In 1993, I began making Rock & Roll Outlaws, a ‘rockumentary’ with my favourite ever punk band, The Exploited. Inspired by a very cheesy MTV feature on Guns n’ Roses, I believed there were much better bands to be given this kind of video treatment, so kicked off something that would result in a 6 year roller coaster of punk rock film making (not to mention Fanzine making and even internet video ‘broadcasting’ before YouTube was even a URL).
The Exploited were a mere 15 years old then and had the reputation of being out of hand. Loved by fans and hated by the media it was a really fun piece to make and came out much better than I ever expected, I mean bear in mind this was made on analogue video with most of the source material supplied on VHS!
The idea of LoP was to sit down with one of the great ignored bands of the early 80s and spend 20 mins or so with them explaining their history, “in their own words”. And that’s exactly what we did with Discharge in V.1
GBH on V.2 got a little more complicated and we ended up doubling that 20 mins, and by V.4 The Exploited we are pretty much on a full blown documentary following the band over the course of a year.
The live side of this production is the best we’ve managed to capture and demonstrates some really slick editing from Ell, and the with the doc, I’ve cut it ‘for fans, by a fan’. It’s not investigative, it doesn’t set out to try to make anyone look stupid, it doesn’t have an agenda. It fills the 30 year gap between the end of Rock & Roll Outlaws and 2024! Enjoy.
Stuart Newman
