‘Amazing Grace’ Is The Aretha Franklin Doco That Almost Never Made It To Cinemas

The 1972 concert film Amazing Grace, filmed in Los Angeles over two nights at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, shows a young and vibrant Aretha Franklin in all her gospel glory. Director Sydney Pollack, then new to the process of documentary filmmaking, overlooked some key technical set-ups before letting the cameras roll.

Producer Joe Boyd, who would go on to become a legend of the music industry (including work with Nick Drake, Pink Floyd, REM, Richard Thompson and Billy Bragg), was part of the crew to capture the concert and witness Franklin in flight.

Looking back on the film, which has taken near 50 years to see the light of day, there is no doubt that it was an extraordinary event and performance. But those technical mistakes at the time of recording, and then unsuccessful negotiations with Franklin during her lifetime, held up the final release. It’s only been in 2019 that this concert film, the soundtrack to Franklin’s bestselling gospel recording, has seen the light of day.

“This is not a publicly advertised event, so it wasn’t like there was an ad in the LA Times, it was word of mouth, the preacher at the church saying ‘Next week Aretha will be recording an album at the church, if you want tickets sign up there at the door,’” Boyd explains. 

“And there were friends of Aretha’s, and friends of the musicians, and so once you had the audience you knew how they would respond. And even then, my experience being in African American churches, the response by the audience [in the film] is a little bit restrained in comparison to a normal service – I think there were obviously cameramen and recording people and a band and all these slightly intimidating things as well. 

“As Reverend James Cleveland says at the beginning of the film, Aretha decided to do this because she wanted the audience response. And I think she knew that you wouldn’t get the kind of performance that she does [in the film] in a recording studio with just musicians around you.”

In Amazing Grace, we see Aretha Franklin play in perfect unison with her musicians and audience – and with her God through gospel. Whether the viewer/listener is a believer or not, it’s hard to deny the energy and beauty of those connections. 

“Some of those arrangements are very complicated. But that’s the point I think, and that’s gospel,” Boyd continues. “And the point that [Aretha’s] father makes [in the film], when he says, ‘People are glad when Aretha comes back to the church,’ and he says ‘she’s never left the church.’ That body of work that we call American gospel music, really an essential element in the formation of the world’s popular music. Ray Charles you know, borrowed hugely from gospel music, and he was such a big influence on the way people made music around the world... And so many great singers in American popular music started out in church.”

Boyd has since gone on to have an amazing career (as did Franklin, of course), but if he had a crystal ball or time machine is there anything about the original filming (and its tech flaws) that he’d change?

"In a way the fact that it got locked away and didn’t get released then has provided us with this extraordinary time capsule.”

“I’m not really a religious person but given that it’s gospel you could say that God moves in mysterious ways. I did over the years look back and wondered if I should have interfered more, and been more engaged with Sydney Pollack’s production team,” Boyd says. 

“But you know, Sydney Pollack told me at the time that he was planning to go to New York and do a whole lot of interviews, interview Aretha and her father, and you could see him in his mind building up what you’d call a more classic, traditional documentary, with people talking and explaining things. And you know, maybe it would have been great, but it would have been more ordinary in some ways. In a way the fact that it got locked away and didn’t get released then has provided us with this extraordinary time capsule.”

Amazing Grace screens from 29 Aug.