Stardust shows you can’t do a Bowie biopic without the music, but why do one at all?

The success of ‘Rocketman’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has ensured we’re going to have music biopics coming out of our ears – yet nearly all of them are terrible, says Fiona Sturges

The path to a decent biopic is clearly strewn with potholes – and ‘Starman’, starring Johnny Flynn as David Bowie, is no exception (Vertigo Releasing)

In the new music biopic Stardust, Johnny Flynn’s David Bowie travels around America in 1971, playing gigs to half-empty hotel bars and conference centres filled with vacuum-cleaner salesmen. Having failed to build on the promise of “Space Oddity”, he’s now watching his latest album tank. He is accompanied by Marc Maron’s put-upon publicist, Ron Oberman, who spews daft promises about landing the cover of Rolling Stone. Bowie is unable to play proper music venues because, Oberman tells him, he hasn’t got the right visa. What he fails to mention is that there can be no triumphant gig scenes in Stardust since the Bowie estate refused to grant film-makers access to the music.

For all its good intentions, Gabriel Range’s film is hobbled from the start – because who wants a biopic of one of the most significant figures in pop music history without the songs? Every time Flynn climbs on stage to play another whimsical faux-cover version – “This is a song by a group I really admire,” he says, launching into “Good Ol’ Jane”, which is meant to sound like the Velvet Underground, but isn’t actually by them – we are reminded of all that is missing. This isn’t the first portrait of a musical icon to have gone ahead without access to their music: England Is Mine, an unauthorised biopic of Morrissey’s adolescence, tried it and sank without trace, as did the Hendrix film Jimi: All Is By My Side. The 2016 biopic Nina, about Nina Simone, not only failed to get the music rights but also provoked the ire of Simone’s family, who called the film “gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, nauseating, soul-crushing”. Even its star, Zoe Saldana, who revealed she was required to wear skin-darkening make-up, denounced the movie and said she should never have taken the role in the first place.

And yet, despite the many disasters that have beset rock biopics, the field has rarely been so crowded. Rocketman, about Elton John, and the Oscar-winning Bohemian Rhapsody, about Freddie Mercury, are among the recent box office hits despite their lukewarm critical reception. There are more in the pipeline including Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis; Liesl Tommy’s Respect, in which Jennifer Hudson plays Aretha Franklin; and an as-yet-untitled Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. Also in development are films about Lemmy, Amy Winehouse, Boy George, Bob Marley and Madonna. This week, director Danny Boyle announced he is making a TV series about The Sex Pistols – because apparently The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, The Filth and the Fury, Sid and Nancy, Never Mind The Sex Pistols, Here’s the Bollocks and Sad Vacation haven’t sufficiently exhausted the topic already.

The path to a decent biopic is clearly strewn with potholes. There are the slippery accents, the awful outfits and the terrible wigs. Having the blessing of the subject’s family can bring its own problems, not least the pressure to produce a flattering portrait. And even if you win the rights to the music, and assemble a decent cast, you still have the fans to contend with. Many will insist on historical accuracy, even though the truth can be hard to nail down in an industry where mythology is everything. There will be those who simply want the same hoary old stories of trashed hotel rooms, mountains of drugs, and dreams realised or thwarted. Actors who go down the Stars in Their Eyes route, attempting impersonation rather than interpretation, do so at their own risk, though stray too far from the artist’s character and viewers are just as likely to cry foul (see the expostulations that greeted Cate Blanchett’s casting as Dylan in I’m Not There).

Nonetheless, you can see the appeal for directors. The rise of a reprobate musician is invariably filled with drama, trauma and creativity, their path to success and/or notoriety forming a perfect narrative arc. A good backstory goes a long way too. In the land of the rock biopic, life-altering problems – such as a tormented childhood, hidden sexuality or mental illness – are obstacles to be overcome in the quest for success. In the final act of this well-trodden storyline, success eventually becomes an obstacle too, because fame is rarely what it’s cracked up to be and also because there’s no pleasing some people.

The best biopics, if perhaps not the most commercially successful ones, avoid the usual structures and tropes, while also steering clear of romanticisation. Anton Corbijn’s Control, about the Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, captures the look and mood of the band and depicts the grind of a singer trying to establish his career while juggling domesticity and a desk job. James Mangold’s Walk The Line, which tells the story of Johnny Cash up until his Folsom Prison recording, is a blistering portrait of a singer’s unravelling. But the good biopics are vastly outnumbered by the stinkers – think Great Balls of Fire! (about Jerry Lee Lewis), Bird (Charlie Parker), Beyond the Sea (Bobby Darin), The Beach Boys: An American Story, Daydream Believers: The Monkees’ Story and Oliver Stone’s abominable The Doors.

Sam Riley as Ian Curtis in ‘Control’ – a good example of a successful music biopic (Rex Features)

Stardust wants to tell us how Bowie found his androgenous alien alter ego. Drawing on a garbled subplot involving his schizophrenic half-brother, Terry, it documents his realisation that to strive for authenticity is to offer a side of himself that nobody is interested in, and that success lies in creating alternative realities. The film culminates in his transformation into Ziggy in 1972, and there is genuine tension as he sits backstage in his rainbow jumpsuit, nervously contemplating the calm before the storm. Then he walks out on stage and plays another sodding cover, and the spell is broken.

Stardust is out on digital platforms now