From Godard's One Plus One, 1968
My review of the enjoyable Scorsese/Stones concert picture Shine A Light will post on the Premiere home page later today (UPDATE: and here it is!); therein I grapple with the question of whether every decade gets the Stones picture it deserves. (A feature on the picture is already up, here.)
One thing's for certain: no other rock-and-roll band has aligned itself with more great directors than the Stones. Yeah, the Beatles had Richard Lester, and then...Bernard Knowles. The Who had, um, Ken Russell. (That didn't really work out.) The Dave Clark Five had John Boorman. (An inspired one-off.)
The Stones, on the other hand, had inspired documentarian Peter Whitehead for '66's Charlie Is My Darling; Jean-Luc friggin Godard for '68's One Plus One (renamed Sympathy For The Devil by a producer who insisted, over Godard's objections, on including the finished title song in that cut); another pair of inspired documentarians, the Maysles Brothers, for '70's Gimme Shelter; epochal photographer Robert Frank for the notorious and rarely-seen '73 Cocksucker Blues; an off-his-game Hal Ashby for '83's Let's Spend the Night Together; and now, a very-much-engaged Scorsese for Shine A Light.
I'm still pretty big on One Plus One, the making of which ended with considerable enmity between Jagger and Godard. The director had initially approached John Lennon about his starring in a biopic of Trotsky, but Lennon didn't like where Godard was coming from one bit, so Godard turned to the Stones.
The movie alternates between querulous agitprop skits, many featuring Godard's then-wife Anna Wiazemsky, and the "Stones rolling," as it were, rehearsing the song that would become "Sympathy for the Devil." A lot of folks find this footage awfully tedious, but I've always been fascinated by it, and "Sympathy" is in fact far from my favorite Stones song. At the beginning of the film, the song is a straight four/four, almost a folk ballad as Jagger, strumming an acoustic, tries to instruct Brian Jones.
The way that Jones wanders in and out of the proceedings is the most voyeuristically attractive part of the film for Stones obsessive. He seems pretty eager to work at first, but grows grows bored, starts wandering around the studio, picking at stuff. As the song evolves into its signature samba beat, he becomes thoroughly disconnected. You see the group's balance of power shift as Jagger finds Keith Richards a more attentive collaborator. (Jones' death by drowning would happen in the summer of 1969.) Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts alternately snooze and seethe as they wait to get down to their business. Owners of foreign region DVD players can witness all the action on the excellent Carlotta disc of the film.
The behind-the-scenes Stones you see in Shine A Light are not captured in the agonizing throes of creation; they're not trying to capture, or define, a zeitgeist, as they're doing in the sessions captured in One Plus One. They're a smart and maybe even still passionate product, taking care of business. The spectacle is definitely less dispiriting than that of Dennis Hopper doing financial planning commercials, but it's certainly...different.
Gotta ask:
Beggar's Banquet or Let It Bleed?
I'm actually a hige supporter of the U.K. version of Aftermath. I felt a sense of pride when I read in th liner notes for My Aim Is True that Costello was also a big Aftermath fan.
Also, Between the Buttons is an album that is ripe for re-discovery. (Nice effort Wes Anderson.)
Finally, I want to throw in a defense of '78's Some Girls. Unfairly labeled their "disco" record, Some Girls is a pretty sleazy song cycle that holds up remakrably well. (I could've done without their cover of "Just My Imagination.") "Miss You" and "Beast of Burden" are damn near perfect pop songs. "Far Away Eyes" is like a lost track from Beggar's Banquet. And "Shattered" holds its own against any of the more trendy punk anthems about NYC of that time. It's like the musical version of Walter Hill's The Warriors.
One more thing. Is every Stones album held back from perfection because of the obligatory Keith-Richards-sings-a-ballad that seemed to always show up on side 2? The only Richards track I can get behind is Voodoo Lounge's "Thru and Thru."
Posted by: Aaron Aradillas | April 03, 2008 at 01:27 PM
"Goats Head Soup" is often overlooked, but I think there are some amazing songs on that album, namely "100 Years Ago" and "Winter." Agree with the Keith Richards comment. "Thru and Thru" was nicely used in "The Sopranos" if I recall correctly.
I finally saw "Cocksucker Blues" recently and didn't think it stood up to either "Gimme Shelter" or "Sympathy for the Devil."
Technically, I think the best Rolling Stones-related film would be "Performance." Worst: "Freejack"
Posted by: Nathan Duke | April 03, 2008 at 02:11 PM
Nice call on the UK Aftermath Aaron. I'd go with the UK Between the Buttons too.
Posted by: cjKennedy | April 03, 2008 at 07:46 PM
As for Richards...what, no love for You Got the Silver?
Posted by: cjKennedy | April 03, 2008 at 07:49 PM
I agree on "Sympathy For the Devil". It uniquely deconstructs the creative process, and I found that utterly fascinating. This same thing got me (to lesser degrees) in "Hustle and Flow" and "Once"- both films that take us inside the recording studio and share in the collaborative magic of creating music.
Posted by: Joseph B. | April 03, 2008 at 10:58 PM
Can anybody actually sit through those agitprop sequences nowadays? In one of them, Anne Wiazemsky--who was transcendent in "Au Hasard Balthasar"--stomps around a forest playing a character named Eve Democracy, offering one-syllable answers to a suite of inane questions like, "Does America love war?" (Answer: Yes)
Thank God for DVD technology, so we can skip ahead to the Stones sequences.
Posted by: Ray | April 04, 2008 at 01:08 AM
To answer your question, Aaron, "Let It Bleed" by a nose. And yes, "Some Girls" is underrated, and pretty great. Your comment about "Shattered" holding its own against similar punk songs is perhaps borne out by the fact that it was often covered live by Richard Hell and The Voidoids.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | April 04, 2008 at 11:55 AM
I did not know that.
Are there any recordings and/or live footage?
Posted by: Aaron Aradillas | April 04, 2008 at 01:46 PM
Yes, Aaron, it can be heard on the Matador-released Hell compilation "Time" from 2002. It's pretty damn raw—the Stones' original sounds rather tidy by comparison.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | April 04, 2008 at 02:05 PM
One of the nicer moments among many in the box set collection of Dick Cavett's Rock Legends shows is a brief early-70s interview he does with a gum-snapping Jagger in which he asks him if he thinks he'll still be doing this in his 60s. Without the slightest hesitation Jagger says "Oh yeah, definitely." Cavett, and the studio audience both chuckle, because of course back then it still did seem pretty silly. But Mick knew, maaaaaaan...
Posted by: | April 04, 2008 at 02:38 PM
There's a snippet from that interview in "Shine A Light."
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | April 04, 2008 at 09:42 PM