The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

In December 1968 the Rolling Stones rented a soundstage, has a circus tent set erected, and paid Jethro Tull, The Who, Marianne Faithfull, Taj Mahal, Eric Clapton and John Lennon to perform, along with a bunch of performers from a tatty old circus called the Sir Robert Fossett Circus. The Stones themselves also performed several tracks from their new album, "Beggars Banquet" (the ostensible reason for this production).

The resulting footage was raw. Shot all in one marathon 18-hour session. By the time the Stones came on it was 5:00am in the morning, after numerous setups, multiple takes of everybody, camera failures, one lunch break, some recreational drug use.... Everyone was knackered. But Mick Jagger's performance was electrifying.

Unfortunately, Brian Jones died 7 months later. The Stones weren't happy with their performance anyway, feeling their exhaustion showed, so they shelved the whole project. Part of The Who's performance (they were straight off an Australian tour, and sharp as tacks) was released in "The Kids Are Alright" but the rest of the footage was stashed in Ian Stewart's barn and forgotten for 28 years. In 1996 it was rediscovered, pieced together, cleaned up and released on DVD.

With three commentaries. One by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the original director. One by some of the surviving musicians, including Mick Jagger, Ian Anderson, and Taj Mahal. A third I haven't played yet. Excerpts from a long 1996 interview with Pete Townshend about the project. Deleted footage, stills, etc.

Apparently (according to Pete) the original idea -- his, Mick's and Ronnie Lane's [of The Small Faces] -- was going to be to rent a train and go across America, stopping now and then to play shows inside a traveling circus tent. When it was pointed out to them that you can't just "rent a train" and go wherever you want in America, the idea was scaled way back.

Incidentally, the "go across Canada on a train playing concerts at every stop" idea was tried in 1970, and became a miserable failure. The movie "Festival Express" details the attempt -- featuring Janis Joplin, The Band, Grateful Dead, Flying Burrito Brothers, delaney & Bonnie... and wayyy too much booze and drugs.

The third commentary (partial) is by Marianne Faithfull.  The tail end of the second commentary, which I hadn't gotten to yet when I wrote the above, is by Yoko Ono.

In both cases these two ladies have incredibly self-centered memories.  When Pete speaks he talks about how great the other musicians were, when Mick speaks he talks about what a monumental undertaking it was, when Ian speaks he talks about the chaos of the times.

Yoko OTOH...  "John thought I was great.  Nobody understood what I was doing at the time, but today everybody sees it was great.  John and I were very cutting edge.  Today everybody is trying to do what I did back then."

Marianne says, "Everyone could see that I was beautiful and had this incredible figure, but I was more than that."

Neither one had a drop of talent.  They both drag the proceedings to a halt while they perform.

I am reminded of Pamela Anderson's post after Hugh Hefner died. "I was his favorite. He always told me I was the embodiment of the Playboy ideal. Hugh said he loved me. My fans who think I'm great like the same things about me that Hugh liked." This in a MEMORIAL TRIBUTE!

1.  This weekend I happened across a used copy of the Criterion edition of "Gimme Shelter", the film about the Rolling Stones' performance at Altamont in 1969 and -- arguably -- about "the end of the '60s."  I'd actually never seen the movie all the way through before.  I'm not a huge fan of the Stones, although their earlier blues band incarnation is palatable.  As a live band they tended to be incredibly sloppy and unprofessional -- only Bill Wyman is a master of his instrument.  Later -- mid-'70s/early-'80s? -- they stopped writing songs altogether and just began doing jams with repeated 3- or 4-note musical phrases, with Mick improvising modal lyrics over the top.  It's the worst kind of musical laziness.

Anyway, the film is a "movie within a movie" because it shows the filmmakers editing the footage, with the Stones in attendance, because of course the concert became famous for what happened offstage.  Some guy, Meredith Hunter, attempted to get up onto the stage (as did a number of other people, successfully) and when the Hells Angels prevented him, he pulled a gun (clearly shown in the film).  The Angels beat the crap out of him, and stabbed him, and he died.  I'd never realized that the guy who died had a gun, never actually heard that before.  In the huge booklet that accompanies the Criterion edition, Angel Sonny Barger speculates that the Angels saved the life of Mick Jagger or some other Stone, by preventing a gun-wielding crazy from getting on stage.  That's an angle I'd never heard discussed before, and puts a whole new spin on my opinion of what happened at Altamont.

The footage of a bunch of zonked-out-of-their-minds kids pushing through the crowd and rushing the stage kinda shows the seamy side of the 1960s, which wasn't all peace and love.  There is discussion in the film, one of the organizers was Mike Lang(?) from Woodstock, of how much money it costs to put on a "free concert" for stages, lighting, sound equipment, electricity, portapotties, transportation, security, cleanup, etc.  It was a crazy time when people willingly (and sometimes not so willingly) lost a ton of money.  And the crowds' thank you was to get stupid high and riot, essentially.  Altamont was one of the last.

2.  I started looking online to see what albums the Stones had released around the time of "Shelter" and discovered there was a UK version of "Aftermath" that was very different from the US version I owned.  It was common practice back then to put about ten songs, 35 or 40 minutes, on US releases and about 12-14 (45-50 minutes) on the British.  In many cases the US arm of the record companies simply took songs off willy-nilly and replaced them with the current singles.  Now, the British editions were usually very carefully sequenced, and flowed as a complete album with continuity and a unified sound.  I'd already discovered, a couple years ago, that the British version of "Between The Buttons" is a whole lot better album than the US version, and I'd downloaded the missing songs, sequenced them properly, and burned a UK version.  Now I did the same with "Aftermath" -- and the result is equally stunning.

3.  While poking around online googling "Rolling Stones" + "blues" I ran into an album somebody posted to YouTube containing a whole bunch of Stones blues songs I'd never heard before.  Turns out somebody took a bunch of B-sides of singles and rare album tracks, and assembled this collection him/herself.  It flows quite nicely as a collection.  It's not available for sale anywhere, so I downloaded the video and converted it to audio, cut it up into tracks, dropped a few songs which didn't meet the level of the rest, and burned myself a "new" Stones album.  Nifty.

4.  I also listened to excerpts from the Stones new "return-to-basics blues album."  It sucks.