Peter Case: A Million Miles Away

In the new documentary Peter Case: A Million Miles Away, concert footage from the early eighties shows musician Peter Case looking entirely in his element. He’s lit with flashing multicolored lights, backed up by his bandmates and a screaming crowd, drenched in sweat, and possessed by the music. Barely a minute later, we see Case perform again. Now some 40 years older, he’s curled over an acoustic guitar, illuminated by a single spotlight, wearing thick glasses, and crooning into the mic. In A Million Miles Away, director Fred Parnes (A Man is Mostly Water) reconciles these two sides of one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters with a complimentary hand.

Parnes tracks Case’s career through its many stages: his time as a busker living on the street in San Francisco; the successful yet contentious years with his rock bands, the Nerves and the Plimsouls; a solo career backed and then (allegedly) tanked by Geffen; and finally his progression into the folk singer-songwriter scene. Along the way, Parnes looks into Case’s relationships with collaborators and friends from each step of his journey.

This is not Case’s first brush with documentary coverage. Parnes includes footage from Nightshift, Bert Deivert's 1973 documentary about the San Francisco music scene that featured Case when he was a young, broke, talented street musician. Other archival footage, talking head interviews, modern concert footage, and shots of the open road are strung together to track Case’s evolution. This story is frequently interrupted by performances of Case’s own lyrical storytelling, captured at its purest and most powerful. “What’s more badass than one guy on a guitar?” asks singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet in an interview, and it’s hard not to see his point as Case’s artistry pours off the stage and through the screen.

Case’s early career is recapped by the man himself and those around him with a sense of impending doom. It’s there as Case recalls his early work with his bands – for good reason, given that both the Nerves and the Plimsouls broke up. It remains as the documentary inspects Case’s promising start to his solo career with an eponymous album that topped The New York Times’ music critic’s year-in-review list and earned a Grammy nomination. It finally culminates with the bitter description of Geffen Records’ apparent failure to distribute Case’s work after hailing him as the next John Lennon. Case recalls a conversation with label founder David Geffen: “‘Peter, what happened?’ I go, ‘You’re David Geffen, you tell me what happened!’”

The film’s weak spot is that it and its subjects seem unsure of Case’s cult status. Is it his current standing as a traveling artist with a devoted group of peers and fans that is the greatest achievement of his life, or did the music industry mishandle an artist destined for legendary stardom? Parnes offers the question for viewers to wrestle with, but it’s hard to take it seriously when A Million Miles Away shows such affection for Case’s stripped-down songwriting and underdog persona. The film ends on Case’s 65th birthday concert at McCabe’s Guitar Shop; fans waiting in line outside direct their birthday wishes into the camera. After the concert ends, they join Case’s friends in singing “Happy Birthday”. Who wants to be a rock star when you could have that?

Peter Case: A Million Miles Away is available on VOD now.