Back in 1972, Marin County, California, was the centre of my universe. It was also home to a high percentage of Bay Area music’s major players: Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick, Quicksilver Messenger Service, all lived here, scattered from Novato in the north to Sausalito and Mill Valley in the south. We had Shel Silverstein living on a barge in Richardson Bay. We had the Record Plant and all the perqs that went with that. We had a lot of pot. Very, very mellow. I loved the place, and I still do.
But in 1972, I slipped away for not quite a week, for a few nights in the Lone Star State. The object of the exercise, about which I told no one at the time, was a couple of Rolling Stones shows. I’d been invited, my presence requested by a friend who thought I should be there. I agreed – I was very young – and I went.
I expected to enjoy myself enormously and, in terms of the shows themselves, I did. There are things about the Stones in general, and Mick Jagger specifically, that got on my last nerve, then and now, but when Mick is on, he’s ON, yo. I hardly need to talk about the fact that he’s the ultimate born-in-the-blood rock frontman, do I? Anyone who hasn’t seen Jagger fronting the Stones, either in the flesh or on film, at least once in their life has either been living in a monastery or on Alpha Centauri. I once told a mutual acquaintance that however much I might want to smack Jagger in the real world, if he pranced over to me mid-show and told me to eat flies, I’d probably find myself holding out one hand saying sure, give me a bag, and then I’d start munching. Most effective frontman ever.
I enjoyed the shows less than I should have, though. There were personal considerations that I took down to Texas with me and then took home to Marin, and they weren’t happy ones. So the Texas shows were oddly tainted in my memory. I couldn’t think about the performances without shrinking away from the entire thing.
Two years later, Dragonaire Ltd. released a film, put together over those same shows. It was called Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones, directed by someone called Rollin Binzer and co-produced by Marshall Chess, scion of the founder of the legendary Chess Records in Chicago, and by 1972 head of Rolling Stones Records. I was invited to the local premiere of the film, and declined with more haste than manners. Those memories were still pretty fresh.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones made the theatrical rounds, and then mercifully disappeared. I forgot its existence, only remembering if someone brought it up in conversation. Thirty-five years later, there it was, released for my home viewing and enjoyment on DVD. Did I want to review it?
I swallowed hard: Um. Right. Okay. So, no more ducking; it was time to take that particular memory out, put it up on the flat-screen TV, and see what was what.
So, what was what? Just this: I’m glad I didn’t go see this in 1974, when it was first released.
It’s not the music’s fault. The set-list chosen, over four shows, is excellent. The film kicks off with a vicious version of “Brown Sugar”, taunts its way through a high-octane crunch of older numbers (“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”), slows down for “Love in Vain” and “Sweet Virginia”, and then ramps up as if someone had poured half a pound of Peruvian rock cocaine into their Gatorade, which of course was quite possible, all things considered. There’s a lot of high intensity and a lot of high speed, but the prize on that has to go to this version of Exile on Main Street‘s “Rip This Joint”, which is done at a pitch and velocity I can only call insane. I’m surprised that either guitar player came out of that without their fingers bleeding. I’m even more surprised that Nicky Hopkins, invisible yet exquisitely audible for most of the film, came out of it without his fingers tied together. Just nuts.
The music, the performances, are as on as I remembered them being. Jagger is a wired kinetic ball of perpetual motion up there, taking it as close to the edge as he can get without falling over, either physically or metaphorically. He’s insanely watchable. Keith Richards, as is expected and proper and pretty much the usual custom, gets nearly as much facetime as Jagger does. The rest of the band – and yes, dear Mssrs. Binzer and Chess, there are other people in the band, including one of rock’s greatest drummers, an iconic bassist, a couple of monster horn players, a keyboardist without whom the Stones’ sound as we know it wouldn’t exist, and oh, yes, a phenomenal guitarist named Mick Taylor — get snippets only.
The “bonus footage” actually adds insult to injury. Two interviews with Jagger, one then and one now, are either for historians or for people who enjoy listening to Mick Jagger being interviewed. There’s not much going on there. There’s footage billed as “tour rehearsal” footage, which left me wanting to smack the hell out of whoever came up with this idea: we once again see metric assloads of Jagger and Richards, less of the rest of the band — and more invisible piano, in this instance obviously Ian Stewart.
What the hell? In the first place, I’m puzzled as to why Ian Stewart was rehearsing with them for this tour – he wasn’t the piano player by that time. But more to the point, oh Glimmer Twins, howsabout you acknowledge and respect the people who helped you get to that point in your careers and creative development? Ian Stewart was core to the Stones, from their earliest days. Yet he’s actually billed as “Mystery Pianist”. We never see him — just as the only time we ever actually see Hopkins onstage during the show is when Jagger introduces the band, and Keith literally has to remind Mick to mention him. The splendid horn players, Bobby Keys and Jim Price, fare only marginally better, and that only because they periodically step into one of the few camera’s direct line of sight.
And therein lies the failing of this film for me, and of most of the recorded footage of the Stones, in fact. When you have three cameras and you have to be prodded in the arse with a pitchfork to capture anyone that isn’t Mick Jagger, your film is going to be missing not only most of the experience, but most of the point as well.
Deborah Grabien
(Eagle Vision [Eagle Rock Entertainment, Ltd.], 2010)
Well you said it yourself, it’s hard not to watch Mick when he’s on, so it’s easy to understand why the camera operators were watching him too. Nonetheless, you’d think it’s the job of the director to insist on looking at more than one person. And I am sick to the teeth of frontmen getting all the credit for everything.
I get that a person can’t be a successful Rock star without enormous ego, but without some form of teamwork, how can a band last as long as the Stones have been going?
hillevi, what I always wondered was whether the Stones insisted on X cameras with X being pointed at the Glimmer Twins for X percentage of the time. I’m not underrating or devaluing Mick or Keith – they were and are the heart of the Stones in terms of both composing and fronting. But how in hell do you manage to only aim a camera at a guitarist as brilliant as Mick Taylor if he’s playing a solo and Mick happens to step out of the way? How in hell do you manage to give Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman what amounts to sneak peeks? And how in the name of hell do you manage to pretend that the damned piano is playing itself?
Andi, I’ve often wondered if it wasn’t a question of “well, it’s clearly not broken, we’re taking in over a million dollars a day while touring, so let’s keep it as is.” I do get that. But I believe, pretty damned strongly, that when filming, you’re taking a complete performance and making a record of it. There are things you can fix in the mix. And none of it was fixed.
Even Scorcese fell into that trap, with “Shine A Light”. That was a corking good show. The guests – Jack White, Buddy Guy, Christina Aguilera – all got full camera when they were up front and centre. But watching the film, their excellent bassist is invisible, and so is Chuck Leavell at the keyboards.
It strikes me as a kind of cheat for the watching audience. What I watched in Texas in 1972 was a band, not two guys and some marionettes.
I have enjoyed reading this review. I lived in the Bay Area in 1972 and as you say we were blessed with musical talent in abundance. We were lucky in having it locally and in being visited regularly by bands from England thanks to Bill Graham Presents.
I personally think it is impossible for films to convey the emotions and passions that you get from a live concert experince. Being there is always the best and a kind of adventure from start to finish. The anticipation from when you first hear about the show, getting dressed to attend, travelling there with your freinds – and on the return the songs ringing in your ears and endless talking about this song and that look. You are correct that films like this only provide a one dimensional view, and this one is particularly guilty of that!
I do wonder if a lot of these kind of things are not aimed at pre teens who will only know who Mick Jagger or Keith Richards are, although really Mick Taylor would probably be their schoolgirl or schoolboy crush. It is insulting not just to the other musicians who provided the entertainment, but to those of us who can in fact process a little more than just a lead singer.
At least you were there to see the whole concert, pity the poor folk who only get to see this film.
LeeAnn, it was a brilliant time to be living in the Bay Area, wasn’t it? Not just the larger venues, but also the club scene was just thriving. I really miss that time.
In re the question of who the film was aimed at, I think you have to look at who it was aimed at when it was first released, rather than who might be viewing it now. The fact is that the Stones, in no small part thanks to Mick Jagger, are a very savvy business as well as the world’s greatest rock band, and they’ve put the whole thing together recently: the re-release of Exile on Main Street with ten new tracks (I reviewed that here last month, in fact), the box set, Keith’s memoir, the whole nine yards. At the time, I suspect it wasn’t thought through beyond “live shows, STP gigs, movie, movie, fans, do it”.
I just wish they had bothered with a few more cameras and given the rest of the world’s greatest rock and roll band band more face time.