The Young@Heart Chorus's Grand Pop
Out of the Mouths of Seniors, Rock Tunes Soar Anew

By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 13, 2008

Three elderly men shuffle into a hotel suite to kvetch about Sonic Youth's cacophonous art-rock song, "Schizophrenia."

No, this is not the setup to a bad musical joke. Just a day in the promotional life of the Young@Heart Chorus, a group of two dozen retirees from Northampton, Mass., who travel the world performing striking interpretations of rock and R&B songs.

Their work is documented in a new film, "Young@Heart," which focuses on the hoary group's efforts to add seven "new" songs to their repertoire in seven weeks -- none more disagreeable than "Schizophrenia," which was introduced by chorus director Bob Cilman in a moment of twisted, visionary genius.

"We didn't care for the song," recalls Len Fontaine, one of the stars of the documentary. An 87-year-old former Navy pilot, Fontaine is sitting in a room at the Georgetown Ritz-Carlton, and he is talking about how, in the case of Sonic Youth, the Young@Heart Chorus truly suffered for its art. "It hurt my ears," he says.

"Noise," agrees Brock Lynch, an 83-year-old retired doctor who also didn't care for the song's lyrical concerns.

"Not my kind of music," says John Larareo, 76, who used to work at Amherst College. "I grew up listening to Sinatra -- the standards."

Still, after the initial shock wore off, the group went to work on "Schizophrenia," eventually stripping the song of its guitar-based dissonance and turning it into a breathtaking choral piece that retains the original's visceral kick and the trenchant lyric: "My future is static/It's already had it."

The song's development -- culminating in a wildly received performance at Northampton's Academy of Music Theater at the conclusion of the film -- is a central part of the narrative of "Young@Heart," which opens in Washington on Friday. It's also a tidy encapsulation of what makes the chorus succeed on an artistic level: The adventuresome if dogged direction of Cilman, whose work has elevated "Young@Heart" well beyond the cute, gimmicky notion of old people singing angsty, provocative youth music.

"He knows what he wants," Fontaine says. Says Larareo: "He has a vision." Says Lynch: "He's a taskmaster. But it works; people seem to like what we do."

Says Cilman, in the same hotel suite a short time later: "There's something about working at a song, not really trusting it or believing it's going to pay off, and then having this huge response to it. . . . That's what makes art interesting."

But "Young@Heart" isn't about the 54-year-old Cilman, who grew up in New England listening to the Beatles and the Kinks and performing in bands (including one called the Self-Righteous Brothers) and who started the chorus 26 years ago while working at a senior center in Northampton.

Instead, it's about life and death, about creativity and vitality, about what happens when old people co-opt a piece of youth culture. Or, as the movie's British director and narrator, Stephen Walker, says: "It's a rock opera about old age." One that even includes music videos, such as the Hearts doing a borderline-ranting version of the old Ramones anthem, "I Wanna Be Sedated," in an old folks' home. Now that is punk rock!

"We're so youth-obsessed; everywhere we look, it's youth, youth, youth," says Walker, whose documentary credits include films about the Los Angeles porn industry and Hiroshima. "Old age is a subject that's swept under the carpet. I wanted to address it head-on." The filmmaker wanted it to be "an unflinching commentary about mortality."

The film opens with the feisty and flirty nonagenarian Eileen Hall singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" -- "a song about life or death when it's sung by a 92-year-old," Walker says. From there, he follows chorus members at rehearsals, in their homes, in the hospital and, yes, even on their deathbeds.

Walker's original plan was to interview the Hearts about their near-death experiences and the deaths of loved ones. "And we were suddenly overtaken by realities," he says with a heavy sigh. Death shifted the narrative in a dramatic way. One of the film's most stirring moments comes when Patsy Linderme sings Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" at rehearsal just two hours after the chorus receives some devastating news about one of its own.

And a video of the Hearts performing the Talking Heads song "Road to Nowhere" is used around footage of one of the chorus members being put into an ambulance. "It's the philosophy of what the chorus is about," Walker says. "They're saying: 'We don't know what that road is, but you can celebrate life along the way.' And they sing it with glee."

The idea for the documentary came in 2005, after Walker's wife and production partner, Sally George, persuaded him to see Young@Heart giving a theatrical performance in London. "I remember thinking, as indeed many audiences might think of the chorus and of this film at first: 'Is it a gimmick? Is this a sort of a dancing-bear situation? Is this karaoke?' I was skeptical," Walker recalls.

He went anyway. And, he says, he was stunned. "I loved their interpretations, their voices, what they looked like, how the audience, which was every age group, reacted. Most of all what touched me was how these songs whose lyrics I knew so well became completely different in these people's mouths."

At first, Cilman resisted Walker and George's overtures. "Bob didn't want to make a cute film about sweet, lovely old people," Walker says. Says Cilman: "We get that all the time. 'Isn't it sweet that these old people are singing these songs?' No. What's really interesting is how they sing the songs."

But when Walker and George proposed making some music videos with the Hearts, Cilman committed to the project. "You never see old people in music videos," Cilman says.

A story line was hatched: The Hearts would learn new material with the cameras rolling -- a fascinating process given Cilman's song choices (James Brown's "I Feel Good" was also on the new set list) as well as his surprisingly firm hand in guiding the chorus. "The toughness is there because he's creating a chorus that performs at major venues around the world," Walker says. "This is not a group that just performs at senior centers. He's incredibly demanding, but they respond really well to that. Even I learned that they don't want to be mollycoddled. And Bob has real, real love for them. It's so obvious."

Cameras rolled. Art and life happened. Walker suffered in the editing suite, trying to distill 140 hours of film into 108 minutes. The end result has generated a rave from Cilman. Sort of.

"I was very pleased that the people I've come to know over so many years came across in a very honest way," he says. "I liked the people in the movie, just as I'm attracted to them in real life."

But? "But some of the music was not great. There were a couple songs that just never elevated to the level I wanted them to, like [Allen Toussaint's] 'Yes We Can Can.' "

On the other hand: "Schizophrenia"!

"It's the most successful song in the movie," Cilman says. "What I like about it is they went somewhere very different with it -- but it's still not something made to be sweet so people can accept it. It's just as edgy as the Sonic Youth version. The energy is fantastic. And you know what? I think the chorus likes it a lot."