"Family Band: The Cowsills Story" is a low budget and rather slap-dash documentary charting the rise and fall of the 1960's Rhode Island family pop group. Clearly compiled from years of haphazardly conducted interviews with various band members, relatives, and entertainment industry business associates and acquaintances, the documentary is rather uneven. It has numerous interviews where the interviewee(s) neither say anything of substance nor provide any particular insight into the topic being discussed. Plus, the documentary assumes that the only people who will watch are former Cowsill fans who would already be familiar as to who is who and thus it doesn't identify who these gray-haired people are in relation to the wholesome-looking, apple-cheeked, toothy kids they were over 40 years ago.
The documentary just feels unfocused. It can't make-up its mind to be a history of a band or cautionary tale of abuse or a therapeutic story of healing among a broken family. Apparently, the filmmakers struggled financially for years to complete this film and it shows.
Still as disjointed and unfocused as the documentary is, the story of The Cowsills is fascinating. It's the oft-told pop music tale of rags to riches then back to rags except it destroyed a family and not just a band. The documentary charts the rise of four young Rhode Island brothers who in the mid-1960's dreamed of being the next Beatles. They and a million other teenage boys who shared the exact same dream. However, the Cowsill brothers had some serious talent especially the eldest, Billy, and they had their unbelievably driven father, Bud, an ex-Navy lifer who truly believed in his children's talent and was determined to bust down doors to see them succeed.
Along the way Bud's vision of success clashed with that of his sons', and, as typical with all things Cowsill, Bud's vision won-out. With "The Sound of Music" then currently smashing box-office records, Bud either came-up with or listened to the idea of turning his sons' rock band into an American pop version of the Von Trapps complete with a singing mother. So, mom, Barbara, was forced rather unwillingly into the band. Naturally, her sons were horrified by this decision, but then the band scored their first hit, "The Rain, the Park and Other Things," with mom singing on the harmonies and they were stuck with her. The brothers' dream of rock stardom then completely evaporated when their father decided that their cute-as-a-button baby-sister, Susan, should join the band for no other reason than she was cute-as-a-button.
With the final inclusion of a fifth brother, The Cowsills managed to score four Top 40 hits including three in the Top 10. They appeared in numerous TV shows, performed hundreds of concerts, and even had an endorsement deal with the American Dairy Association. With their well-scrubbed good looks and non-controversial music, they were marketed as family-friendly and wholesome during the tumultuous late 1960's.
And then it all fell apart. The documentary does discuss some of the immediate after effects of The Cowsills' amazingly quick fall from the pop scene and the loss of everything they had earned due to their father's gross mismanagement, but it doesn't provide too much detail as if it's still too painful to recall. The long term effects are given a lot more attention especially relating to the premature demise of two of the founding brothers, Billy and Barry.
The Cowsill story is both so fascinating and tragic that even a substandard documentary can make it interesting. Their father, Bud, rivals and maybe even surpasses other infamous stage-dads, Murray Wilson and Joe Jackson, for abuse and mismanagement. On the other hand, their mother doesn't really resonate and the image one gets is of a mouse of a woman afraid to stand-up to an abusive husband and thus failing her children. Their entire wholesome image was a façade created to sell milk and records. And when Bud had burned their last bridge within the entertainment industry and with their trust funds empty, where does that leave six kids who had spent their formative years as entertainers? The younger ones were expected to just go back to school and carry on as if nothing had happened. A sort of nightmare reverse version of "Hannah Montana." It would make a good Hollywood tragedy.