, Learning to Live Together , which weaves together footage from the original show with musings and music from the tribute concert. “I tried to make clear the beautiful link between the old show and the new one,” says Lauter. “I also wanted to show how the original show changed the course of rock’n’roll history.”

It had an equally transformative effect on the lives of many who took part in it – though not always for the better. On the one hand, “Mad Dogs” made Russell a household name, boosted Keys into a regular sideman position with The Rolling Stones and turned Keltner into one of the world’s most in-demand drummers. It also yielded a double live album that shot to No 2 on the charts, boosted by two major hits, “The Letter” and “Cry Me a River”. On the other hand, “Mad Dogs” killed friendships, ruined romantic relationships and left Cocker, its star, penniless, drug-addled and creatively at sea. More, there was violence backstage, as well as threats of it that date back to the tour’s birth.

From the start, “Mad Dogs” was chaotic and fraught. In March of 1970, Cocker was riding high after his soul-shaking performance at Woodstock the summer before. To take advantage of the momentum, his management demanded that he throw a tour together at lightning speed – not an easy feat since he had just fired most of his backing group, The Grease Band. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the kind of demand you could ignore. Cocker’s manager, the late Dee Anthony, has often been depicted as having been mob-connected, a view supported by the recent memoir by another of his former clients, Peter Frampton. “We would make jokes about that and push our noses to the side like you do when you talk about the Mafia,” Coolidge says with a laugh.

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With the implicit threat of “tour or else”, Cocker turned to Russell – a well-connected multi-instrumentalist who had produced his most recent studio album – to find great musicians pronto. To do so, he plundered a band led by Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, swiping from them Keys, Keltner, Coolidge and the duo who would later form the rhythm section for Derek and the Dominoes, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Though Delaney and Bonnie’s original group never became big sellers, they played a crucial role in music history. In 1969, they were the only white band on the storied Stax Records label. Their album on that imprint proved so powerful, it inspired no less a line-up than Clapton, George Harrison and Dave Mason to join them for a historic 1969 tour of the UK, which yielded an ecstatic live album, On Tour with Eric Clapton . In addition, Russell’s piano work for the duo proved pivotal to a then unknown Elton John. “Elton once told me that if it weren’t Delaney and Bonnie and Leon he never would have done what he did,” Coolidge recalls.

Miraculously, Russell whipped together the Mad Dogs band in just eight days, stuffing it with as many people as possible. In the film, Russell says his inspiration for the mass casting was the hippie love-ins that featured scores of musicians and chanters who created a cacophony that somehow ended up sounding sweet. The quest for such a sound had a thrilling effect, enhanced by two powerful drummers, a Latin percussion section, a pumping horn trio and a “Space Choir” of singers who echoed the sound of a gospel chorus. Still, the pile-on had a down side. Some in the Space Choir couldn’t even sing. “As choir leader, sometimes it was hard for me to get some of the people who were not singers off the microphone,” Coolidge says.

As a result, the live album from the tour required major remixing and vocal enhancements. Regardless, the result brought something new to music by marrying big band R&B of the 1940s with Sixties rock’n’roll. “They were probably the first of the rock’n’roll big bands,” Lauter says. “That set off a whole trend.”

You heard it on Clapton’s self-titled solo debut in 1970, which also featured much of the Delaney and Bonnie band, as well as the giant group George Harrison assembled for 1971’s “Concert for Bangladesh”, which employed some of the same musicians as “Mad Dogs”, and Dylan’s sprawling “Rolling Thunder” tour in 1975. Russell actually name-checked Dylan on the Mad Dogs album as an audience member before he and Cocker performed his yearning ballad “Girl from the North Country”.

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To up the theatricality, Russell encouraged the musicians to dress and act as outrageously as possible, creating a circus-like atmosphere for which he played ringmaster, outfitted with a Captain America suit and a top hat. Unfortunately, such a defining role for Russell wound up alienating the event’s ostensible star. “It got to the point where Joe didn’t feel like it was his tour,” Coolidge says. “He felt like he was not in control and, consequently, he would just take any drug that anybody handed him and then he really wasn’t in control.”

To a listener, however, Cocker’s wrenching soul cry and the band’s manic back-up seem like they were born for each other. Together, they created a gripping amalgam of rock, soul, gospel and blues. “It was classic, cosmic American music,” says Lauter. More, their repertoire, which featured songs penned by everyone from The Band to Isaac Hayes to The Beatles, contained what Lauter calls “the most sacred music in rock’n’roll history”.

Coolidge got her own showcase on the tour by fronting the soul ballad “Superstar“. Though the song is credited to Russell and Bonnie Bramlett, Coolidge says she had instigated the writing. “Somehow when it came out, my name wasn’t on it,” she says. “I know Bonnie would never hurt me but I think Leon had hard feelings and just said ‘screw her’.”

Coolidge, with whom Russell was romantically involved and for whom he wrote the ravishing ballad “Song for You”, left him before the tour to take up with drummer Jim Gordon. “Leon adored Jim so he took it all out on me,” Coolidge says. “I left him and he wasn’t used to that.”

Unfortunately, her alliance with Gordon led to something far darker. One night while on tour, without warning, the drummer called her into the hallway and proceeded to “beat the shit out of me”, Coolidge says. “He was out of his cracker box.”

Years later, the drummer wound up killing his mother. Only afterwards was he diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. “When he was arrested, he said that he had also planned to kill his ex-wife but he was too tired from killing his mother,” Coolidge recalls with a dark laugh. “He wouldn’t have been done killing. I think if he were out now, he still wouldn’t be done.”

After Coolidge was attacked, she wanted to leave the tour but Cocker convinced her to soldier on. “I stayed for my love of him,” Coolidge says. By the tour’s end – after a punishing 48 dates in just over two months – everyone was either worn-out or strung-out. The massive cost of the show, which included flying the cast around in a private jet, left the star himself without a dime. “I probably made more money from that tour than Joe did,” says Coolidge. Afterwards, “he was living at (producer) Denny Cordell’s house and sleeping on some kind of mat by the front door. He didn’t have money to buy a guitar. But for him it wasn’t about the money. It was more about him feeling that he had been betrayed and that everyone profited from it more than him.”

In the film, Russell talks about being warned that he would be accused of “career profiteering” and of spending all of Cocker’s money on the pricey backing musicians. But, says Lauter, “Leon wasn’t scheming to profit off Joe. Leon told me, ‘Look, I’m just the band leader.’ He had this idea for the big band and at the beginning Joe was gung-ho about it. The tour was put together very quickly so maybe it takes you several weeks to realise, ‘Oh crap, what did I get myself into?’”

Still, the scale of the project turned out to be a key part of its legacy. Five decades later, it inspired Trucks and Tedeschi to form a big band of their own, The Tedeschi-Trucks Band. “The Mad Dogs band was pivotal to us,” Trucks says. “They were like the white Sly and the Family Stone.”

Consequently, in 2014, when the organisers of the jam band-oriented US Lockn’ Festival approached The Tedeschi-Trucks Band about forging a collaborative live project, they first thought to contact Cocker. Unfortunately, he was sick at that time. (Cocker died of lung cancer at the end of 2014). For a substitute, Trucks turned to Russell to explore a Mad Dogs salute. “At first, I thought maybe this wouldn’t be something he would want to jump back into,” Trucks says. “But he was so excited. I think it was a way for him to put that thing to bed, or to confront it, or to have the reunion he never got to have.”

With Russell on board, many of the surviving members of the original show happily signed on. They even managed to rope in Dave Mason, formerly of Traffic, who didn’t appear the first time but who wrote a key song that was performed there, “Feelin’ Alright”. Even so, Trucks knew that trying to reinvent a classic show had risks. “Forty or 50 years down the road, there’s no way it’s going to be the same thing,” he says. “But it became its own thing.”

The insertion of Trucks’s style into the Mad Dogs’ mix wound up forming a modern connection between that band and its original sonic relatives, including Delaney and Bonnie, Derek and the Dominoes and The Allman Brothers (with whom Trucks played for years). “One of the reasons I felt it was OK to take on this project was because of all those historic connections,” Trucks says.

In the film, the older musicians express deep appreciation for getting the chance to recreate music that had changed their lives. For Coolidge, the new show actually trumped the old one. “This time it was grown-ups instead of kids,” she says. “That makes a difference.”

“The original show probably had to be insane to become what it was,” Trucks says, with a laugh. “But there’s an upside to being able to look back now and say, ‘this aspect of the tour was magic, but this aspect was never going to end well.’ This time, we just took the magic.”

‘Learning to Live Together’ will have its UK premiere at the Raindance Festival on 31 October. It opens in the US on 22 October.

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How Joe Cocker Corralled Everybody for ‘Mad Dogs & Englishmen’

Joe Cocker 's triumphant set at Woodstock brought his distinctive vocals and peerless interpretive talent to thousands of new fans. But by the end of 1969, he was a singer in search of a band — and staring down a long list of touring commitments.

As tended to be the case in his early career, things didn't come together easily for Cocker following his Woodstock appearance, which prefaced the release of Joe Cocker!  later in the year. Although that LP was a hit, disagreements with the members of his Grease Band left him without backing musicians for an upcoming U.S. tour — and when he couldn't back out of those dates, he had to put together a new group in a hurry.

Enter pianist Leon Russell, whose song "Delta Lady" was covered on the Joe Cocker! LP. Russell, already a wizened studio vet despite being only in his late 20s, had performed with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and when Cocker reached out to ask him to put together a band for the looming American tour, Russell turned to many of his former bandmates in that short-lived, highly regarded combo.

"Leon Russell was the ringmaster," singer Rita Coolidge told the Long Island Pulse . "He pulled the whole circus together. Joe Cocker needed a band for his tour and movie. Joe called Leon. Leon called me and said, ‘Put a choir together.’ We only had four days to rehearse. There were no rules anytime."

That rushed approach helped contribute to the band's legendarily unwieldy lineup, which boasted more than 20 singers and musicians — a gaggle of players whose combined efforts beefed up Cocker's sound while perpetually seeming to teeter on the edge of chaos, only to be reined in by Leon Russell. As crowded as the stage eventually became, the personnel Cocker ended up taking out on the road represented a slimmed-down version of the crew Russell initially assembled.

" Mad Dogs & Englishmen came about because Joe had this tour of America already booked. And then the Grease Band split and he didn't have a band. He tried to cancel, but there were lots of complications, so he decided to fulfill his engagements with a new band," Russell told Record Mirror . "Mad Dogs is a 10-piece band with a 10-piece choir and some other people. It was up to about 45 people at one time, and now it's down a few."

Listen to Joe Cocker Perform 'The Letter'

Sensing the tour needed to be documented, execs at A&M Records bankrolled a concert recording and live documentary, both later released under the title Mad Dogs & Englishmen , taken from the 1931 Noël Coward song that Russell later recorded for his own Leon Russell and the Shelter People album in 1971. The album, recorded in late March 1970 during a pair of dates at the Fillmore East in New York, arrived in August 1970; the film, taped at the Metropol in Berlin on Oct. 31, debuted in the spring of 1971.

By the time anyone got to see or hear either of those projects, however, the band had already fallen apart. Cocker, who'd already been reluctant to tour even before the dates were underway, clashed with Russell on the road while battling depression and a growing alcohol dependence; after the tour ended, he entered a period of self-imposed exile, returning to England while slowly contemplating his next move.

"The album almost didn't happen," A&M co-founder Jerry Moss told Rolling Stone . "The tour was so taxing, I didn't see Joe for a couple years, and he was nowhere to be found."

The label ultimately turned to producer Glyn Johns to make sense of the Mad Dogs tapes, and by the time he was finished mixing the record (which was co-produced by Russell and Denny Cordell), Moss knew they had a hit even if he couldn't find Cocker — and his instincts were proven right with Cocker's rendition of the Box Tops hit "The Letter," which cracked the Top 10 and helped the album on its way to over a million in sales.

"'The Letter' was the first hit for Joe, and provided a tremendous glimpse of his amazing musical force. The record went platinum, and sold well; it also showed this incredible menagerie of musicians, like Leon Russell," recalled Moss. "That whole group was incredible, and it was an amazing experience – what they did live and on record was magnificent. After that success, we were able to get Joe back in the studio to make more great records."

As Moss admitted, getting Cocker back into the studio wasn't necessarily as simple as making a few phone calls. And although he'd go on to record many more albums, he'd clearly lost a lot of momentum by the time he returned with his next effort, Joe Cocker , in late 1972. He still had plenty of hits in his future, but his chart successes would prove fleeting and sporadic over the ensuing decades — which is understandable, given the uphill battles he'd continue to face on a personal level.

"I was about 26 years old, and I kind of felt indestructible," Cocker admitted during a 2012 interview with NPR . "By the early '70s, the drugs and the booze took their toll. ... It was a long road back. A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realize, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in."

Listen to Joe Cocker Perform 'With a Little Help From My Friends'

Given the pain and confusion that surrounded the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour for Cocker, his feelings for the music that came out of it were always colored by a mixture of resentment, sadness, and ambivalence — and although he had to be glad for the sales and critical acclaim, he steadfastly refused to contemplate the idea of a reunion.

"It's weird because people are always coming up with that. You've got to look at the past, and how many people have either died who were on that tour or are just incapacitated? It's not like the Eagles getting back together. You'd be trying to put something together that was a feeling, and an event," Cocker told Billboard years later.

"The reason that tour broke up was I fell out with Leon and we all ended up very unhappy," Cocker added, "so it's not like you're putting together some happy memories. I mean, why should I, at this stage of my life, want to go back into something that made me unhappy. I'm quite happy with my own band, but I know [the reunion idea] is something that won't go away."

That proved a more accurate prediction than perhaps even Cocker himself might have guessed. In 2015, several months after Cocker's passing at the age of 70, guitarist Derek Trucks hit upon the idea of staging a Mad Dogs & Englishmen reunion with the surviving members of the band, scheduled for Sept. 11 at the Lock'n Festival in Virginia.

"It's going to be a blast," Trucks later told UCR . "It’s going to be a big beautiful mess on that stage! I’m pretty pumped about it. You know, Leon Russell will be there, Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, Dave Mason and then about six of the original background singers. It’s going to be a trip."

For Russell, the show represented a way of honoring the past without truly hoping to recapture it. "I've been approached by people in the past who said, 'Let's do Mad Dogs & Englishmen again, and we'll get these guys and that guys," but you have to remember that all the people in the [original] band were unknown at the time. It didn't have stars ," he told Rolling Stone . "So I didn't think it could be recreated that way. But I quite like this band, and it'll be interesting."

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‘Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen’ Review: A Luscious Rock Nostalgia Trip

Interweaving footage from the great 1970 Joe Cocker tour with a Mad Dogs reunion 45 years later, Jesse Lauter's film is a serious blast of rock 'n' roll love.

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Rock ‘n’ roll bands, we’re told, are the closest and most combative of families. They come up in the world together, they eat and sleep and ride in a tour bus together, they haunt the recording studio together, they become experts in how to manipulate (and shield themselves from) the media together, and, in a funny way, they break up together. But in 1970, Joe Cocker fronted a band of virtuoso ruffians called Mad Dogs & Englishmen, who put on some of the most musically rambunctious and cathartic concerts of their time, and the strange thing is that the band members barely knew each other.

In 1969, Cocker had made a splash at Woodstock — it was the first time almost anyone had seen his writhing British blues-dog self — and after riding that buzz for a while, he fired his band out from under him and tried to take a break. But an American tour had already been organized and booked for him. A story that’s often been told is that Cocker had to do the tour to keep his U.S. working papers from being revoked. But according to Rita Coolidge, who told this to Rolling Stone , the sometimes mobbed-up music industry threatened Cocker with bodily harm if he didn’t do that tour.

He had almost no time to throw it together, so he reached out to Leon Russell , the already fabled producer, songwriter, former member of the Wrecking Crew, and multi-genre recording artist. Russell called the top musicians in his Rolodex (and recruited Coolidge to assemble a chorus of backup singers), and all of them came together. They rehearsed for less than a week and went on the road with Cocker, doing 48 shows in 52 nights. How to describe the sound of it? It was rock, it was soul, it was Vegas, it was blues, it was gospel, it was pop, and — more than anything ­— it was big . In its oversize ramshackle way, it was the sound of all those sizzling musicians, most of them in their 20s, still saying hello to each other.

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The tour was captured on film, in the 1971 cult concert movie “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” (available only on used DVD), but even if you’ve never seen it, the new music documentary “Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen” is a fantastic companion piece. It’s a performance film, a delectable slice of nostalgia, and a testament to how one gorgeously raucous rock ‘n’ roll moment can reverberate through the decades.

Directed by Jesse Lauter, the film looks back at the Mads Dogs tour, utilizing a wealth of grainy split-screen footage from “Mad Dogs & Englishmen.” But the doc is also set in the here and now. It jumps back and forth between 1970 and 2015, when Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, the married leaders of Tedeschi Trucks Band, organized a reunion, teaming up with 12 of the original Mad Dogs, including Chris Stainton, Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, and the 74-year-old white-haired and wizardly Leon Russell, to give a concert at the Lockn’ Festival in Virginia.

If, like me, you grew up on the “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” album, with its ironically ornate drawing of Joe Cocker flexing his bicep on the cover, it has a special place. The Beatles’ White Album aside, it’s the first of the great, raw, spilling-over-the-sides rock double albums — a tradition that would go on to encompass the Stones’ “Exile on Main St.,” Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti,” Prince’s “Sign O’ the Times,” and Outkast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.” Think of the most primal rock drumming you ever heard: Keith Moon smashing his way into the anarchy zone, John Bonham doing his thunder-god riffs. Mad Dogs & Englishmen had two drummers, Jim Gordon and Jim Keltner, and the sound of them in unison was staggering; it surrounded you with drums. But then in song after song, the entire band had that effect. From the ecstatically relentless gospel groove of “Delta Lady” to the ominous descending-and-then-soaring delirium of “The Letter” to the syncopated tenderness of “Space Captain,” the Mad Dogs built a wall of sound from the ground up — tight as hell but loose with pleasure, a rock ‘n’ roll circus that throttled just hard enough to scatter a few parts along the highway.

The whole Mad Dogs tour was big. It was like a commune, only one that traveled in a private jet and didn’t come with cloying utopian rhetoric. It was a floating bacchanal, like the Rolling Thunder Revue with less thunder and more roll. I realize that decades don’t always come in neat packages, but 1970 really was an eye between the storm of two eras. It still had some ’60s tumult (like the Kent State massacre), but the notion that a “revolution” was on the horizon was doing a quick fade, and the decadent glam-rock listlessness of the early ’70s had yet to come into being. You feel that cozy limbo on the Mad Dogs tour. It was a bawdy, soulful good time…without a higher meaning. And that was its glory. The documentary lifts its title from a line out of “Space Captain” (“Learnin’ to live together…” ), and there’s a refreshing lack of starry-eyed hippie-dippy-ness to that line. It’s really about the eternal human challenge.

In “Learning to Live Together,” the original “Mad Dogs” footage looks more amazing than ever. And the survivors of that tour who show up for the reunion concert are great company; anyone who thinks that aging rock boomers are simply cranks stuck in time should get a load of these folks. Claudia Lennear, who began her career as part of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, explains that there is white gospel and Black gospel, and that Leon Russel had a unique gift, as a musician, for fusing them together. (That’s as good an explanation as I’ve heard of the Mad Dogs alchemy.) And there are vivid reminiscences from Rita Coolidge, who recalls what a sweet soul Joe Cocker had but also how stressed-out he was (something visible, at moments, in the old footage).

Leon Russell discusses the 300 hours of film footage that originally existed of the Mad Dogs tour, and the X-rated version he always dreamed of making of it, and Coolidge and Chris Stainton recall the hang-loose camaraderie that developed among the Mad Dogs. But Coolidge also describes the tour’s darkest moment, when drummer Jim Gordon, who was her boyfriend, slugged her in a hotel hallway. (He was later diagnosed as schizophrenic.) The critic David Fricke, interviewed throughout the film, provides eloquent testimony to what it was that made the Mad Dogs’ music magical.

Now, as then, much of the focus coheres around Leon Russell, who was hired by Cocker to be the tour’s musical ringleader, and yet the sway Russell held over the band ate away at Cocker, who wanted it to be his band. Watching the “Mad Dogs” footage, you revel in the rock star that Russell, for a brief moment, became: a total 1970 icon of aristocratic country hippie sexiness with his ironically worn top hat, long silver brown hair (which you can see he was very vain about), deadpan scowl, and pants with rosy vines painted on the butt. He’s like Bob Seger as a silky alley cat.

The contemporary performances at the Lockn’ Festival are superb. Tedeschi Trucks Band, enhanced by the older musicians, do a remarkable job of reconfiguring the Mad Dogs sound, and singers from Coolidge to Lennear to Dave Mason to Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes make nice work of standing in for Cocker, even as they get you to realize what an irreplaceably powerful belter he was. It’s Leon Russell, more than anyone, who looms over the proceedings. He’d been through his share of health battles, and would pass away just one year later (in 2016), but working under the stewardship of Derek Trucks (who is an extraordinary guitar player), he spins out his tasty piano licks and surveys it all with a Southern-fried gleam of counterculture wisdom that remains undiminished. In the inside cover of the “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” album, Russell was billed as “the Master of Space and Time.” In “Learning to Live Together,” he still is.

Reviewed online, Oct. 22, 2021. MPAA Rating: Not rated. Running time: 111 MIN.

• Production: An Abramorama release of a Swamp Family Productions, Good Fast Cheap Productions production. Producers: Jesse Lauter, Wayne Forte, Blake Budney. Executive producers: Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, John Beug, Thomas Tull, Alba Tull, Bert Ellis.
• Crew: Director: Jesse Lauter. Camera: Jojo Pennebaker. Editor: Drew De Nicola. Music: Mad Dogs & Englishmen, Tedeschi Trucks Band.
• With: Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Chris Robinson, Jim Keltner, Claudia Lennear, Dave Mason, Jon Landau, David Fricke, Larry Campbell.

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New documentary chronicles legendary Joe Cocker tour

Joe Cocker 's legendary 1970 "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" tour is the subject of a new documentary entitled Learning To Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen .

In addition to actual tour & offstage footage from 1970, the film also focuses on the Tedeschi Trucks Band reunion show of the tour's players at the 2015 Lockn' Festival . A press release describes the documentary and its special guests:

"In the spring of 1970, Joe Cocker undertook what became the legendary Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, immortalized in a live album and concert film. Fifty years later, first-time filmmaker Jesse Lauter tells the complete story through the lens of the Grammy Award-winning Tedeschi Trucks Band ’s reunion of the Mad Dogs. In addition to Derek Trucks , Susan Tedeschi and the entire Tedeschi Trucks Band , this reunion featured 12 of the original Mad Dogs, including Leon Russell , Rita Coolidge and Claudia Lennear , plus guest performers Chris Robinson and Dave Mason , among others. The film showcases inspired performances from the reunion show, along with an exclusive look at the history of the tour and never-before-seen archival materials, commentary from the original members, critic David Fricke , notable fans who attended shows on the original tour and features the last filmed interview with the late Leon Russell ."

Learning To Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen will be screening in theatres later this month and next. Here's a trailer for the film:

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Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour thrived in the chaos

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On March 11, 1970, Joe Cocker arrived in L.A. ready for some downtime.

Fresh off the road and his success at Woodstock the previous summer, the working-class Sheffield soul singer was riding high in the music charts and looking forward to re-energizing during a much-needed break in the California sunshine.

The next day his stateside manager Dee Anthony (who specialized in introducing U.K. artists to the American market and was rumoured to have ties to the Genovese mob family) informed Cocker that he had booked him on a seven-week (48 shows in 52 nights) tour that was set to begin the following week in Detroit. He gave the singer eight days to find a band or face the collective wrath of the American musician’s union, immigration authorities, concert promoters and music fans everywhere.

Cocker turned to the producers of his last album, Denny Cordell and Leon Russell, to see if they could help him out of the jam. They went to work that day organizing the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour.

“(My friend) Sandy Konikoff called me up because he didn’t drive and asked if I could take him over to the A&M Sound Stage,” recalls photographer Linda Wolf. “He needed to go to rehearse for this impromptu tour that was taking off with Joe Cocker. I took him over there and went into the rehearsal room at A&M Records and the place was jam-packed with vibratory delight. It was just like the place to be if you were in music at that moment. I looked at Denny Cordell when I was introduced to him and I said, ‘I want to go.’ He said, ‘What can you do?’ and I said I could be a photographer. He said, ‘Show me something,’ and like magic there was a guy standing listening to the conversation who said, ‘I have a darkroom.’ I looked over at Jim Gordon who had gone to my high school but who I really didn’t know and I saw that he was carrying a camera and I said, ‘Hey, can I borrow your camera?’ He had film in it so I shot rehearsal that night and we went over to this guy’s darkroom, developed the film, made a couple of proof sheets and I brought them back to Denny at something like two o’clock in the morning and he said, ‘OK, you can go.’ And that was how I got on to the Mad Dogs tour.”

Wolf says she had been drawn to the music scene since she was 13 years old, when she met Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones at the TAMI Show, in 1963. “My teenage heart and budding body led me to believe the only way I could be part of the scene was to become a musician’s girlfriend, but I soon saw that one-night stands were the norm and I wanted much more from a boyfriend and for my life. In 1969, I met June Millington and the girls from Fanny, and that changed everything. I immediately moved into Fanny Hill, the house Warner Brothers rented for them and became their photographer. We were a sisterhood, supporting each other in our crafts.

“Because Fanny was such an anomaly (an all-girl rock band) lots of musicians came by to jam. Lowell George came often, as did Chris Williamson, Bernie Taupin and Rick Danko. By the time I went to the rehearsal for the Cocker Tour, I had honed my chops as a photographer with Fanny.”

A&M Records’ Jerry Moss liked the energy that was building around the group and gave Cordell free rein to make things happen. A five-man film crew was hired to document the action.

“It was a wild magic carpet ride of immediacy,” says Wolf. “People were getting up on stage from that first night. I just became part of the circus.”

People went back to Leon Russell’s house on Skyhill Drive to sleep between rehearsals. “I only went home one night on March 17 because it was my birthday and my parents were throwing a party,” says Wolf. “That’s why I’m not in the main photograph because that photograph happened that night.”

Otherwise, Wolf camped out at Russell’s with the rest of the Mad Dogs crew. “Joe was at Leon’s, Chris was a Leon’s, Peter Nichols – those three had come out from the U.K. together. They were all at Leon’s house. Sandy Konikoff, Bobby Jones, all the women were there, I don’t think Denny was there yet, there was just a ton of people. The women were making breakfast in the morning. It was just constant rehearsing and staying up all night.”

One day the entire group went en masse to a doctor’s office to get shots for a proposed side trip to the Bahamas that didn’t happen. Afterwards they went to The Plantation, where Delaney and Bonnie and Taj Mahal lived for a jam session. Most of the Mad Dogs were Tulsa musicians from Delaney and Bonnie’s band.

“I was wrapped in the rapture of being part of this group,” says Wolf. “Every minute of the day was an event; driving anywhere, going anywhere in public, hanging out at Leon’s, because we were completely out of the box, visually and energetically bombastic. We stood out even then.”

Wolf says she was enchanted because she had always wanted to be part of the music scene. “My only way in as a girl back in the 1960s was maybe to meet the musicians, until I took up the camera and found my role… Because I had lived and worked with the band Fanny and knew other musicians, such as Jackson Browne at 16, it had just ramped up by the time I got to the Cocker tour where I really felt like I was a legitimate part of the scene because of the camera that I was using and not my body.”

On the tour Russell gave some of the women cameras without film in them. Wolf says he wanted to create a spin that the relatively unknown musicians were all famous by having photographers run around after them with cameras.

With Wolf and Andee Cohen as official still photographers and a film crew every move was well-documented.

The filmed version of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour opens with the 43-member touring party departing LAX for Detroit on a Central American Airways propeller-driven, four-engine airplane dubbed “Cocker Power” for the summer. The Lockheed L-749 Constellation, built in the late 1940s as the first transcontinental airliner, had seen better days.

“It wasn’t like being on a plane,” says Wolf. “We were all stoned a lot. I was taking uppers to get up in the morning and downers to get to sleep at night because we had all kinds of crazy hours and I just could but mostly it was pot and acid. I don’t know what happened with the pilots. They got us there and back. There were no seatbelts on the plane. You didn’t sit still on the plane it was a party plane. People slept a lot.”

The tour established its own rhythms that everybody followed, says Wolf. “Plane then bus then hotel then bus then event then bus then plane. It was always that way except in New York where there was a pilot’s strike so we were there for a while. I really don’t know how the management worked things out. I was so unaware of management. I didn’t have to be aware of any money transactions. Nothing. We had a minder. Smitty, he was a Shakespearean actor – he could recite Shakespeare to us and he kept everybody together.”

Wolf had a Nikon camera her father had given her and three lenses. She gave her film to Cordell who sent it to Prolab in Los Angeles where Andee Cohen had a friend who developed it and sent it back on to the road. “I got a chance to look at them,” says Wolf. “I only know this because of a scene in the movie where I’m looking at my proof sheets sitting next to Joe. You have to remember my mind was pretty much in present time constantly and I was also probably getting tweaked out because of having no schedule. There was no going to bed at night and get up in the morning – it was all over the map.”

During performances, Wolf and Cohen were up on stage shooting all the action. “There were no prohibitions,” she says. “Leon was clearly the Master of Space and Time: He was the conductor of the music and the energy. Joe was channelling the voodoo of rock and roll.”

Everybody was welcome to participate in the concert experience.

“That’s another thing that speaks to my own value system around this whole idea of fame,” says Wolf. “Without the grace of the man who drives the truck that arrives at the stage door and all of the men and women who carry the equipment (nothing would happen). We are all part of the same dream and we are all making it happen. If it weren’t for that (fact) there would be no show. Some of the people you think are the least important in the story become the most important in the story - they have an understanding and perspective that goes deeper than anyone’s. To dismiss anyone as being lesser than is creating the same problem that is at the root of all of our social ills – which is the system of power-over rather than power-with. That’s what I loved about being part of the Cocker tour to begin with - that we were all one.”

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The documentary celebrates Joe Cocker’s legendary, short-lived 30-piece band – and their surprise reunion 45 years later.

Published on

Abramorama has acquired distribution rights to Jesse Lauter’s music documentary Learning To Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen .

An electrifying documentary jam-packed with music spotlighting the celebrated ‘Mad Dogs & Englishmen,’ Joe Cocker’s short-lived tour featuring a mammoth thirty-piece band, told through the lens of the reunion of 12 remaining band members, 45 years later, to perform with Grammy Award-winning Tedeschi Trucks at the Lockn’ Festival.

The film features archival footage alongside current performances and interviews with Leon Russell, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Rita Coolidge, Chris Robinson, Jim Keltner, Dave Mason, Claudia Lennear, and many more.

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Filmmaker Jesse Lauter stated, “The original Mad Dogs & Englishmen album and documentary played a foundational role in my early years as a music producer and musician, so it’s only appropriate that my first film as a director is about this critical piece of music history. There has always been a shroud of mystery around this tour- how it came about, what was it like, why it never happened again – so I felt it was my duty to reveal the truth, beauty, and yes drama, behind the music, in hopes to uncover why this music has resonated for so many generations. It was the greatest honor of my career to capture this once-in-a-lifetime reunion.”

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks added, “Mad Dogs & Englishmen were one of the groups that inspired us from when we first started our band and paying tribute to their work with so many of the original members on hand was a highlight on many levels. This film is a labor of love many years in the making, and we’re so proud to share the music and the stories of the men and women of Mad Dogs & Englishmen.”

In the spring of 1970, Joe Cocker undertook what became the legendary ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ tour, immortalized in a live album and concert film . Fifty years later, first-time filmmaker Jesse Lauter tells the complete story through the lens of the Grammy Award-winning Tedeschi Trucks Band’s reunion of the Mad Dogs.

In addition to Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and the entire Tedeschi Trucks Band, this reunion featured 12 of the original Mad Dogs, including Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge and Claudia Lennear, plus guest performers Chris Robinson and Dave Mason, among others.

The film showcases inspired performances from the reunion show, along with an exclusive look at the history of the tour and never-before-seen archival materials, commentary from the original members, critic David Fricke, notable fans who attended shows on the original tour and features the last filmed interview with the late Leon Russell.

Richard Abramowitz, Abramorama CEO said, “Jesse Lauter has woven a seamless fabric of great live music and insightful, often hilarious anecdotes into a film that honors the past while being firmly planted in the present. We’ve worked on a lot of music films over the years and this one instantly found its place among the very best.”

Buy or stream the Mad Dogs & Englishmen soundtrack .

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Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Album Of The Week Club review

The live album of joe cocker and leon russell's shambolic, chaotic, sex-fuelled, mad dogs & englishmen rock’n’roll circus.

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Honky Tonk Women Sticks and Stones Cry Me a River Bird on the Wire Feelin' Alright Superstar Let's Go Get Stoned Blue Medley Girl from the North Country Give Peace a Chance She Came in Through the Bathroom Window Space Captain The Letter Delta Lady

Joe Cocker 's Mad Dogs & Englishman was a double vinyl live album recorded on  t he singer's legendary US tour – a quite mad, chaotic rock’n’roll circus-like extravaganza with more than 30 musicians in the band – which left the him ill and virtually broke. 

It also resulted in this stunning (and extravagantly packaged) live record, fizzing with energy and at times bursting with outrageous big-band instrumentation, with piano player Leon Russell the ringmaster and bandleader. 

The director of the subsequent  Mad Dogs  documentary (which Cocker unexpectedly had to bankroll), Pierre Adidge, recalled: “It was no ordinary tour. They brought together the finest musicians in Hollywood, who all went because they wanted to go, because they wanted to be a part of this whole giant effort. They wanted to be together through their music."

Tensions ran high in the Mad Dogs camp. Russell had become envious and began to muscle his way up the pecking order. The man who’d started out like his brother suddenly “took over the whole show, became like a slave master,” insisting on pre-show communal meals, communal sex and gang-style sermons, in which the Mad Dogs held hands and praised the Lord, before proceeding to get utterly wasted. 

The tour itself was an unwieldy shambles. Cocker often didn’t know the lyrics and clammed up, until Russell told him: “Doesn’t matter, man. Just sing what you like.” So he did.

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Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute. 

Join the group now .

Other albums released in August 1970

• Future Blues - Canned Heat
• A Question of Balance - The Moody Blues
• Runt - Todd Rundgren
• Weasels Ripped My Flesh - The Mothers of Invention Eric Clapton - Eric Clapton
• Metamorphosis - Iron Butterfly
• Hawkwind - Hawkwind
• Stage Fright - The Band
• Scorpio's Dance - Shocking Blue
• Easy Does It - Al Kooper
• Just for Love - Quicksilver Messenger Service
• Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon - Status Quo
• Mongrel - The Bob Seger System
• The Rill Thing - Little Richard
• Mungo Jerry - Mungo Jerry

What they said...

"With the exception of Leon Russell, who excels on guitar as well as on piano, no one has any musical identity on this album. Neither is the group as a whole much of a back-up for Cocker. Each guy seems to be playing fills for everyone else, and the arrangements are oh so predictable and mechanical." ( Rolling Stone )

"An impressive document, but the same overkill (eleven musicians plus nine backup singers) that was so exhilarating live wears a little thick over a double-LP, especially when you compare the four repeats from Cocker's two studio albums – he sings more accurately when nobody's rushing him. I love Leon Russell's guitar raveup on Feelin' Alright , though. And the New Orleans horn break on Cry Me a River . And The Letter . ( Robert Christgau )

"Unlike a lot of other 'coffee table'-type rock releases of the era, such as Woodstock and The Concert for Bangladesh , people actually listened to Mad Dogs & Englishmen -- most of its content was exciting, and its sound, a veritable definition of big-band rock with three dozen players working behind the singer, was unique." ( AllMusic )

What you said...

Mike Canoe: I only listened to the whole sprawling two and a half hour plus deluxe edition of Mad Dogs and Englishmen once, then went back and focused specifically on the songs I liked with Joe Cocker as lead or co-lead singer - which, turns out, is most of them.

The choir is absolutely fantastic, making nearly every song they're on sound like a gospel number. It works particularly well on The Weight, Cry Me a River, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window , and Bird on the Wire - well, essentially any song with the choir on it that started playing while writing this review. Space Captain sounds like the funnest hymn I never heard in church - "Whooo!...Ahhh!."

But even the much quieter " irl From North Country , with only Leon Russell accompanying on vocals and piano, is simply beautiful. It's very rare that I like a song stretched out live, but I wanted way more than the 2 1/2 minutes they gave us.

Whether you listen to the original hour and sixteen version (but cheat yourself out of The Weight and With A Little Help From My Friends ) or the twice as long deluxe edition (with a lot more help - and solo numbers - from his friends), this is an incredibly fun album.

Mark Deakin: Bloody good album.

Chris Elliott : It's my idea of hell: an extended jam with the kitchen sink thrown in. I tried twice, but three tracks is the best I managed before running away. I can vaguely see how it may have worked live with everything else going on, but on record – and a pretty bad recording at that – it leaves me completely cold

Brian Carr : I imagine it was a lot more fun to be there, either in the audience or on the stage. To listen after the fact? Well… I liked the loose vibe, but extended outros with repetitive vocal lines don’t typically do it for me. I might listen again at some point, but I’m not chomping at the bit to do so.

Brian Gasser : One of the greatest live albums ever.

Steve Claggett : Of the many great tracks on this album, I think Space Captain is my favourite.

Fausto Barusolo : Unfortunately the sound quality is very bad.

Laurent Biehly : Brilliant. What a line-up.

Meldon Brindley : This is what concerts used to be like. Just a band having fun and playing great tunes. Good stuff.

Norma Mona Gaylord LeBarron : What a treasure!

Steve Pereira : I saw the film when it was released in cinemas around 1971. A glorious sprawling mess where Leon Russell makes up for lack of rehearsal of the assemblage with a Phil Spector massed clamour. The stage was often awash with living creatures - musicians, roadies, groupies, children, "Cooking Italians", fans, photographers, passers by, several dogs (some with flowers in their collar), a handful of drummers and Miss Brown Sugar / Lady Grinning Soul herself, Claudia Lennear. 

Somewhere in the fray is a somewhat lost and drowned Joe Cocker - with nothing like the emotional energy and stature of his Woodstock performance. As much (or more) a vehicle for Leon Russell as Joe Cocker, the split screen film did help build Cocker's popularity, and is a wonderful record of the more casual way of life in the early Seventies - though it is not quality. 

The film was grainy and blurred, the sound (on both film and album) muddy, the performances messy and casual (and how could they not be with that amount of people all over the place, including a groupie sitting on Chris Stainton's lap while he plays the keyboards). But what stood out then, and still stands out now, is how wonderfully warm, encompassing, and inclusive it all is. The casualness, the mess, the dogs, the children, it all adds up to a very engaging and likeable slice of humanity. We should love each other more. Less striving for perfection, more striving for warmth and understanding. With a little help from our friends we can all be happier and better people.

Evan Sanders: Mad Dogs & Englishmen is Joe Cocker's tour de force. Although the reviewers point out that the tour was more of a showcase for Leon Russell's arranging, the album features Cocker on a variety of songs that he made into his own. I see that it was released only a few months after the Woodstock album. For those who had only heard Cocker from his first studio albums and from With A Little Help From My Friends on Woodstock , this expanse over four sides showed that he could keep it going for more than one song. 8/10.

John Davidson : I'm sorry, i pretty much bailed after the first two songs. starting off with covers of the Stones and the Beatles is a ballsy choice and on the back of his celebrated Woodstock performance I can sense the confidence, but neither version improves on the original, instead reducing them to shambolic rhythm and blues jams.

Cocker has a great voice but that's not enough to keep me interested.

The opening instrumental section prelude to Honky Tonk Woman showed promise, but when it settled in to the song I lost interest.

I did, out of fairness, give his first album a quick listen and it is much tighter, much less rambling affair and this version of Feelin' Alright is an improvement on the Traffic original, but that isn't translated onto the version on this album which again falls down the good time rock'n'soul rabbit hole. Not for me, 3/10.

Final score: 8.41 (93 votes cast, total score 783)

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