The documentary Lambert & Stamp is the story of the two guys, Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, who managed The Who to rock immortality. It’s an interesting odd couple story: hardscrabble and posh, straight and gay. There’s also this improbable but actual premise – in a quest to become movie directors, Lambert and Stamp decided to find a rock group to manage, film themselves managing the group and then use the resulting film as their filmmaking calling card. Of course, because they stumbled on a struggling band named The High Numbers and turned them into The Who, they never got to make the movie.
Chris Stamp survives, along with The Who members Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey, and we get to hear the story from their lips, and there’s plenty of film from the 60s and 70s, too. (The actor Terence Stamp is in the movie, too – he’s Chris Stamp’s big brother.)
However, rich source material can be too much of a good thing if you use more of it than you need. It’s interesting to see Lambert hold forth in German and French with European journalists, but not on and on and on. Lambert & Stamp is a little too long for me to recommend to a general audience, but to people interested in rock history or fans of The Who, it’s a Must See.
Lambert & Stamp is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.