A rockstar who sang his own suicide into existence—did he mean it or was it all performance?
“When I do my suicide for you, I hope you’ll miss me too,” Herman Brood sang in “Rock ‘n’ Roll Junkie” – just one of many announcements of his own death Brood worked into his songs. It’s a subject Brood, who jumped off the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton 15 years ago, often sang about. In Unknown Brood, a whole range of people look back on the rock and roller’s turbulent life, including fellow musicians, his manager, a former girlfriend, photographer Anton Corbijn, Brood’s wife and their daughter. Video footage shot by Brood himself and never seen before is intercut with a rich collection of archive material, including a humorous clip of Brood barking the Dutch national anthem. His sister Beppie Brood stresses her brother’s split personality: on the one hand the shy, vulnerable man wary of other people, and on the other the one who played Herman Brood – an extravagant, hedonistic junkie and rock and roll star.
Direction
Never-seen self-shot footage feels stolen from a ghost
Editing
Cuts between myth and sister's testimony dismantle the facade
Production
Archive depth that only a culture obsessed with its dead could provide
Director
Dennis Alink
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Anton Corbijn's early photos of Brood helped establish both their careers—he'd later direct Control and American, making this a meeting of two artists who built myths around doomed musicians.
Brood's 2001 death made him the Netherlands' first true rock martyr; this film arrived 15 years later when the generation that mythologized him began interrogating their own complicity.
NL
