Nash the Slash Rises Again! Doc Unwraps Underappreciated Toronto Talent
By Kim Hughes
Rating: B
Music fans of a certain age who were around in the 1970s-80s heyday of Nash the Slash — the seemingly maniacal, mercurial musician best known for being mostly unknown and disguised beneath layers of surgical bandages — might not expect to come away from a documentary about the man with a sense of sadness. Quite the opposite given his outlandish personage, which threatened to eclipse his formidable talent. And oftentimes did.
Yet director Tim Kowalski’s fascinating and exhaustive Nash the Slash Rises Again! ends on an unmistakably bittersweet note. And not just because Nash the Slash, a.k.a. Toronto’s James Jeffrey Plewman, died alone in his home in May 2014 at age 66, discovered only because his tenant noticed newspapers hadn’t been picked up.
Rather, it’s the sense of missed opportunity — wrong place, wrong time, maybe? — that reverberates loudest among those recalling the eclectic multi-instrumentalist’s life. That, and the unfortunate incident at the 1981 Police Picnic.
Had Plewman been working in an era of technological capability that mirrored his innovative instincts, had he been able to bypass the music industry and market his stuff directly, had he been able to leverage social media to collate his fanbase, it all might have ended differently, and more lucratively.
But Plewman, co-founder of prog rock combo FM and musical outlier to the end, nevertheless made his mark.
To be sure, Kowalski doesn’t whitewash his subject’s darker moments or tendencies: his self-aggrandizement, bad temper, and general hostility toward the mainstream, or the incident that brought jailtime, unwelcome notoriety, and an inability to tour the U.S.
But those who knew Plewman or followed his work speak about him with a fondness that suggests his onstage persona was just that, even if he could be maddeningly mulish. They include the photographer Paul Till, author Paul Myers, record producer Michael Wojewoda, promoter Gary Topp, musicians Gary Numan and Don Pyle, bon vivant Jaymz Bee and several others.
Given the limitations the filmmakers faced — a subject performing in an era without cell phones and the candid footage they invariably capture, not to mention the fact that Plewman had been dead for more than a decade — Kowalski and co-writer Kevan Byrne do a very good job of bringing this story to life.
That was greatly assisted by Schitt’s Creek producer Colin Brunton, who co-wrote the script and, as my colleague Jim Slotek notes in his interview with the filmmakers, "was the Boomer in the room, [and] had a role to play in the telling of that particular New Wave-era of Toronto.”
Plewman’s longtime collaborative work with the surrealist painter Robert Vanderhorst is a particular highpoint and almost certain to spark renewed interest in the Vanderhorst’s singular work.
And it’s hard to miss the sense that the 1970s and 80s would have been duller without the man who revelled in then-nascent electronic music and used old-school horror movies as a kind of thematic jumping-off point for his image and worldview. Nash the Slash would no doubt approve of this telling.
As Jim also notes, “Appropriately enough, on Friday the 13th this week, Nash the Slash Rises Again! starts its Canadian theatrical run, including a show at Toronto’s Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, with a screening, Q&A, and performance by various artists who took part in an album of Nash the Slash covers, among them Ian Blurton, Kevin Breit, and The Rheostatics’ Dave Clark.”
Nash the Slash Rises, Again! Directed by Tim Kowalski. Written by Colin Brunton, Kevan Byrne, and Tim Kowalski. With Iggy Pop, Gary Numan, Paul Till and Paul Myers. In theatres March 13.