We got some nice feedback from our recent package of stories about the new Rolling Stones documentary, “Shine a Light,” and its creator, the great Martin Scorsese. It’s refreshing in today’s throwaway world to know that some grizzled veterans like the Stones and Marty are still doing their thing and getting their just due for it.
For those of you who, like us, dig the Stones, surely you’re aware that their long and storied career has been well documented on film. If you didn’t know that, well then, let us enlighten you.
Taking nothing away from Scorsese and “Shine a Light,” our favorite Stones doc is “Gimme Shelter,” directed by the brother tandem of Albert and David Maysles. The film is a time capsule that documents the end of an era, literally and figuratively.
“Gimme Shelter” trails Mick, Keef and the boys on their 1969 U.S. tour. In December of that year, the Stones gave a free concert at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco, and more than 300,000 fans showed up. In one of the all-time great “what-were-they-thinking” moments in rock and roll, the show’s organizers hired the Hell’s Angels to provide security. That resulted in the murder of a fan that was captured on film by the Maysles.
The horrifying act put a grim capper on the idealism of the sixties.
The good folks at Criterion have put out an excellent edition of “Gimme Shelter” (I know, it’s in my collection), so check it out.
Another Stones film in my collection is the “Rock and Roll Circus,” which isn’t notable so much for the Stones’ performances as it is for their special guests, especially the thrown-together super group Dirty Mac (John Lennon, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell) playing “Yer Blues” and the Who, with an incendiary reading of “A Quick One While He’s Away.”
Two more Stones films to check out, if you can: Well, I can’t print the first word of the title of the first one, this being a family website and all. The second word is “Blues.” Anyone who knows their way around Google or YouTube can figure out the rest.
The film has never been released, and in fact is only shown when director Robert Frank, who’s now in his 80s, can be present at the screening. The doc follows the Stones on yet another tour, this one in 1972, and shows the accompanying sex, drugs and rock and roll in detail too rich to allow the Stones to give it a proper release, even though they’d commissioned it.
Not quite as obscure (it’s on DVD) is “Sympathy for the Devil,” shot by French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. The film is compelling if only for its fly-on-the-studio wall look at the Stones taking the song “Sympathy For the Devil,” from a loose outline to the classic it became.