. . . And in a Later, Long-Lost Film
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735804575536480021154228.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
NOVEMBER 15, 2010
By BILL WYMAN
These days, a Rolling Stones concert is a wholesome, stadium-size
affair, presented to folks who pay hundreds of dollars to attend. But
the quintet once rocked across the U.S. hinterlands in much different
fashion. In 1972, to promote the release of "Exile on Main St.," they
played smallish halls and delivered blistering renditions of their
darkest works for the benefit of unkempt fans paying $6.
"Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones" is a long-lost concert film
that presents a near-complete show from that tour. It was shown under
grandiose circumstances in some cities in 1974 but then relegated to
art houses; it never had a general release, nor was it officially put
out on home video.
The Rolling Stones had decreed that a truck full of equipment and an
engineer be on hand in each moviehouse to get the sound right苔nd
play it at the proper high volume. "We had a full rock-concert sound
system in every theater," recalls producer Marshall Chess, then the
band's manager.
But Rolling Stone magazine panned the film when it came out; several
other major critics of the era貞uch as Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus
and Ira Robbins苞ontacted for this article, said they hadn't seen it
or couldn't remember it.
The film's recent release on DVD and Blu-ray may give it the
attention it deserves.
"Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones" tried to re-create the
punishing concert experience of the time, right down to a long
sequence of crowd noise emanating from a dark screen before the band
is introduced. "This was the show from the best seat in the house,"
says Rollin Binzer, the film's director.
Robert Fries oversaw the shoot. "That's how we approached the entire
film," he says. "You were at a concert. You weren't looking at it.
You were part of it. You were inside the thing."
As a consequence, there are virtually no crowd shots, giving the film
an intense, insular feel. The band plays none of its lighter, earlier
hits. Almost everything is from the quartet of malevolent albums on
which the Stones' reputation still rests: "Beggars Banquet," "Let It
Bleed," "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile on Main St."
Charlie Watts's drumming crackles in unison with the bass of Bill
Wyman (no relation to this writer). Guitarist Mick Taylor looks
cherubic onstage, but his continuous leads虐e seems to be playing one
long sinewy solo throughout the film訃adiate clarity and authority.
Keith Richards, dissolute even then, had huge thatches of his hair
seemingly sheared from his head. (Other parts of it are dyed golden.)
He delivers his famous riffs觔n "Happy," "Gimme Shelter," "Street
Fighting Man"趴ith a proprietary flair. As for Mick Jagger, the
elements of his star quality負he hauteur one moment, the blinding
smile the next; the frenzied, utterly committed delivery; his
dominance of the stage苔re plain.
To Mr. Chess, who toured with the band throughout the 1970s, the
film's climactic sequence is a 12-minute version of the Stones song
whose subject would get an approving nod from a gangsta rapper: "It
was the best 'Midnight Rambler' ever," he says.
Mr. Jagger plays a furious harmonica as the band snaps into the
song's unsettling groove. The filmmakers at one point find him and
Mr. Richards in an iconic pose: Mr. Richards covered in blue light,
churning out the song's menacing guitar line; Mr. Jagger, next to
him, bathed in red, impossibly thin in a satin jumpsuit, lasciviously
undulating his hips. The song ends with Mr. Jagger raging in a fiery
Dionysian dance.
The movie's backstory is a tangled tale.
In 1972, the Rolling Stones were bloodied veterans. Their chief
rivals, the Beatles, were gone; Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim
Morrison were dead, and Bob Dylan was missing in action.
The band's chaotic 1969 U.S. tour had culminated in the infamous
Altamont concert, at which a fan was killed by Hell's Angels. The
1972 outing, designed to be more professional, was still a circus.
Riots marked the opening dates, even as celebrities like Truman
Capote and Lee Radziwill dropped in along the way. Mr. Jagger had an
emergency-room physician nearby in case he was hurt while performing.
Robert Greenfield, in his book "S.T.P.," detailed scenes of violence
and beatings, by police and security personnel, night after night.
The noted photographer Robert Frank, whose bizarre images of America
adorn the cover of "Exile on Main St.," was hired by the band to make
a backstage film of the tour. Mr. Chess says it was decided觔n the
fly負o shoot four shows in Houston and Fort Worth, Texas, to give Mr.
Frank concert footage. The manager called Mr. Fries and Steve
Gebhardt, veterans of cinematic projects with John Lennon and Yoko
Ono in New York, and sent them ahead to Texas.
But Mr. Frank's film, with its scenes of drug use and nude groupies,
was suppressed by the Stones and is rarely seen today. (It has a
two-word title, the second of which is "Blues" and the first of which
is unprintable.)
Mr. Chess showed the concert footage to his friend Mr. Binzer, one of
the hip young ad men of the era. Mr. Binzer recalls: "Marshall asked,
'Can we do something with this?'" Mr. Binzer thought they could.
Mr. Fries mixed the 16 tracks of sound down to four. The Stones liked
the results so much that the decision was made to present the new
movie in four-track surround sound.
That wasn't easy. "Theaters were lo-fi back in those days," notes Mr.
Binzer. So the filmmakers created travelling road shows, each with
what was said to be 10,000 pounds of speakers and sound equipment and
the sound engineer to fine-tune each presentation. Starting with the
Ziegfield Theatre in New York, the film was booked into select cities
for a week or 10 days, with concert-ticket sellers handling sales.
The new DVD and Blu-ray of the restored and remastered film include
footage of the band rehearsing and a 1972 interview with Mr. Jagger,
but not some of the other perks the film's original attendees got,
which included a Styrofoam Stones Frisbee and a live performance by a
glitter-covered hippie dance group called the Angels of Light. For
fans of the Stones, the dark magic of the band at its height should be enough.
--
Mr. Wyman is a former arts editor of Salon.com and National Public Radio.
.
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