One thing that’s not immediately clear about HBO’s new rock drama, Vinyl, is that the Feb. 14 premiere is essentially a Martin Scorsese film.
The two-hour episode was helmed by the Oscar-winning director, with the story a collaboration between himself, Rich Cohen, Mick Jagger and Terrence Winter. It’s not a terribly dissimilar scenario from HBO’s last venture with Scorsese and Winter, Boardwalk Empire, but Scorsese implied during a Thursday appearance at the Television Critics Association winter press tour that he plans to be a little more involved this go around.
“I’ve already in the first season been even more involved in these episodes and all stages of production,” said Scorsese, who first started plotting the project with Jagger and Winter back in 2008. “I’ll continue working with the music. This is something that’s very natural to me — and very close to my heart. I hope I can work out the time to direct a few more.”
Jagger was slightly more vague about his role, laughing at one reporter who asked if he was contributing to scripts or vetoing story points in the 1970s-era music drama that he deemed inaccurate.
“The genesis of this really was an idea I had years ago that I took to Marty,” he explained. “We tried to develop it as a movie, and we developed and developed and wrote scripts. When TV series started coming online and becoming interesting, respectable and money making, we decided to make it a series.”
When asked what he liked about being an executive producer compared to being in a band, the Rolling Stones frontman offered this: “The amazing thing to me about a TV series is that you can do it on your own.”
