Plug in. Turn it up. Rialto Channel is turning the volume to dangerous.
Icons, excess, and the untold stories behind the music that shaped generations this is your backstage pass to the beautiful chaos of genius.
From Becoming Led Zeppelin to Blur: To the End, The Stones and Brian Jones, Brendan Gleeson’s tender Farewell to Hughes’s, and The Lost Weekend: A Love Story – it’s a line-up that hums with electricity, heartbreak, and the smell of cigarette ash on studio carpets.
We’ve all imagined what it must have felt like to be there – in the room where riffs were born, where friendships imploded, where brilliance and self-destruction became twins. Rialto has the receipts.
Becoming Led Zeppelin is pure thunder – a story told from inside the storm. You hear the heartbeat of a band still drunk on discovery, before myth calcified into monument.
Then there’s Blur: To the End, where the lads from Colchester look back without flinching. The music remains sharp, the humour intact, the tension never far away. Damon still restless, Graham still fragile, the chords still ringing with youth and regret.
The Stones and Brian Jones take us to the edge of the 1960s dream – and shows how easily brilliance tips into oblivion. It’s the story of the man who built the band, only to be erased from its myth. The price of rhythm, fame, and being the first to fall.
And then, softly, Farewell to Hughes’s. Brendan Gleeson sits at a pub table, fingers finding old chords, grief and joy tangled in the same note. It’s a quiet elegy to friendship and music – the kind of small film that can still break your heart.
Finally, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story. May Pang’s recollection of those 18 months when John Lennon, freed from his legend, rediscovered the man. Together they wrote, recorded, fought, and laughed – Lennon’s only solo number one was born in that blur of chaos and clarity.
Pang reminds us: love can be the most creative rebellion of all.
Rialto’s Riffs, Rebels & Rock Gods isn’t nostalgia. It’s resurrection. The sound of creation and collapse, replayed in surround. The stories behind the songs that built us – loud, flawed, and still ringing true.
So plug in. Turn it up. And stay awhile.
— Roger Wyllie, View Mag
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