BEFORE: Well, since this is the Summer Concert series, and since we still can't go see concerts in the real world, I'm going to get back to the virtual ones. Plus I wanted to start off August with a bang, a concert from the "Bigger Bang" Stones tour, in fact. I watched at least three Stones concert films two years ago on my last rockumentary go-round, and they were "Crossfire Hurricane" (which repeated the infamous Altamont footage from "Gimme Shelter"), "Olé, Olé, Olé - A Trip Across Latin America" and "Havana Moon". Those last two concert films were from the same tour, and released in 2016. For some reason, I skipped "Shine a Light", which was released in 2008, but recorded in December 2006, as a benefit concert for the Clinton Foundation.
I'm still five days behind where I'd planned to be, but delaying this film helped me line it up with some Rolling Stones anniversaries, according to "Today in Rock History". On August 1, 1994, The Rolling Stones turned down an invitation from President Bill Clinton to play at the White House. Well, I guess they made up for that in 2006 by letting Clinton introduce their show at the Beacon Theater. On August 1, 2013, the Stones charted their 50th LP on the Billboard 200 albums chart when "Hyde Park Live" debuted at #19.
Also, you won't see this in the history books, but the insiders will know this one - August 1, 2006 was the day that Keith Richards fell off the branch of a dead tree in Fiji, and suffered a head injury. He died the next day, but his reanimated corpse continued to tour with the Stones and play guitar for...well, it's been 14 years now and counting. So that's a sad story, but it kind of has a happy ending, right?
Dick Cavett carries over from "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" via archive footage. I hate to make a connection like this, through archive footage alone, but it still counts. I could have scheduled this one before based on appearances of Martin Scorsese, but I didn't want to break up the flow with Bob Dylan movies leading in to movies about The Band. Anyway, Scorsese also directed "Rolling Thunder Revue" and "The Last Waltz", and I wanted to get one more rock doc from Marty in here before I get back to fiction films.
THE PLOT: A career-spanning documentary on The Rolling Stones, with concert footage from their "A Bigger Bang" tour.
AFTER: Perhaps the reason that I skipped this film two years ago, when I watched the other Stones concert films, was that it wasn't available - not for free, anyway. It's still $3.99 to rent this one on AmazonPrime, and it's $3.99 on iTunes, too. But I watched it today for FREE on www.documentaryarea.tv - and maybe you can, too, if you want to play along at home. Sometimes I just don't understand the pricing structure on streaming platforms - does it make sense to charge money for a movie on one site and then give it away on another? Why would anyone pay for something that they can get for free? How would a store in the real world stay in business if the store down the street was giving away the same product it was selling? And why do I have to Google search every movie online just to compare prices? Why can't I just see the movie I want, when I want it, and know where to look for it? One day somebody's going to organize the internet properly in a way that makes sense - this is long overdue.
Early in the film, during the set-up portion, there seems to be much debate over the set-list. Which songs are the Stones going to play? (Umm, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say probably "Start Me Up" and "Satisfaction", call me crazy.). But I guess the director, Scorsese, needed to know what song was going to be FIRST out of the gate, so he could start telling the camera operators what to do, whether to open on Keith's guitar solo or Mick coming out on stage like a model at a Paris runway show. It's important, sure, but they just happened to have a camera RIGHT THERE when the director gets the final set-list, mere moments before the concert starts? After watching "Rolling Thunder Revue" I now don't know whether to trust Scorsese when he's making a concert film, because this seems like a very set-up sort of moment to include. Maybe he didn't get the set list early enough according to his arbitrary schedule, and he wanted to include a jab at Jagger for taking so damn long.
There also seemed to be a concern during set up about the lights that were needed for the IMAX shoot at the Beacon Theater. Because we really needed every single wrinkle in Mick and Keith's faces to be well lit, I get that. But the fear was, apparently, that too much light would somehow burn Jagger up, and he'd crumble to dust like a 3,000 year old mummy if you took away the mystical scarab that brought it back to life. OK, this does sound a bit believable, I'll admit. But let's get real, these men have hides like leather by now, and they're dressed like the outcasts from a "Mad Max" movie, all overcoats and scarves, so I think they're going to be OK under the harsh lighting - you just can't take these guys down, I think they could even go like a week without water if they needed to.
I'm not saying the Stones are old, but I think if you added up the ages of everyone who was in the audience at this Beacon Theater concert, would that total be greater than the combined ages of the four original Rolling Stones on the stage? I mean, there were a LOT of people in this audience, but most of them seemed to be in their twenties, so it may be a wash. And if you saw Charlie Watts at a senior living center, even if he was playing the drums at that senior center, outside of the context of a Rolling Stones concert, you'd probably just assume that he lived there, right? And again, this was back in 2006, they've added another 14 years since then, and they're still going. Jagger had some kind of heart valve surgery last year, then posted a video of him doing some signature moves, I guess to prove he was ready to go on tour again. Did that happen before Covid-19 shut down all rock and roll touring, in addition to all movie production? I'm not sure. Maybe the Stones are really done this time, because even if concerts start up again, they're all in that high-risk age group.
But let's get back to the set list for a minute. They went for some deep cuts here, some from "Exile on Main St." that I didn't know, like "Loving Cup" and "All Down the Line", and "Far Away Eyes" and "Some Girls" from the album, umm, "Some Girls". Yes, I'm sort of outing myself as a casual Stones fan, again I have all their Greatest Hits albums, plus only "Steel Wheels" and "Stripped", the latter of which was their version of the "Unplugged" trend that was very popular in the late 90's and early 2000's. ("Stripped" contains their cover of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", and I go back and forth over whether this was incredibly ironic, or extremely appropriate. But the lesser-known Stones songs that I know are all on "Stripped", like "Slipping Away", "The Spider and the Fly" and "Sweet Virginia".).
I didn't know "You Got the Silver", either, but that one has Keith singing lead, so there's the explanation for that. Jagger needed more breaks, I guess? Did he get tired jumping around during "She's So Hot", which I think was a solo hit for Jagger, released during that break-up period known affectionately as World War III? I guess those Jagger/Richards peace accords were successful after all, which is why solo material (though co-written by both parties) was included here. There were nods to Muddy Waters ("Champagne & Reefer", with Buddy Guy as a guest) and The Temptations ("Just My Imagination"). I can't say that I enjoyed the weird harmonies that Christina Aguilera was generating on "Live With Me" - Jack White did a much better job getting in synch with Jagger on "Loving Cup".
All this kind of goes to explain why there was no room for "Gimme Shelter"? That seems like a damn shame - after "Sympathy for the Devil" that's one of my favorites to hear in a Stones concert. Plus it's been featured in nearly every Martin Scorsese movie, from "Goodfellas" to "The Departed", right? It's really odd that it wasn't in this one. Personally, I'd prefer "Gimme Shelter" over "Shattered", "Tumbing Dice" or any of those deeper cuts, but I guess you can't have everything.
Still, it's a killer concert captured in great detail. As I mentioned, many people saw this in IMAX, and I remember all the jokes about whether or not we all needed to see the Stones that large, and in such detail. I found it to be perfectly fine on the smaller screen - my computer - and maybe a little less scary that way. Look, I'm glad the Stones were still going strong in their early 60's, and if I do the math Jagger was 73 at the time of "Havana Moon", but when are they going to pack it in? Everyone else that old retired already, except for Paul McCartney and David Crosby. It's not a competition, guys, although I guess on some level it sort of is. Just give the longevity award to the Stones already and be done with it, I say. I guess they just keep on going, because they all have child support payments to make - and Mick turned 77 just a few days ago!
OK, I'll admit I was kidding about the Keith Richards being dead, but for real, this was the concert where Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records and Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, fell down backstage and suffered a head injury on a concrete floor in the VIP area. At first I didn't understand how you go on and do a show when something like that happens, but it turns out he died about six weeks later, in December 2016. This accident happened on day 1 of the concert, but it turned out that the film only used musical performances from day 2, so maybe there was just a lot of bad mojo on October 29, right before Halloween - and the 2nd recording day was moved to November 1 because Mick Jagger had a sore throat.
Also starring Mick Jagger (last seen in "Filmworker"), Keith Richards (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Charlie Watts (ditto), Ronnie Wood (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Darryl Jones (last seen in "The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon"), Chuck Leavell (ditto), Bernard Fowler (ditto), Bobby Keys (last seen in "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul"), Lisa Fischer, Blondie Chaplin, Christina Aguilera (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Buddy Guy, Jack White, Bill Clinton (last seen in "Blood Diamond"), Hillary Clinton (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), and Martin Scorsese (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), with cameos from Bruce Willis (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Benicio Del Toro (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Albert Maysles, and archive footage of Brian Jones (also last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Bill Wyman (ditto).
RATING: 7 out of 10 Friends of Bill
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