HBO documentary film “Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That’s the Weight of the World)” gives me a bit of enlightenment on one of the legendary bands in the American pop music history during the late 20th century. To be frank with you, I belatedly came to learn a little about Earth, Wind & Fire via one of its famous songs memorably utilized in Oscar-nominated animation film “Robot Dreams” (2023), and I was surely both entertained and enlightened enough thanks to this solid documentary.

The main center of the documentary is Maurice White (1941 ~ 2016), the founder and leader of Earth, Wind & Fire. The early part of the documentary focuses a bit on his rather unhappy childhood years in Memphis, Tennessee, and the documentary makes a point on how a certain childhood trauma of his often affected his relationships with others around him for the rest of his life. For herself as well as her son, his widow mother had to leave young White to someone else, and he did not recover from that trauma at all even after he came to live with his mother and her new family in Chicago several years later.

Anyway, as getting more interested in music, White eventually found comfort and stability in that, and he quickly showed a lot of potential as studying and practicing music. Not long after becoming one of the studio musicians at Chess Records in Chicago in the early 1960s, he joined the Ramsey Lewis Trio as a new drummer, and it seemed that he reached the top of his field as becoming one of the best drummers in the town.

However, White was not still satisfied enough as reaching for something more special, so he eventually decided to leave the band and then moved to California for making a band of his own in 1969. As many of you know, the American society during the 1960s was shaken up a lot by the demand for more freedom and change, and White was particularly influenced a lot by those New Age ideas which became pretty popular during that time. As a matter of fact, that rather weird name of his band was actually inspired by the astrological stuffs associated with him, and he was quite determined to go all the way with those New Age ideas represented by the name of his band.

However, the early years of Earth, Wind & Fire were not exactly successful to say the least. As often trying on the wild mixture between R&B, jazz, and gospel, the band surely shocked and confused audiences at that time, and even White became unsure about the prospect of his band because its first album was not sold that well.

Nevertheless, White did not give up at all, though his following drastic measure on the band hurt the feelings of his close collaborators a lot. He promptly fired most of his original band members, and then he gradually recruited the new members to fit with his artistic vision on the band. This was certainly a risky gamble, but it worked much better than expected. Once everything eventually clicked among the band members, Earth, Wind & Fire became much more popular than before, and it gave a number of hit songs to remember during the 1970s.

However, of course, this big success of the band did not last that long. White and his band tried to follow the changing trend during the late 1970s and then the 1980s, but, as shown from their tacky music video during the 1980s, the result was not very excellent to say the least. As many of their juniors ranging from Prince to Michael Jackson became much more prominent, the band only got pushed further toward past, and that made White decide to stop working on the band at least for a while.

As the band went down, White came to show more of the worse sides of himself to others around him, and many of his close colleagues still remember how much they felt hurt when he suddenly announced the temporary hiatus of their band on one day without any consideration. In addition, he was not that good to not only his longtime partner but also his children, and all of his children reminiscent well how absent he was before opening himself more to them as well as his band members later in his life.

Compared to the extraordinary aspects of director/co-producer/co-composer Questlove’s previous Oscar-winning documentary “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” (2021), the documentary feels relatively plain, but Questlove did a fairly good job of presenting the interesting human aspects of its main subject, and you will be often impressed by a number of prominent figures interviewed by him. While a number of the past band members and White’s close colleagues surely have a lot to talk about their experiences with White, several notable musicians including Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder are certainly willing to talk about the considerable influence of Earth, Wind & Fire, and a certain very, very, very famous couple eagerly talk about how much the band has meant a lot to them (They used one of its most famous songs for their historical night in 2009, for example).

Overall, “Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That’s the Weight of the World)” was both engaging and informative enough for me to check on the albums of Wind, Fire & Earth. As a matter of fact, I am listening to one of its compilation albums as writing this review right now, and I guess that says enough about how well the documentary works on the whole.