BEFORE: It's really helpful that the Rolling Stones appeared in archive footage in "Long Strange Trip" - I was hoping they would, even though they were not listed in the IMDB as such. But now I can drop "Gimme Shelter" from my chain, which makes me happy because I believe that I've seen it before, and I don't want to get credit for a film previously seen. This project is for watching only films that I have NOT seen, and since I've owned a copy of that 1970 concert film for a long while (possible taped off VH-1 Classic or such) now I can drop it, and the number of films in the Rockumentary chain returns to a nice, round 50 films.
So, I can say after 10 films now that I'm 20% of the way through the chain. So still much more ground to cover, but 20% is a good marker of progress having been made. 40 films still to come, which will last me until the first week of September - and now I get to finish a day earlier than planned. Ten films in, I did a quick count of who's appeared the most, and so far the leader is Jimi Hendrix with 6 appearances, counting concert footage and archive interviews. Tied for second place with 5 appearances are Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Paul McCartney - with three Stones-centric films on the docket, plus more guest appearances to come, things are looking good for Jagger at the end of the year.
I'm going to quickly re-watch "Gimme Shelter" this afternoon, in preparation for "Crossfire Hurricane", which I'm sure will reference the famous Altamont concert which is not only the connection between the Grateful Dead and the Stones, both acts played there, but is unfortunately famous for the fact that the Hell's Angels stabbed and killed a concert-goer there. That act does not appear in the film, so don't look for it - and in fact, if you want to see the guy get stabbed, you should sit down and take a long, hard look at yourself and ask yourself why you would want to see that.
"Gimme Shelter" is a film with a number of structural problems - there are too many shots of the Stones in the editing room, watching the concert footage and talking about the incident with the Hell's Angels after the fact. This not only messes with the time-stream, but also gives away the ending at the start of the film. Though, to be fair, it was in all the newspapers. But the concert film "Woodstock" managed to play out in real time, starting with the set-up for the event, the planning at the location, rock stars flying in by helicopter, fans driving and walking to the concert location, and then from there it plays out (more or less) in chronological order, the late-night concerts are followed by Wavy Gravy's announcement of breakfast the next morning, and so on.
In "Gimme Shelter", we see the Stones perform a few numbers, then it's back to the editing room (because watching the film over Mick Jagger's shoulders, and seeing Keith Richards lying on the floor is SO visually interesting...NOT) and then another Stones number, followed by lawyer Melvin Belli on the phone, arranging the concert and venue and such. This is not why people tuned in, to see the legal negotiation for the use of Altamont Speedway. The only possible reason to include this footage is to demonstrate after the fact that lawyers WERE involved, and that the parties involved did their due diligence before just playing a free concert with minimal security. And again, that tips off the ending. THEN we see Ike & Tina Turner perform as an opening act (I assume) and then it's time to start (??) the concert. Did anyone here understand the order in which things happened?
The only thing I can think of is that someone said, "Let's deal with the elephant in the room" and moved all talk of the dead fan up to the start of the film, to get it out of the way. Then there are shots following of people crowding the stage, and security people clotheslining them, and pulling them away from Mick Jagger. Later, more shots of Hell's Angels roughing up people who wouldn't give the roadies enough space to work. So the whole event may have been well-intentioned, but it was a complete mess. That's reflected in the jumbled structure of the film, maybe? I don't know. Maybe I'll get some more understanding about what went down at Altamont in tonight's doc.
Ah, a check on Wikipedia explains that the footage of the Stones seen early in "Gimme Shelter" is from their earlier concert in Madison Square Garden, and so is the footage of Ike & Tina Turner performing. That clears up SOME of the time-jumping, but not why the Stones are seen before the concert listening to audio of someone on the radio talking about the guy being stabbed, when that hasn't happened yet.
People erroneously believe that the stabbing took place during the performance of "Sympathy for the Devil" - fans of irony, perhaps, considering the presence of the Hell's Angels, but it was really during "Under My Thumb" - and then the next song seen in the film is "Street Fighting Man", which might be ironic for real. The stabbed man, however, was later determined to be high on meth, and was storming the stage with a gun - so who's to say that a worse tragedy wasn't prevented? It's up for debate.
Also, it appears that the Grateful Dead never played at Altamont, the "Gimme Shelter" movie shows them arriving for the concert, but then finding out that there was some trouble with the Hell's Angels punching Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane, so they left. Probably smart from a safety standpoint, given what came later, but perhaps also a terrible business decision.
Mick Jagger and two other Stones carry over from "Long Strange Trip". Yesterday was Mick Jagger's 75th Birthday, if you can believe that coincidence! OK, so I missed it by one day sort of, but I did re-watch "Gimme Shelter" on the proper day in honor of Mick's birthday, so I think I'm covered.
THE PLOT: Legendary British rock band The Rolling Stones mark their 50th year together.
AFTER: Whoever made this documentary conducted interviews with the Rolling Stones for their band's anniversary, but we're told at the start of the film that the Stones did NOT allow cameras in the room - so only new audio was created for this film. (Umm, you know a band is getting old when they don't allow anyone to see them, am I right?) So really, this is a compilation of a ton of archive footage, from concerts, news reports and previous interviews, to attempt to create something new, a de facto video history of the band. And they still brought it in under two hours, something the makers of "Long Strange Trip" really should have considered doing.
I think the footage sort of goes in reverse chronological order first, to give the audience the sense that we're stepping back in time, back to the band's early days, when they were the anti-Beatles, the villains to the Fab Four heroes. I mean, the Beatles caused teenage girls to scream and faint and go crazy, then the Stones did all that again, plus their music made teenage boys RIOT. I'm serious, whatever crazy stuff was going down in the U.K. in the 1960's, somehow somebody figured out that if you put Jagger and Richards and a bunch of other longhairs on stage, the shit was gonna go down, a riot was DEFINITELY going to break out, it was just a question of WHEN, and whether they'd make it through a full set before the theater would be destroyed.
So apparently there's a long history of people jumping up on stage at Stones concerts, back to the early days. And then if some lucky girl (or guy) managed to reach Mick Jagger, what was their goal? Tear off a piece of his clothing? Have sex with him right there on stage? Seriously, what's the end game here? But then usually this fan would be rewarded with a beatdown from security, so I hope the concussion was worth it, kids. This plays out as some kind of foreshadowing of Altamont, if you think about it - only the fans at Altamont were tripping on LSD, and many of them were also naked, and apparently in this state they love the Stones SO MUCH that they just HAVE to try to make it to the stage.
Yes, footage from the infamous Altamont concert is repeated here in "Crossfire Hurricane" and we can clearly tell that even the Hell's Angels were absolutely tripping balls, though probably on meth or crank instead of acid. One biker in particular looks like he's being tortured, as if he's ready to tear out all of his hair, or break into a cry, or possibly both. It's not hard to see what went wrong at Altamont, because if your security is a bunch of strong bikers who are put in a position of power, AND they're high AND some fans touched their bike, well, jeez, that's just a recipe for disaster. And yeah, you can totally see the guy in the lime green suit get stabbed, so I take back what I said above, but you have to know what to look for, and as I said before, why would you want to see that on film, anyway?
Before that, we get the news reports of Jagger and Richards being busted for drug charges (though the newspapers all referred to Keith RICHARD'S arrest, not Keith RICHARDS', so none of the British reporters apparently knew how to spell his name, or maybe the Brits do possessives differently?) and then there's the difficult decision to kick Brian Jones out of the band because he was doing too many drugs - or maybe it was the wrong KIND of drugs - and not contributing during studio work. Jones died a few months later, and the Stones had a free concert coming up that turned into a tribute to him, and if I didn't know better I'd think there was some suspicious timing there.
Then Keith got clean (or at least off of heroin) a couple years later, after being on trial and spending a short time in jail, getting released and agreeing to do a free concert for the blind in Canada as some sort of community service. I don't know whether Keith went all macro-biotic and health-conscious like some rockers do, or if he just found a better mix of chemicals that includes Captain America's super-soldier serum or something, but I firmly believe that he and Jagger will somehow outlive us all.
I never knew much about Mick Taylor (who replaced Brian Jones) before now, because I got into the Stones in college, shortly after I got into the Beatles (because that's a natural progression, right?) and by then, Mick Taylor had been replaced by Ronnie Wood. God, Mick Taylor looked so young when he moved from John Mayall's BluesBreakers to the Stones. He's kind of like the Bob Weir of the Stones, right? Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor - that had to be confusing, right? Then originally there was a guy in the band named Dick Taylor, so I don't know how anybody in the 1960's kept this all straight...
Also starring Keith Richards, Charlie Watts (both carrying over from "Long Strange Trip", Brian Jones (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child"), Bill Wyman, Ronnie Wood, Mick Taylor, Andrew Loog Oldham, Dick Cavett.
RATING: 6 out of 10 unpaid tax notices
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