'Women Who Rock' docuseries celebrates 'camaraderie and sisterhood'

During the lengthy process of interviewing dozens of rock music's most legendary living players, one of the producers of the new TV docuseries "Women Who Rock" asked a simple and fair question.

"Do you think we need to interview any men for this?"

The series' Minneapolis-raised director and co-producer, Jessica Hopper, laughed at the query — only because she said she had not considered it herself.

"It really just hadn't even come up until that point," Hopper said. "But we all just kind of went, 'Nah!'"

When you see the truly rocking docuseries — which premieres Sunday via Epix and spans seven decades of music over four hourlong episodes — you'll know Hopper wasn't being flip about excluding men. She was being a smart director.

We get to hear iconic singers like Mavis Staples, Chaka Khan, Pat Benatar and Joan Jett talk candidly about their storied yet complicated music careers on screen in "Women Who Rock." But one of the series' great strengths is that we also hear all of these subjects talk excitedly and comprehensively about the careers of the other artists featured in it, including '80s-'90s stars such as Shania Twain, Sheryl Crow, Susanna Hoffs and Sheila E., and more recent standouts like Kelis and Norah Jones.

"A lot of these women are experts on the other women," Hopper explained. "Just the amount of camaraderie and sisterhood and joy that some of these women have for each other's success and each other's battles, it's so apparent and so inspiring.

"Historically within the music industry, these women were often pitted against each other and told, 'There can only be one of you at the top.' None of them believed that."

A veteran music journalist — going on three decades counting the fanzine she launched via Kinko's in Minneapolis in her mid-teens — Hopper has been an editor at Pitchfork, writer for Rolling Stone and GQ and author of three books (and counting), including 2015's "The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic."

Now based in Chicago and working on a documentary about the Lilith Fair tour, Hopper turned to TV work while serving as editorial director at MTV News in the mid-2010s. She said she took to the more visual side of storytelling very quickly.

"I would be very interested in a story and think, 'That's definitely one where we need to hear the voices of the people or see them tell the story to really feel it,'" she said.

"Women in Rock" is a prime example of that difference. Here's more of what Hopper had to say about directing the series.

On how the musically varied subjects of the docuseries themselves helped tie it all together cohesively: "When we meet each of these women on screen, they're all calling back to the women who came before them — the women who made the rungs that they're standing on, the women whose innovation and talent created these spaces for the next wave of women to be artists.

"I think we see that really vitally with the Black women: Merry Clayton talking about being directly mentored by Odetta, and Nina Simone as the direct mentor to Nona Hendryx and giving her [guidance] as a songwriter with Labelle, the first all-Black band featured on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1975. And then on up to Macy Gray and other more recent stars standing on all of that."

How MTV's image-driven success affected artists like Madonna, Benatar, Heart and Tina Turner: "Most of these women's careers were impacted by MTV ... It was a space that liberated women artists, particularly the women who could be in charge of their image, like Pat saying, 'I'm doing this for me,' and changing how she's dressed.

"These women really were the first generation of pop stars to have control over their image and their sexuality, and how much sexuality they put into their image. Some of them went a more androgynous route, Annie Lennox particularly famously. As MTV became such a massive driver in the business, it tipped even further for these women. It really determined where they went in their careers."

The artist she was most nervous to interview (also the one who makes the biggest impression in the series): "Chaka Khan doesn't talk to many people, and she's absolutely no-bull----. So I was very nervous. Once we started talking, though, it was like two Chicago girls just talking. About 40 minutes in, she said, 'I see how you're veering off and asking your own questions. I trust where you're going. You can ask me anything. I don't give a [expletive].' She was really funny and emphatic. She doesn't have to prove anything to anyone."

The lesser-known artist she was personally most excited to include: "Anytime anyone mentions Black Flag, they go straight to Henry Rollins. But what about Kira [bassist Kira Roessler]? She was a big one for me and all my punk friends. She's really an unspoken legend. Those pictures of her with her hand in an ice bucket after playing brutal two-hour sets. Her endurance is totemic among punishing punk stories. Those kinds of stories were important to me to include."

How the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade adds potency to the series: "Pat and Chaka and some of these women pioneers talk about the impact motherhood had on their careers. I think it's really important to hold up those stories next to stories of women whose lives were shaped by children they had to give up; namely Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell.

"You really see how women having access to birth control — and having control over their own bodies and livelihood — changed the shape of their music and changed our culture. Women had a much better opportunity to shape their own paths after Roe. Before Roe, their careers very formally came to an end sometimes."

What a continuation of "Women Who Rock" might look like: "There is no Season 2, though people keep asking. We got up to the present. But watching this series as just a super fan, I hope somebody else watching it says, 'OK, we need a Bangles documentary. We need four hours on Chaka, and Nona Hendryx, too. We need a Labelle biopic.'

"I hope people see this series and — whether they know these artists well or not — it stokes their curiosity not only about their music, but also about digging deeper into the lived history of all these women."

Airs: 7 p.m. Sundays.

On: Epix (online epix.com).