It’s 1965 and rock music is shaking up the world but not in New Zealand. A 23-year-old journalist is determined to break the government’s monopoly on broadcasting and bring rock ‘n’ roll to a younger generation while staying with the woman he loves.

Queen’s performance at Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in 1985 is often regarded as Rock’s greatest live performance of all time. Their set lasted 21 minutes and consisted of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Radio Ga Ga”, “Hammer to Fall”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, “We Will Rock You”, and “We Are the Champions”. Mercury and May returned later on to perform a version of “Is This the World We Created?”

When Nirvana burst onto the scene in 1991, the music they played spoke directly to an angry and disenfranchised generation. As grunge took over MTV and radio, the music industry was transformed overnight. But just three years later, the drug-related deaths of several musicians, capped by the suicide of Kurt Cobain, closed the books on an all too brief era. Hit So Hard follows the rise to fame (and the near-fatal fall from it) of Patty Schemel, drummer for Courtney Love’s seminal rock band, Hole. Given a Hi-8 video camera just before Hole’s infamous Live Through This world tour, Patty captured stunningly intimate footage of the scene that has never been seen… until now. Not just an all-access backstage pass to the music that shaped a generation, Hit So Hard is a harrowing tale of overnight success, the cost of addiction, and ultimately, recovery and redemption.