Movies About Musicians

Having just seen (actually for the second time) the made for VH1 movie “Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story” and recently also having watched “Ray” and “The Five Heartbeats” got me thinking about all the movies I’d seen about real or fictitious musicians or singers.

Musical biopics, I suppose they’re called in the trade; biographical pictures that because of their subject matter must include a great deal of music.

So I thought I’d put together a list, and over the next few months I’ll be updating to add comments and ratings to these flicks as a guide to the newly needing to be inspired musicians on my reading list. Because I’ve seen most of these movies, over the years, and found them either inspirational, insipid or in some cases, wildly inaccurate about the way being a musician actually works. No matter, the accuracy, however, it seems that the movie-going public has ALWAYS been fascinated by biographies of musicians, whether they would have them in their homes or not.

So here’s the list: