'Women Who Rock' Director Jessica Hopper on Getting Female Icons to Open Up
Chaka Khan, Sheryl Crow and more talk about their experiences in the male-dominated music industry in a four-part docuseries.
The life and career of almost every female artist interviewed in the new four-part docuseries Women Who Rock now airing on EPIX could fill an entire season, let alone an individual episode. Yet, somehow director Jessica Hopper manages to give each musical luminary their due through the use of archival footage and revealing interviews.
An astounding roster of talking heads—including Sheryl Crow, Pat Benatar, Mavis Staples, Chaka Khan, Tori Amos, Nancy Wilson of Heart, St. Vincent and Rickie Lee Jones—spans decades, musical styles and levels of fame, but navigating and surviving a male-dominated industry connects them all. Their stories of perseverance, discrimination - both racial and sexual - and wrangling to gain even an ounce of control over their images and art are jaw-dropping.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. As the Cyndi Lauper anthem famously goes. girls just want to have fun and escapades involving the "sex and drugs" part of the rock ‘n’ roll mythos abound. Instead of sounding cliche, even these tales take on an aura of empowerment.
Sling spoke with Hopper (who is also a Chicago-based journalist and author of several books, including The First Collection of Critism by a Living Female Rock Critic) about who she hopes Women Who Rock connects with and letting it out with the enigmatic Chaka Khan. Watch Women Who Rock on EPIX this weekend as part of Sling's Freeview Weekend.
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Sling: Why did you decide to cover the entire breadth of rock ‘n’ roll instead of focusing on a specific decade or a specific subgenre? It’s a lot to to squeeze in four episodes.
Jessica Hopper: Yeah, it’s pretty breakneck to try to cover even just the ‘70s alone in 56 minutes. We knew our starting point was with Mavis and the Staples Singers and civil rights, and very fortunately, kind of the rubic for the show in a lot of ways is that in telling the story of these central key figures … it really allows us to tell the story of music and music culture at that time. In starting with Mavis, we go back to Mavis’ influences and mentors and we’re at Mahalia Jackson, we’re at Sister Rosetta, we’re at Etta James. So by telling the stories of the women that influenced and endowed these women, we’re telling the stories of the black women who are foundational to the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. It was kind of unavoidable to really start at that origin point. And also for me as a music critic, nerd, author, historian - whatever it is, all that I am - it’s really important to show how many women were right there and really are foundational to rock as we have come to understand it. I think we do a really solid job of seeing how these women are all in relationship with each other and how much they drove and shaped not only the sound of rock ‘n’ roll, but really the broader culture around them.
While watching these artists talk about the civil rights movement and second wave feminism, it’s hard to not look at our current moment and think, “the more things change the more they stay the same.” Is there a reason to feel hopeful by the end of the series?
Yes! The fourth episode starts with Shania Twain who is a world-wide icon … who really fought for control talking about Taylor Swift. And she actually grows quite emotional talking about Taylor Swift and seeing how much Taylor Swift was able to enact and really bust through some of the things that Shania really fought for her entire career. But then we also spend time with St. Vincent, Yola, Syd - formerly Syd Tha Kyd of Odd Future - who’s an R&B artist who’s really doing her own thing and also is a producer and has immense control and talks about how much control she has in the studio and how much freedom she feels as a black, queer artist, and a woman and really occupying that space and that freedom. And we hear from people like Margo Price and Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast about how much freedom they have and how much control they have over their own image and what they perform and sing. We really see how much less gatekeeping there is about what women can be. We see these women who are really able to bring their full selves to the stage, to their albums, to the control they have over their production and their careers and their songwriting. And it really does feel like a fullfilment of so much what women fought and struggled for in the music industry in the previous 60, 70 years. And that it really does seem like a progression. So, there’s a lot of hope. And I hope that buoys people because I think this is a really fraught time as we know for women having control over anything, including their own bodies.
You were able to sit down with so many amazing artists. For you personally, who was your biggest “get”?
The person I was most borderline I-want-to-throwup-level nervous to interview was Chaka Khan. I mean, who gets to talk to Chaka Khan these days? She is not quite as elusive as Kate Bush, but she’s up in that pantheon of elusive artists who absolutely defines the sound of so many that came in their wake. Chaka Khan is an icon, icon, icon. I just have such a deep and unabiding love of her music. Nona Hendryx was someone that I insisted we get because she’s someone who has embodied so many of the evolutions of popular music and how they’ve changed for women and pushed. And Labelle, their early records were sort of the first records that were written and produced by women on major labels. She’s just been at the vanguard for so long.
You brought up Chaka and how elusive she is. In the series, she seems extraordinarily open. How did you pull that out of her?
I submitted all my questions about what we wanted to talk to her about and we got a couple questions in and she said, “I see where you’re going.” She said, “I trust you. You can ask me anything. I don’t give a bleep, you can ask me anything.” Fortunately, coming in with my background as a critic and a writer and someone who has done my homework, I think they knew they could trust me, and that because I knew my stuff I was coming in with real respect and real deep knowledge and I think I got women’s candor. So even while we’re working through this breakneck pace to cover so much history in a mere four hours, I wanted to make sure that even though this cast a pretty wide net over music history that we got to go deep. Because I think that’s really rewarding both for fans and the uninitiated and people who are hungry for this kind of history. What did it take for them to get here and survive?
What was the most surprising thing you uncovered during the making of this?
There was a whole bit of both Nona and Chaka talking about the late Betty Davis who a lot of people know better as the wife of Miles, the muse of Miles. But, she was a real pioneer. She was a vanguard. She was very baudy, sexual, funky. She was the first black women to be a band leader. And both Nona and Chaka talk about what a game-changing influence she was on them and suddenly both of their careers make a different kind of sense when you find out that they never missed a Betty Davis show. And granted, Betty Davis wasn’t huge. She’s somebody who’s been more revered in recent years and rediscovered and then you just see she had a massive influence on Chaka, on Labelle and you’re like, “A-ha!” And it was this real missing link for me in American music. That was kind of the most exciting thing in a lot of ways is these women talking about their very deep, personal relationships with other artists and the friendships and the peerships that shaped their sound or their image.
Did a sense of mortality permeate the filming for you?
Oh God, yes! I mean, we were shooting during a pandemic. You can’t be somebody alive today who doesn’t have a real deep sense of that. A few years ago I was doing a piece on the first six women that were on the masthead of Rolling Stone and one of the women died the day before I was supposed to interview her. Indirectly, that sense of mortality really has sent me towards work that is retrospective and historical. That’s really shaped my career that last couple of years is wanting to make sure that I get time with the Rickie Lee Jonese's of the world - our living legends and really do what I can to accord all that is due to them.
Who are you hoping to reach with “Women Who Rock?”
I think Gen Z and folks who are millennials are ideal viewers of this because younger music audiences have a built-in skepticism and curiosity about who was in the shadows. What don’t we know? What’s the real story behind this? Why don’t I don’t about this person? I think a lot of young music fans are going to be very interested in this. And I think the people that grew up listening to Chaka Khan, listening to Heart, idolizing Pat Benatar on MTV - that this is still going to be very revelatory for them. In part, because older generations grew up with this idea of there’s only one woman at the top and these ideas of competition that a lot of these women speak about and when you find out, wait, they weren’t in competition, they were friends? They influenced each other? They didn’t think about it that way? I really hope it does have an appeal to both dyed-in-the-wool rock ‘n’ roll fans and audiences who are looking for the story underneath the story.
Women Who Rock airs on Epix on Sunday nights at 9 pm ET. Use the link below to subscribe to Sling Orange + Blue for EPIX Freeview Weekend.