Article Contributed by Big Hassle Media
Published on 2026-09-25
Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen, the acclaimed documentary and concert film capturing 2015’s landmark live celebration reuniting members of Joe Cocker and Leon Russell’s legendary Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, has returned to digital platforms.
Directed and produced by Jesse Lauter (Little Feat: The Documentary), the film is available now to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play. The digital release is distributed by Buffalo 8, a BondIt company.
In the spring of 1970, Joe Cocker and Leon Russell embarked on one of the great experiments in rock ’n’ roll history. Mad Dogs & Englishmen was less a conventional tour than a traveling musical commune: more than 30 musicians and singers—along with spouses, children, friends, crew members, hangers-on and even a dog named Canina—crisscrossing America together on a private jet.
At its center were Cocker, one of rock’s most singular vocalists, and Russell, the enigmatic musical genius who assembled and led the enormous band. Over the course of two frenetic months, the group created a sound that fused rock, soul, gospel, blues and rhythm and blues into something enormous and joyous.
The Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour produced a landmark live album and an enduring concert film, helped launch several major careers, and became a source of inspiration for generations of musicians. But the full story of what happened inside the tour—and particularly Russell’s role as its musical architect—remained much less understood.
Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen now tells that story through the lens of the unforgettable reunion assembled by GRAMMY Award winners Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi for the 2015 LOCKN’ Festival in Arrington, Virginia.
Bringing together a dozen members of the original Mad Dogs—including Russell, Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear and Chris Stainton—alongside Tedeschi Trucks Band and special guests including Chris Robinson and Dave Mason, the concert proved both a tribute to Cocker and a remarkable continuation of a musical experiment thought never to be repeatable.
Directed by Jesse Lauter, Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen moves between the original tour and its unlikely rebirth, combining exhilarating concert performances, intimate rehearsal footage, rare archival material and firsthand accounts from the musicians who lived it.
Renowned writer David Fricke provides historical perspective, while figures including Steve Earle and Jon Landau, who witnessed the original tour, recall its impact firsthand. But at the heart of the film is Leon Russell himself. Filmed during the final year of his life, his interviews offer a rare window into the musician whose vision made the original Mad Dogs possible, while the 2015 reunion gives him an opportunity to step back into the middle of the enormous sound he created nearly half a century earlier.
Buffalo 8’s new digital release of Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen follows the film’s acclaimed festival and theatrical run, as well as its presentation on The Criterion Channel and availability aboard Delta Air Lines.
The digital release arrives at a particularly resonant moment for the Mad Dogs legacy, following the 2025 arrival of the official live album Tedeschi Trucks Band and Leon Russell Present: Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited (Live at LOCKN’) and Joe Cocker’s long-overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that same year.
“Eleven years after the reunion at LOCKN’, and five years after the film first premiered, I’m just really happy that Learning to Live Together is finally easy to find and watch again. A Mad Dogs reunion always felt like one of those near-mythical things in the rock-and-roll pantheon—something fans could imagine, but never seriously expect to happen. I worshipped the original record and film, so when it actually came together, I knew there was a much bigger story than simply documenting a concert. For the people who lived it, those few months in 1970 had changed their lives. It was messy, ecstatic and completely unsustainable, but it created a family—and became the starting point for some serious branches on a great musical tree.
“That’s what made the reunion so moving to me. Derek [Trucks], Susan [Tedeschi] and Tedeschi Trucks Band didn’t just recreate a famous show. They brought these people back into a room 45 years later and somehow found that sound, and that feeling, again. Getting to film and interview Leon Russell was enormous for me. He’s one of my musical heroes, and what I treasure most now is that the film captures Leon the person. You see his sweetness and humor. In hindsight, it became a kind of swan song in the career of a giant.
“So much has happened around this music since the film first came out, and in some ways the story has only grown richer. The original 1971 Mad Dogs & Englishmen documentary is finally available on YouTube, and most movingly, Tedeschi Trucks Band helped induct Joe Cocker into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. My hope has always been that this film, this music and these stories keep getting passed from one generation to the next. This release makes that a whole lot easier.”
—Jesse Lauter
Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen
Available to rent or buy digitally
Amazon Prime Video
Apple TV
Google Play
Watch the trailer
