La Bamba

For me, the summer of 1987 felt like it went on for years. For reasons that are still unclear (an early and profound lack of interest in my studies?), my parents let me skip out of the 3rd grade three weeks before the school year ended so I could travel to the city of Richland, WA with my great grandparents to visit family. We spent a full month out there doing Pacific Northwest-type stuff (picking onions…visiting an unfathomable amount of hydroelectric dams). I’d never left New England before so I thought Richland was paradise, man. I returned there in 2011 and did not find it to be as such. I ate at an Applebee’s and promptly drove back to Seattle. When I got home, I discovered my mom was dating this low grade race car driver who had a son Todd who was around my age. We spent the rest of the summer just balling it out: riding the log ride at the amusement park, smashing up our Hot Wheels, cruising around Worcester on our Huffy’s. Wait..where am I going with this?? Oh yeah–we had the radio tuned into WAAF all summer, which skewed heavily to the hair metal side of things while everyone else and their goddamn grannies were listening to the freakin’ Joshua Tree. The big hit on AAF that summer wasn’t Whitesnake or Motley Crue, but a cover of the 1958 Ritchie Valens tune La Bamba, sung entirely in Spanish. A biopic about the doomed chicano/american singer opened in late July and the producers hired Los Lobos, a long-running LA band that every famous person alive LOVES and that I have never once listened to (Dylan..Robert Plant…Tom Waits…they all love the Los Lobz) to record cuts from Valens’ slim discography. I’m telling you, kids–La Bamba was the bop of that summer! It was inescapable. We’d jam out in the back of my mom’s Datsun, singing along to what we thought the words might be (“you no poke in the grass, yeah?). My dad, whose mother was born and raised in Panama, was delighted to hear a Spanish-sung song on the radio and would try to translate it for me even though he, to the best of my knowledge, did not really speak Spanish. He figured La Bamba would be the perfect flick to take his 8 year-old son to. So one August night before the summer’s end we went to see La Bamba….and it was fuuuuuuuucked up dark, folks. We all knew the kid was gonna die at the end, right (if this is new information for you…sorry for the spoiler. Or: maybe go read a book or listen to American Pie). Ritchie Valens was 17 when he died and his entire recording career was shorter than one major league baseball season so the filmmakers instead trained their focus on Ritchie’s Biblically troubled alcoholic half brother Bob. This is really Bob’s story as much as it is Ritchie’s. They should’ve called the movie: Bob.

I decided to check out La Bamba again for the first time in a minute. What happens is this: we open with a washed out scene of children playing basketball on their school playground and the gentle sounds of planes buzzing overhead. The sound of the planes go from gentle to quite ungentle when they crash into each other, raining hellfire down onto the children and OH!!! It was just a dream! I feel like this plane crash thing is going to come up again, though. A lot. The dream belonged to one Richard Valenzuela, a 16 year-old Mexican American kid living with his mom in a California labor camp…sleeping in a damn TENT! Valenzuela is played by Lou Diamond Phillips, whom I always assumed was Native American on account of all of the Native American characters he portrayed back in the day. Turns out he’s from the Philippines and his dad was a quarter Cherokee. In other words: he ain’t from anywhere near Mexico. Also not from Mexico is the actor Esai Morales, who plays Ritchie’s Miller High Life chugging older brother Bob, who is the first character we meet (besides those plane-smooshed schoolchildren, anyway). Bob rolls into the citrus grove encampment on his chopper…just oozing menace: slicked back hair, leather vest, mustache. He just got outta the joint because of course he did. Bob and his baby bro reunite and run through the hills together and this is when I notice that Ritchie has an electric guitar slung over his shoulder: a green Harmony H44 Stratotone (I had to look it up). He will go on to carry this same guitar in almost every scene in this film which drove me friggin’ bonkers. For one–he never plays it. I mean…he plays gigs and shit but he never just sits down and strums a few chords. Second–electric guitars aren’t really that effective unless, you know, they are electrified. I didn’t see a lot of amps plugged in around that labor farm. Electric guitars sound terrible around the campfire. And finally–if you go running around the hills swinging your guitar it’s gonna go WAY out of tune! Maybe he had perfect pitch and could tune up in a jiff…I don’t know.

After Bob and Rich talk about their dreams for the future (Rock n’ roll stardom for Ritchie…cervezas and mamacitas for Bob), they head back to camp, where Bob pulls out a roll of $50 dollar bills and tells his Mama he’s moving her back to civilization. She’s all “I know you didn’t get that dough trading stocks…I’m all set” but Bob is like “have fun wiping your ass with orange peels then” and Mama agrees to go with. Before they can split for SoCal, Bob catches the eye of pretty young Rosie (the great Elizabeth Pena, who sadly drank herself to death IRL). They immediately start necking under a tree and Bob penetrates her sexually and they show the whole thing!! I mean…not the actual body parts and whatnot…but it’s pretty graphic for a PG-13. Afterwards Bob says “you didn't tell me it was your first time.” Her response: “You didn’t ask.” Touche. Bet you a fiver she’s already preggo. The next morning, as they’re rolling out with Rosie in tow, I notice that the instrumental score was performed by Carlos Santana. And also: it sucks. It’s his usual weeping guitar thing but with a bunch of gooey 80’s synths. This was long before his big Supernatural comeback and such. The 80’s were some serious wilderness years for Santana. Ever hear his song “I’m Winning?” Awful. More like “I’m Losing,” amirite??

Bob moves Ritchie, his Mom, and his two non-speaking younger siblings into a shotgun shack in the Valley and sets up house with Rosie in a janked up trailer in the backyard. He’s got plenty of room to chug liquor, terrorize his lady, and sell kilos of what looks like plain old reefer. This was 1957 so there wasn’t a dispensary with a stupid ass name on every other street corner (Relaxation Inc, Nature’s Remedy, etc). Ritchie goes to high school (with his guitar, natch) and immediately sidles up on a pretty caucasian blonde named Donna. He tells her that people call him High Tone, which is not something that anyone else in this movie ever calls him…not even one time. After school, Rich happens upon a local garage band called The Silhouettes. You know…maybe it’s just because I’m from New England where it’s cold and shitty 325 days a year, but every band I’ve ever seen practice in a garage did so with the garage door CLOSED! Apparently they weren’t terribly concerned about noise pollution in SoCal. Rich rolls up on the band, plugs in his guitar (finally!!!) and they launch right into Rip it Up by Little Richard. And they’re tighter than a bat’s asshole right from the word go. Rich plays and sings like a stud and all the other kids look at him like whosthisfuckinguy!?? Little black kid on the boogie woogie piano turning around all “this boy’s good!!!” I don’t know if LDP could actually play guitar but he’s got some long ass fingers, man. I bet he can shred.

Ritchie is on cloud 9 when he gets home, only to find that a completely shitfaced Bob has sexually assaulted Rosie…which I mercifully did not understand when I saw this film at age 8. She calls him pendejo and throws everything in the trailer that isn’t nailed down at him. Oh–she also mentions she’s pregnant. Bob’s response: “It ain’t my first and it won’t be my last!” Got that? Bob’s a family man! Rosie forces him to move into Ritchie’s basement bedroom, where he continues to complain that the only way he can have sex with Rosie is by force. Dude, maybe try buying her some flowers or something?

Ritchie plays a talent show with the Silhouettes, who refuse to let him take a turn at the mic…which is really too bad ‘cuz their frontman sings like a dying Muppet. Instead, he hangs in the back noodling away, looking all pissed off. Richie's mom gets him a gig at an all white’s honky tonk but the rest of the band has the croup or whatever so he has to let BOB play the drums. And you know…that cat can swing!! Oh he’s not exactly good. He could really sharpen up his high hat work…but he’s definitely got a vibe. They play a Buddy Holly song with just guitar and drums and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t sound a bit like the White Stripes. I’m gonna go ahead and say that Jack and Meg White cribbed their entire aesthetic from this one random scene in La Bamba. Bob is hyped over breakfast beers the following morning. He’s all “we’re going to the top, Rich! We’re gonna play the Troubadour and Woodstock and Lollapalooza all that big time shit!” But Ritchie is all “thanks for filling in the skins but you really need to deal with your personal problems…which are legion.” Speaking of Legions, Mom helps Ritchie and his band land a gig at the local American Legion…because there was apparently a dearth of quality venues in late 50’s SoCal. No City Winery or nothin’! Speaking of American Legions: over the last year I have played a lot of cover band gigs with my high school buddies at various bars and VFW-type halls throughout Central MA. One night we arrived at our 5 PM gig at the American Legion in our hometown and I was instructed where to set up my drum: in front of a glass- encased display memorializing prisoners of war. Like…there was a giant POW flag, a table, an empty chair, and a plate with a slice of lemon on it. There was some literature on the wall about how the POW eats alone and the lemon represents the bitterness of his tears. It was SURREAL, folks. We’d be like “this next tune is Summer of ‘69 by Bryan Adams!!!” Then I’d turn around and think about all of our boys who ain’t coming home.

ANYWAY–when Ritchie tries to gather the band for the big gig, their cabron singer balks so the guys say they will see him never. The band plays the show and the joint is packed and jumpin’ and what happened to the black piano player kid?? I don’t even know any of the other dude’s names (I think one is called…Chico??). I know this is probably only of interest to music nerds like myself, but there are zero extra musical conversations in this film of any kind. No “let’s try this song in the key of C?” or “let’s play that hook through the chorus.” The music just…exists. Ritchie was obviously good at guitar because he NEVER PUT IT DOWN!!!” Take our word for it! So the band is slaying the Legion crowd and in walks Joe Pantoliano!! Joey Pants!! Guido the Killer Pimp from Risky Business (or Ralphie from The Sopranos for you younger…ehh…35 year-old-ish readers). He’s a mid range record producer who has come to check out the soundz, which is awesome. But then Bob shows ripshit drunk and immediately starts a 5-alarm brawl, which is less awesome. Ritchie even jumps off the stage and punches a few peeps with his guitar hand and smashes a couple dudes in the face with a chair. Brian Jonestown Massacre ain’t got nothing on Ritchie and his crew. Afterwards, mom is absolutely apoplectic…mostly at Bob, though. This mother character basically only delivers lines about A–how she works 100 hours a week and B–How Ritchie is a wonderful son who is a gift straight from heaven and how Bob is…less so.

Turns out Joe Pants is Bob Keene, owner of Del-Fi Records and he wants to cut some demos with Rich. He brings him to his creepy basement and tells him to get undressed. Seriously though–he wants Rich to start singing ASAP but he refuses to do so without his band present. “I’m not singing without my friends,” he tells Bob. Dude, these “friends” have had somewhere between two and zero lines in this entire movie! Maybe they cut a bunch of scenes that fully fleshed out the other band members…I don’t know. They DID just put this flick out on Criterion BluRay so maybe I need to check that out. After some back and forth, Producer Bob runs the proTools and Ritchie starts laying down some sounds. Ritchie takes Donna to the drive-in, where they swap spit ferociously. Bob discovers he’s good at art and enters a contest to win $500, which is like a million bucks in 1958 money.There’s a brief “things are going fairly well for everyone” montage.

One afternoon, Ritchie takes Donna to a diner to explain his dreams to her. The plane crash-type dreams…not the ones about rock stardom. He tells her that there was actually a midair collision over his school and three of his buddies were killed by falling debris. He’s not putting her on, either–this shit really happened in 1957 in Pacoima CA. Ritchie just happened to be attending his grandfather’s funeral that day but all of the victims were his buds. Details on this last part are scarce. What’s abundantly clear is that Ritchie was TERRIFIED of flying, even more so than I was after watching La Bamba (seriously…I refused to fly for 6 years after I saw this movie…which wasn’t a huge deal as I was a small child). Donna reassures him that he needn't worry because “stars don’t fall from the sky.” UMMMM LADY!!!!?? What about FALLING STARS!?? I guess maybe they don’t actually hit the ground though, right? Whatever…

Producer Bob tells Ritchie that they’re gonna book time in a proper studio and cut a Ritchie original called “Come on Let’s Go.” Producer Bob makes him sing the track like 60 friggin’ times. When Ricthie gets a little pissy, Producer Bob says “this ain’t Mexico, pal..this is the big leagues.” Ritchie is all “I don’t even speak Spanish, you racist prick.” Did you know that!? It’s apparently true: Richard Venezuela…whose biggest hit was sung in Spanish…did not speak Spanish. Oh…Producer Bob also tells him that his last name is too ethnic sounding and that he will now go by “Valens.” And also–he will put a “T” in his first name, so Ritchie instead of Richie, which doesn’t even make crazy sense. I’m gonna start going by Dann and see what happens. Whatever, the kid has 3 months to live. I’ve had sore throats that lasted longer than Rich’s stage name.

RiTchie’s single comes out and climbs to #1 with a bullet. His mom is all “all of our dreams have come true and nothing bad will ever happen again!!!” #yourkidisgonnadierillsoon. Ritchie gets to sign autographs and host pizza parties but now Donna is constantly giving him the slip cuz her dad is racist like a motherfucker and doesn’t want her messing with no brown boys. He shows up at her house and tells her YOU ARE MY GIRL with authority, but she tells him to beat it. That she’s dating other dudes. Ritchie is so distraught he runs home and writes a weepy ballad called Donna about, you know, Donna. He calls her from a payphone and plays the entire track for her. She’s like: cool. Brother Bob sees that his baby brah is heartsick so he figures the best move would be to take him to Tijuana and buy him a prostitute…so that’s exactly what he does. Well…he takes him to a brothel but he’s more interested in the band playing onstage…who is the actual Los Lobos. The band is playing a traditional Mexican folk song called La Bamba, which is totally the name of the movie we’re talking about. Instead of messing with the putas Ritchie works up his own arrangement of La Bamba because he IS STILL CARRYING HIS GUITAR!!! I didn’t notice him drinking but he still wakes hungover up in a tent out in the sticks the next morning. Shit, you could get cirrhosis just by standing next to Bob for too long.

Bob introduces Rich to a medicine man who whips them up a freshly skinned snake omelette with cobra venom hollandaise to help cure their aching heads. He also makes Ritchie a special talisman necklace and tells him that if he never takes it off, he will absolutely positively NOT die in a plane crash. So he’s got that going for him…which is nice…

They return home to discover that Rosie has given birth while they were down in TJ…and peeps are PISSED! Mostly just at Bob though. Rithie heads to the studio to cut Donna (the song…not the person) and weeps while he does so. He insists on cutting La Bamba as a B-side over Producer Bob’s racially motivated objections. The record is another solid gold banger and Producer Bob tells him that he must board an aircraft if he wants to appear on American Bandstand with the dude from the Stray Cats pretending to be Eddie Cochran. On the flight to NYC Ritchie nervously fondles his talisman and tells Producer Bob that he’s probably gonna die in a plane crash. Kid, when you’re right…They make it to the Bandstand where Rich plays his new arrangement of La Bamba, which slaps so hard the kids start dancing in the aisles and downloading Duolingo. Back home, Bob continues to get shattered and start bar brawls and destroys all of his art supplies.

By the time Ritchie comes home from his first tour he’s, like, Elvis famous. He’s really feeling himself too. He drops out of school and starts calling Producer Bob “Bobbo,” which works for me. Now I won’t have to write “Producer Bob” anymore! He hops in his new convertible and rolls up on Donna (who he now calls “Kitten”. Barf) and she’s all “haaaaayyyyyy loverrrrrrr.” Dude, I’d be like FUCK YOU and your racist family. You like me now that I got Maybach keys? Please. He’s celebrating every day thinkin’ back on his one-room shack. Now his mom pimps a Ac' with minks on her back. Basically what I’m trying to say is–he has some dough and buys his mom a nice house. Ritchie keeps touring through Xmas of ‘58 and returns home to find his folks have thrown him a big “Welcome Home” party. And dudes guess what? HE HAS PURCHASED A GUITAR CASE!!!! I feel like they should’ve made a bigger deal about this. Everyone is mad thrilled for Rich…except Bob of course…who is even more grouchy now that he’s “sober.” He does drink ½ of a Miller High Life. Is that this California Sober I’ve been hearing about? After the party clears out Bob tells Ritchie that it dudn’t matter how famous he gets: he’ll always be an asshole….so Ritchie punches him in the jaw..which is fair. They go round and round and Bob yells “I’m gonna kill you” juuuussssstt as he rips Ritchie’s anti-plane crash talisman off his neck. There you have it: drunk Bob killed his own brother. He couldn't have just taken that talisman to a jewelry repair store or something? Shit.

The next day Ritchie has to split for tour again and he’s SUPER QUIET on the way to the airport with Donna ‘cuz he knows he’s gonna die and all of that. “I will always love you” he tells her in a low, expressionless voice. The tour he’s about to embark on was called The Winter Dance Party Tour with Buddy Holly, Dion & The Belmonts, and The Big Bopper. There’s absolutely no mention of any of this beforehand even though it must’ve been a big deal for Valens (right??). I don’t even think they say Buddy Holly’s name. We simply cut straight to the night of February 2, 1959, when the bands were scheduled to play in Clear Lake, Iowa. I did a little research on this tour (meaning I looked at the Wikipedia page for about 90 seconds) and learned that it consisted of 24 shows over 24 days…which sucks for sure. The itinerary, though, was clearly determined by blindly throwing darts at a map. All of the shows were in the Midwest but the scheduling was almost comically cruel. Instead of starting on one end and working across they just zigzagged all over the place…often driving 500 miles north only to drive 500 miles back south the next day and play a city 50 miles away from where they just played. Also–it was 30 below every day and they were tinned up in a school bus with no heat. There’s another crazy fact about this tour that we’ll get to in the next paragraph.

Clear Lake was the 11th gig on the tour and Ritchie was already both sick and homesick. After he plays his set he calls all of his loved ones from a payphone and has long, meaningful conversations with them…as one does when they are about to die a movie death. As fate would have it, (ooh-wee-ohh I look just like) Buddy Holly (played here by the great power pop singer Marshall Crenshaw. Someday, Someway fuuuuuucks!!) was DONE with the frosty bus rides and decided to charter a tiny plane to fly the headliners to their next gig in Minnesota. Or, I guess Ritchie “won” his seat from Holly’s guitar player in the world’s most unfortunate coin toss (or we’d be talking about the Tommy Allsup Story right now). Holly, the Bopper, and Valens take off into the snowy night and the rest you can hear about in Don McLean’s interminable 1972 song American Pie. So obviously their plane crashed and everyone died and Ritchie Valens probably stayed famous for a lot longer than he would have had he not been a passenger on rock n’ roll’s shittiest flight. And look…I’m SURE I’m not the first person to mention this…but the Big Bopper is the only one of the doomed trio who has yet to get his own movie. What’s up with him? Did that guy not have an alcoholic scene-stealing brother??

Here’s what happens in the rest of this movie: Bob is home working on his car when he hears Ritchie’s death announced on the radio. He gasps. Rosie runs out of the house sobbing. Bob sprints to his mother, who falls to the ground wailing NOOAAAAWWWWWWWWUHHHH. Everyone at Ritchie’s high school hears the news and freaks out. Donna loses her shit, as does Bobbo. There’s a funeral. Bob walks across a wooden bridge, shakes his fists at the sky, and screams “RITCHIE!!!!!!!!” Freeze Frame. The fuckin’ movie is OVER! All of that stuff I just told you about unfolds over a span of about 90 seconds. Then nothing! Look, I get that there isn't much else to say but don’t send me out of the theater all torqued up with grief, bro. I got tears flowing over here! They could’ve had a closing credits scroll or a slideshow with pictures of the real Ritchie or something. Damn.

Here’s a crazy thing that DID happen: that Winter Party Tour? It KEPT GOING!!! They played another show the NEXT DAY!!! They told Buddy Holly’s band “sorry about your boy but you got this Waylon Jennings cat and we’re calling up 15 year-old Bobby Vee who sings a mean “Peggy Sue.” I know Joy Division turned into New Order and all but not the day after Ian Curtis died. Jesus! Jennings was so upset he drank and cocaine’d himself to death over the next 40 years. You know who didn't drink himself to death?? BOB!!! That motherfucker lived until 2018. Ritchie Valens’ alcoholic brother Bob lived long enough to purchase a copy of Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” on vinyl…if that was his thing.

During that pandemic we had back in 2020, my friend Kathleen Mahoney started a podcast called Rock n’ Roll Film Club, where she gathered local musicians and other funny types to talk musical biopics. I was so stoked about it I begged to be a guest on an episode. We talked about the early Beatles biopic Backbeat, which went so well they immediately stopped recording new episodes (I was hungover…it was really hot that day…etc). I was asked to grade my film on a scale of 1 to 4 La Bamba’s, being that La Bamba is, I guess, the gold standard of rock biopics.

My rating for La Bamba: 3 La Bamba’s.

The end.