Tina Turner and The Go-Go’s Enlisted A Secret Weapon To Finally Gain Entrance To The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame: The Music Documentary

What could be considered a golden ticket to guarantee an artist’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? If the Class of 2021 is any indication, the answer could be the release of a brand-new, feature-length documentary that paints the act’s career in a glowing light.

Take Tina Turner and the Go-Go’s, two artists who have been eligible for induction for over a decade but finally got the nod in 2021, just after both artists were the subject of a new movie. It’s impossible to say whether the HBO Max film Tina or Showtime’s The Go-Go’s (neither flick has a compelling title, it has to be said) were decisive factors in their inductions. Voters for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame fill out their ballot based on their own taste, history, and perspective, a combination of factors that vary voter by voter. Having a new documentary celebrating a Rock Hall nominee certainly helps refresh the memory of a RRHOF voter, offering a reminder of why an artist is worthy of induction. 

Besides, there are some strong indications that the presence of a documentary has helped push certain musicians into the Hall of Fame. The Canadian prog-rock trio Rush made it into the Hall in 2013, a few years after the release of Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, a documentary that explained the band’s idiosyncratic appeal and enduring friendship to audiences who may not have known much about them outside of “Tom Sawyer.” A more direct line between a documentary and induction can be seen between the Oscar-nominated 2015 film What Happened, Miss Simone? and the 2018 induction of Nina Simone, a jazz vocalist who may have been a towering figure of the twentieth century but who rarely entered discussions about artists overlooked by the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

What Happened, Miss Simone? elevated Nina Simone’s presence in modern pop culture, which is what music documentaries are intended to do. Cult favorites like Simone aren’t the only beneficiaries of a new doc, either. Whitney Houston made the Rock Hall class of 2020 not long after the 2018 release of Kevin Macdonald’s acclaimed Whitney. The difference with The Go-Go’s and Tina is that they feel as if they were designed with the end goal of ushering their subjects into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The Go-Go’s even begins with a thesis statement delivered by Jane Wiedlen: “We are the first all-girl rock & roll band that wrote their own material and played our own instruments to be really successful.” It’s a statement with historical weight that the rest of Alison Ellwood’s film supports (you can read Decider’s review here). For any potential voter who viewed the quintet as a fun relic of the New Wave era, the documentary reframes the group as rock & roll survivors who captured the zeitgeist. It’s a vivid portrait of a breathless run to the top of the charts, spinning off stories at a rapid clip and offering enough tension–particularly in regards to how matters of finance can tear apart a band–to give an appearance of candor. Ultimately, The Go-Go’s is a work of advocacy, a film designed as much to win over skeptics as it is to appeal to longstanding fans. That it works so well is a credit to Ellwood and to the band themselves. All five members of the Go-Go’s are great interview subjects, possessing a keen sense of self-awareness and humor, qualities that enliven the film as much as the vintage film footage.

Tina Turner is also a tremendous interview subject, something that is made plain at the very start Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s Tina (read Decider’s review). The filmmakers open with Turner and journalist Carl Arrington reminiscing about the People profile he wrote about Tina in December 1981, an article where she publicly revealed the abuse she suffered at the hand of her former husband Ike Turner. It’s a story that’s been repeated many times since 1981, including Turner’s own 1986 autobiography I, Tina and its 1993 big-screen adaptation What’s Love Got To Do With It, but it’s never been told as well as it is in Tina. That’s because no other print or film iteration of the story has relied so much on the very thing that turned Turner into a superstar: the magnetism of Tina herself, a charisma evident in old film and new interviews alike. The kitschy clips from the wilderness years between Tina’s breakup with Ike and Private Dancer comeback in 1984 are revealing in a number of ways. They show that even if Turner no longer was tearing up the charts she still was a showbiz presence, playing Las Vegas with Tom Jones and popping up on corny television variety shows with Olivia Newton-John. Her fame may have faded but she still radiated star power when vamping it up on The Brady Bunch Hour, a herculean task for most performers.

Tina illustrates that Tina Turner always carried that dynamic aura: that allure, more than the records she cut, is the reason why her popularity endured for decades and why she wound up in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year. Looking at her discography, she doesn’t have many great records outside of Private Dancer and a handful of hits she cut in the decade after its blockbuster success. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame isn’t strictly about artistic quality, however. It is an institution that celebrates “fame” and there may be no better way to capture the vagaries of fame than film, which can highlight the kinetic energy of an artist’s peak while also placing a musician in a historic context.

Tina Turner and the Go-Go’s were lucky — and perhaps canny — to have films that did precisely this while Rock Hall voters were deliberating on which artists to place on their ballot. Maybe if Iron Maiden, Chaka Khan, Fela Kuti or Dionne Warwick had their own shiny new documentary this year, they would’ve made it into the Hall, too. Either way, one thing is for certain: from this point forward, it’s a safe bet that more Rock & Roll Hall of Fame contenders will be armed with a glorifying film as they enter the consideration period for induction.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a Senior Editor of Pop Music at Tivo.com, where he’s written thousands of artist biographies and record reviews. Tivo’s music database is licensed throughout the net—Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes, I Heart Media, Pandora and Tidal are all customers—and is easily seen at www.allmusic.com. Additionally, he’s freelanced for Pitchfork, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Spin and New York Magazine’s Vulture. 

Watch Tina on HBO Max

Watch The Go-Go's on Showtime