In partnership with Warner Bros.
Supergroups get kind of a hard time, being, essentially, the non-golfing option for bored rockstars with kids. But when you accept the immutable truth – that a supergroup is never as super as its constituent parts – then you can enjoy them on their own merit.
In Bill & Ted Face The Music, the brand new movie in cinemas and streaming now, Bill and Ted’s two daughters, Wilhelmina ‘Billie’ Logan and Theadora ‘Thea’ Preston, must assemble the greatest supergroup ever in an attempt to help their dads out of another time travelling, interdimensional pickle. Here’s how they get on:
Jimi Hendrix
Who: The Seattle-born, London-made guitar god who tragically joined the 27 Club in 1970.
Played by: DazMann Still
Positives: Probably the greatest electric guitar player ever, innit.
Negatives: A scene-stealer. They didn’t call his band The Jimi Hendrix Experience for nothing. Also: fire hazard.
Louis Armstrong
Role: Vocals, brass
Who: Gravel-voiced jazz great who was equally legendary on the trumpet.
Played by: Jeremiah Craft
Positives: A pioneer, a peerless performer and the kind of positive presence you need to keep a supergroup together.
Negatives: Yeah, he can scat, but can he shred?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Role: Keys
Who: 18th century Salzburg’s answer to Justin Bieber, Mozart was a child prodigy who went on to compose more than 600 classical works.
Played by: Daniel Dorr
Positives: Works quickly, natty dresser.
Negatives: The classical fusion genre never really worked, did it? We don’t need no baroque ‘n’ roll, shrimpy.
Ling Lun
Role: Wind
Who: According to legend, the founder of music in ancient China, and the inventor of the ancient Chinese five-tone scale.
Played by: Sharon Gee
Positives: Innovative and inventive – Ling Lun is said to have created the bamboo flute, and thus gave the birds their song.
Negatives: Do you know many great songs with a bamboo flute in them?
Grom
Role: Drummer
Who: Nope, not a member of Gwar – Grom is an early human in pre-historic Africa.
Played by: Patty Anne Miller
Positives: Unlikely to have heard any of the drummer jokes. Plays hard.
Negatives: Unlikely to be able to bash out a half-time shuffle, for example, at the first asking.
The NME verdict: Given the timescale the Bill and Ted offspring have to put this together, it’s a pretty good effort. There can’t be many fantasy supergroups dreamed up that don’t involve Jimi Hendrix, but Satchmo is a cool leftfield choice. Ling Lun is thinking out of the box but semi-mythical figures are stretching the brief a bit. And as for Grom? We wouldn’t wanna be sharing a private plane with a neanderthal – would you?
Prediction: One great gig and an untouchable (if overlong) single, but the album never materialises due to quite enormously massive “creative differences” and disputes over royalties complicated by incalculable inflationary metrics.
Bill & Ted Face the Music is in cinemas now. Find cinema tickets here. ©ORION RELEASING LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.