Director: James Slater
The Coral may not be the most well-known band to come out of Merseyside, but as this carefully created documentary demonstrates, they are definitely the weirdest. Beginning with the childhoods of the original six members, this film, filled with plenty of music, finishes with the success of their debut album. While on the surface Dreaming of You is concerned with friendship, the main thrust of the narrative is the pursuit of a unique sound.
It’s a difficult journey as the band members appear to be influenced by every act they hear. Growing up at the time when Britpop collided with the tail-end of Rave, the boys, of course, were first swayed by the music of Oasis and Prodigy. Living in the Wirral, with Liverpool visible over the Mersey, they were also Beatles aficionados with one member of the band claiming that he could play every one of the Fab Four’s songs on guitar.
But there are other influences, too: The Who, Two-Tone, The Kinks and even Bob Marley. Perhaps most surprisingly is their interest in 1950s Skiffle, the music genre that marketers pressed on the newly-invented British teenager when Rock ‘n’ Roll was declared to be too vulgar, too American. Often seen as the poor man’s version of Elvis and Little Richard, Skiffle has always been underrated, and we shouldn’t forget that the early version of The Beatles, The Quarry Men, were, indeed, a Skiffle band.
Added to these touchstones were the vocal harmonies of unfashionable groups like The Four Freshmen, and now The Coral was getting noticed and playing at venues like the iconic Cavern. But in a Battle of the Bands in 2000, a local version of the rivalry between Oasis and Blur, the boys were disappointed to lose out to Tramp Attack. And they also discovered that their modern take on the Skiffle genre wasn’t as distinctive as they first thought.
Back in the Wirral, the six boys, still teenagers, looked for inspiration by watching Oliver Stone’s film The Doors. In it, the 60s band go out into the desert and take LSD. The Coral boys restaged their own version, dropped some acid and walked along the coast, finding that they all hallucinated the same events, the main one being that the sea had frozen. And perhaps Jim Morrison is the most lasting influence on The Coral, who continue to this day, but now as a five-piece.
Director James Slater adds a quirkiness to his documentary with the use of archive footage, home movies and some cute animation, all of which is reminiscent of the old Monkees’ TV shows. His collage style, like the cover of The Coral’s first album, is the perfect fit for a band that has soaked up a musical heritage and yet, finally, found its idiosyncratic sound.
Superstardom beckoned when The Coral was categorised as part of the New Rock Revolution along with the White Stripes and The Strokes, but the boys didn’t want the fame and lead singer James Skelly was reluctant to become a pin-up in the same way as Damon Albarn had been in the 1990s. Dreaming of You ends humbly with The Coral back in the Wirral. Their odyssey to find their own sound starts and finishes at home.
Dreaming of You: The Making of The Coral will be in UK Cinemas from 12th September.
