Sheryl Crow’s earliest musical memory begins in the backseat of a powder blue Plymouth Station Wagon. Only three years old at the time, she was being driven by her parents into the heart of her hometown’s commercial district when, fortuitously, Petula Clark’s “Downtown” came on the radio. Young Sheryl sang at the top of her lungs the whole way home.
It was the beginning of a lifetime of music that’s followed Crow from those simpler Kennett, Missouri origins to the height of musical superstardom in the 1990s, 2000s, and on through to today. When Crow speaks about those formative years now, it’s with affection for her hearth and kin, her parents’ musical tastes, and their encouragement for her to play piano for friends. But her favorite early singing memories of that time?
It was really the quiet times when I could go sit at the piano by myself,” Crow says while stopping by the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “I could play by ear, and I remember playing songs by Carole King and ‘Both Sides Now’ by Joni Mitchell, or James Taylor. That was soothing for me, being at the piano with the lights off and playing stuff by ear.”
This anecdote of first truly finding herself in her music, and in the dark, is also one of the early standout revelations in Sheryl, a new musical documentary slated to premiere on Showtime later this week. The film is a passion project from filmmaker Amy Scott, who along with her producer Brian Morrow previously put out the superb Hal Ashby documentary, Hal. Now with Sheryl, they’re able to similarly highlight the elusive qualities and quirks of fame, and what talent can both bring and take away from a life.
She adds though, with a faint reflection on the ironies of life, that she could sing on stage with them yet still never quite be their peers.
Says Crow, “I always felt like, and I still feel like, I’ve been invited to the party but I’m the new kid, even though I’m 60 now. I’ll never get to be in that group, really, because I didn’t come up with them.”
Of course Crow’s cut her own formidable legacy through the music industry, as Sheryl meticulously documents. Once seen primarily as a unique So-Cal voice that married the sounds of country with alternative rock in the ‘90s, Crow wound up being a trailblazer in her industry, becoming one of the most popular and successful producers in an era when female artists were still pressured to be shaped by the male eyes around them; Crow also helped headline and lead Lilith Fair, the multi-million-dollar music festival spotlighting female artists from 1997 to 1999; and there’s that long string of hits: “All I Wanna Do,” “Strong Enough,” “If It Makes You Happy,” and “Soak Up the Sun,” among many others.
When asked about that impact Crow is modest, ambivalent even, but the filmmakers who’ve spent many months recently studying her career are hardly so undecided.
