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, distributed by Buffalo 8, a BondIt company.

“A serious blast of rock ’n’ roll love…a delectable slice of nostalgia… a testament to how one gorgeously raucous rock ’n’ roll moment can reverberate through the decades.”

– VARIETY 

“Remaking a Once-in-a-Lifetime Band…a reconsideration and a revival.”

– NEW YORK TIMES

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 & 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 2015’s LOCKN’ Festival in Arrington, VA.  Bringing together a dozen members of the original Mad Dogs – including Russell, Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, 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 first-hand 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 2025 reunion gives him an opportunity to step back into the middle of the enormous sound he created nearly half a century earlier.