The Secret Lives Of Bill Bartell Blu-ray Review

There are some wild stories in the music world, and the story of Bill Bartell is certainly one of the wildest. From the moment the documentary The Secret Lives Of Bill Bartell opens with a closeup shot of Bill while an unseen person repeatedly calls his name, it is clear this movie is going to be an unusual and wild ride. For those who are not familiar with Bill Bartell, he was in the band White Flag and was founder of Gasatanka Records (those beginning as humorous plays on Black Flag and Casablanca Records). But that is just the tiniest bit of it. At the beginning of the film, we hear various folks describe him, and someone says, "Bill ends up in these very funny situations where he changes musical history from the background and nobody even realizes that it's happening." And the film goes on to back that statement up with all sorts of delightful examples. So, again, if you are not familiar with Bill Partell, he probably still has had some effect on your life. This movie demonstrates how.

The movie contains interviews with lots of musicians that knew Bill, that worked with him in one way or other, including members of White Flag, The Melvins, Redd Kross, The Muffs, The Germs, Camper Van Beethoven, Generation X, Os Mutantes and Black Flag. And the stories they tell are fascinating and often very funny. Early in the film, it is established how Bill Bartell seemed to always be in the action. There is footage of him in the front row of punk shows when he was a teenager, and footage of him catching a Devo sign on stage at a concert. He is even spotted in The Decline Of Western Civilization. And from there, he just always seemed able to be where he wanted to be, showing up in so many different scenes and easily working his way into many different groups, to the point where he is referred to as the punk rock Zelig. And though he was important in the punk scene, his musical tastes extended far outside that realm. Jeff McDonald (of Redd Kross) talks about bonding with Bill because they both admitted to liking the band Kiss. And several of the people interviewed comment on how he did not look like a punk rocker at all. In addition to that, his band would sometimes cover straight rock songs, confusing the audience. This is when punk had a sense of humor, when it did not take itself too seriously. As several people note in the film, Bill Bartell out-punked the punks. 

There is a lot of humor to this story. The film contains some hilarious stuff about whether White Flag was a real band or not, and how the name was a play on Black Flag, with the logo being Black Flag's logo laid on its side. Dez Cadena (of Black Flag) says, "Bill Bartell was a really good guitar player, but you couldn't tell if he was serious or if it really was a joke." And that was only a small part of the strange mystery surrounding this guy. "No one knows how he made money," someone points out early in the film, regarding the way he would fly to various places to catch concerts and then later book White Flag for a European tour. Apparently at one point he became a substitute teacher, using the name Pat McPherson, bragging to other punk musicians that he was giving the students false information. This made me burst out laughing. How punk rock is that? Going into a school as a subsitute teacher and presenting all sorts of false information as facts. It's a shame that a few of his students weren't interviewed for the film. And then there is the whole thing of Bill becoming a cop. And there is the matter of riding bulls too. Seriously.

But for me it's the music stories that are the most interesting. The Generation X story is particularly crazy and delightful, about Bill getting the manager of Kiss to manage that band, and how when Generation X broke up, Bill took Billy Idol from the band to help make him famous. Bill was also responsible for getting Os Mutantes known in the United States. Seriously. If you're a fan of Os Mutantes (and you absolutely should be), you kind of owe it to Bill. He also promoted Shonen Knife. The stuff about the band Sator is also crazy. But perhaps my favorite bit is the story of his band Tator Totz playing BeatleFest in 1988 and covering a Yoko Ono song. I love the great punk humor of doing that. They even made a reference to John and Yoko's "bagism." The footage is fantastic. Look, I love The Beatles, but to hell with all those Beatles fans at that concert that couldn't see the humor and couldn't find pleasure in that performance. 

So, as you perhaps gathered, Bill Bartell's story isn't one crazy story, but many crazy stories. And it took many different people telling these stories, because Bill was apparently particularly adept at compartmentalizing, and so each person in his life was only privy to certain bits of information. So film director David Markey had a lot of work to do in piecing it all together. And though there is a lot of humor to this tale, there is a sad story running underneath the entire thing, the fact that Bill Bartell felt he couldn't tell his friends the truth of his sexuality (though they mostly all knew it anyway), and so this is also a story of loneliness, a story with a sad ending. 

Special Features

The Blu-ray contains a lot of bonus footage, including more from interviews with Sergio Dias and Ave Cope, about Kurt Cobain getting into Os Mutantes because of Bill. There is also more with Jim Laspesa, Dez Cadena and Jennifer Schwartz. It's surprising that this was cut from the final film, because there is some fantastic stuff here, like about the recording of the first White Flag record and the anecdote about the Redd Kross recording. Also, the stuff about his band Chariot is hilarious. That bonus footage totals approximately forty-six minutes. Also included is footage of the Q&A from the Slamdance screening of the film, featuring director David Markey and producer Brian Kehew. In this Q&A, we learn that the opening sequence was shot in 1994, and was the director's first attempt at interviewing Bill Bartell. Also, the director is in the film for a moment. He's the guy who puts the Tator Totz singer in the bag during that fantastic performance of the Yoko Ono song. Some other folks who appear in the movie were in the room for the screening, but there was only one camera, which was set up for a static shot, so we don't see them, only hear them. This Q&A is approximately sixteen minutes. The special features also include the film's trailer.

The Secret Lives Of Bill Bartell was released on Blu-ray on February 24, 2026 through MVD Visual.