In this footage shot by the Maysles brothers on December 6, 1969 for the film Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead wait for a helicopter on a pier in San Francisco to take them to the Altamont Speedway.
Jagger, in not so sympathetic devil-mode, foppishly preens and sashays like rock royalty, much to Jerry Garcia’s amusement, while attempting to force an unyielding Charlie Watts to bestow a kiss upon a groupie’s forehead. As Jagger continues to egg Watts on, Charlie responds with the classy retort “Love is much more of a deeper thing than that.. it is not flippant, to be thrown away on celluloid.”
Later that day, the whip would come down.
This footage never appeared in the final cut of Gimme Shelter. It did eventually turn up on DVD as part of the Get Yer Ya Ya Yas Out boxset.
Michael Azerrad has written an insightful piece on The Gimme Shelter outtakes on his blog.
Well, it’s certainly an improvement over some of the other outfits he wore that decade…
Although there is much debate about when the Rolling Stones “peaked” or what their last decent album was—I still loved Goat’s Head Soup, thought It’s Only Rock & Roll was okay and felt the same about Black & Blue. I drew the line at Some Girls. You may feel differently—having said that, music aside, what about Mick’s clothes from about 1970 onward?
His fashions started going downhill a lot earlier than the music did.
For a guy who dressed so damned cool in the 60s, by the time this short live show was shot at London’s famed Marquee Club in 1971, Jagger’s much-vaunted fashion sense had clearly turned to shite. The guy who looked so spooky and satanic in the Uncle Sam top hat and cape get-up during the 1969 tour was now wearing a glittery mid-drift “top” with a sideways-cocked, multi-colored silk baseball cap???
Imagine what the rest of them thought when they realized they had to go onstage with this git dressed like this… It’s a great set, Mick Jagger just looks like a bit of a dork here.
Setlist:
Live With Me, Dead Flowers, I Got The Blues, Let It Rock, Midnight Rambler, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Bitch, Brown Sugar.
Formed by Martin Atkins (ex-Public Image Ltd drummer, and member of Killing Joke, Ministry and PIgface), Opium Jukebox are a Bhangra tribute band, who released some rather stonking cover albums of the Sex Pistols (Never Mind the Bhangra Here’s Opium Jukebox), The Rolling Stones (Sticky Bhangra), Black Sabbath (Bhangra Bloody Bhangra), and a rather fab industrial compilation of various artistes including Nirvana, Soft Cell and Gary Numan, Music to Download Pornography By.
Well worth getting acquainted with, so here’s a small selection of their covers:
The Stones interviewed at the Sea Way Motel in Montréal for Canadian teen music show Like Young. April 22, 1965.
Jim McKenna (Montreal’s Dick Clark) is doing the interview. I love it when he asks Charlie whether he planned to go back into fashion design once his music career was over.
Anyone who thinks punk rock started with The Ramones or The Sex Pistols should take a look at this video. Watts and Wyman can barely conceal their disdain for the whole pop star thing. Keith is totally elsewhere, Jagger seems slightly bemused but mostly restless while Brian manages some bad boy charm as he actually takes the time to answer the questions.
The story is told of a furious George Harrison storming out of a Beatles recording session in 1969 and then going to see a Ray Charles concert in London. Billy Preston (who Harrison had met in 1962 when Preston was playing in Little Richard’s group) was performing with Charles. Harrison invited Preston to come into the studio with The Beatles where his friendly personality and musical talents calmed the rising tensions within the band.
Billy Preston was the only musician the Beatles ever credited alongside them, for his contribution to “Get Back.” The song was also performed in the rooftop concert of the Let It Be film with Preston in tow (see below). John Lennon allegedly proposed the idea of inviting Preston to be the “Fifth Beatle” but Paul supposedly replied that it was bad enough already with four. (Preston also played on Abbey Road’s “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and “Something.”)
Musical prodigy Preston played with gospel legends Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland, and Andrae Crouch. In 1963, at the age of sixteen, he played organ on Sam Cooke’s Night Beat. Preston was also a frequently featured performer on ABC’s musical variety series Shindig! and a member of the house band (lots if clips on YouTube). Below, Billy Preston performs “Agent Double O-Soul” with Ray Charles. Check out his moves!
He recorded a great song in 1965 with a young Sly Stone called ““Can’t She Tell?” that was produced by David Axelrod. Do yourself a favor and hit play:
His 70s solo career saw his friendship and professional association with George Harrison continue. Preston appeared onstage at the Concert for Bangladesh and his records came out on the Apple label. His first really big solo hit was “Outa Space” which sold a million copies and won the Grammy for “Best Pop Instrumental Performance of 1972”:
Preston also played on several 70s Rolling Stones albums Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, Goats Head Soup, It’s Only Rock’n Roll and Black and Blue. He toured as a support act on their 1973 European Tour and played with the band as well. Mick Taylor played guitar on Preston’s live album. In 1974 he co-wrote “You Are So Beautiful” with his songwriting partner Bruce Fisher (and an uncredited Dennis Wilson) for Joe Cocker.
In 1964 The Rolling Stones played at Kurhaus concert hall in the Netherlands and all hell broke loose. The concert lasted less than a half an hour as kids went nuts, throwing chairs, rushing the band, moshing in the pit and stage diving. The joint was wrecked. Keith Richards later said that girls underwear was hanging from the chandeliers. That’s what I call fucking punk rock!
In this amusing video, Bill Wyman watches the riot footage for the first since the day of the concert and comments on what it was like to be there.
Produced by the The Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham and directed by Peter Whitehead Charlie Is My Darling documents the band’s 1965 two city tour of Ireland. A somewhat haphazard affair, the film is none-the-less a fascinating glimpse into the life of The Stones on the road, backstage, performing and getting drunk. It also includes some footage of fans rioting at London’s Royal Albert Hall which was later inserted at Oldham’s behest to make the movie more commercial.
Whitehead directed one of the seminal films about the swinging sixties, Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London, and the exhilarating documentary of the infamous beat poet gathering at Royal Albert Hall, Wholly Communion. After seeing Wholly Communion, Oldham picked Whitehead to direct a freewheeling film that would compete with the success of the Beatle movies. The result was something a bit darker and rougher than anything produced by the Beatles at the time.
Charlie Is My Darling was given its premiere at the Mannheim Film Festival in 1966 when Joseph von Sternberg was Director of the Festival. He said - “When all the other films at this festival are long forgotten, this film will still be watched - as a unique document of its times.”
Filmed over three days in Dublin and Belfast, the film captures the boys in all their pristine and unspoilt pagan energy and satanic glory - soon after the release of their first big single in America - the record which established them there - “I can’t get no satisfaction”.
The passionate stage performances are finally wrecked by fans getting on the stage - the boys have to flee for their lives over railway lines when they arrive in Belfast. Scenes in the dressing room are highlighted by Keith playing acoustic Blues guitar - showing what a master he was on the guitar, and how serious he had always been about Blues music. Interviews with Charlie and Bill are very revealing - but most poignant of all is the interview with Brian Jones in which he discusses his threatened future as a Rolling Stone. Speaking only of ‘time’ and ‘insecurity of his future as a Rolling Stone’, he seemed already unconsciously aware of his fate. Did he not deliberately bring it upon himself?
The film ends with the legendary scenes of Keith and Mick drunk in the hotel ballroom - Keith playing the piano (extremely well!) and Mick doing an accurate and subversive impersonation of Elvis.”
The rights to Charlie Is My Darling and its soundtrack became entangled in legal problems when Allen Klein took over management of The Stones. Klein had a rep for being difficult (which is putting it kindly) when it came to controlling the band’s assets. So the original cut of the film was never released on video. A DVD version was released in England with a soundtrack of generic instrumental pop as background music and is basically unwatchable.
On September 23, 1966 The Rolling Stones played Royal Albert Hall. It was their first gig in England in more than a year. During their opening number, “Paint It Black,” several hundred teenyboppers went apeshit and rushed the stage. A few broke the police barricade. A mini-riot ensued. Footage from the chaotic concert was used in the 1967 promo video for “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?”
The following video begins with raw footage of the Royal Albert Hall fan frenzy followed by the promo for “Have You Seen Your Mother,Baby, Standing In The Shadow?”
The Stones on The Arthur Haynes Show in 1964. Great quality.
While Keith is strumming and bobbing his head like one of The Beatles, Brian adds some serpentine slide to “I Wanna Be Your Man” that makes this terrific performance particularly groovy and sexy.
Arthur Haynes was a popular British comedian who had a successful TV show on the BBC that ran from 1957 to 1966. His show was broadcast live and there’s little surviving footage.
Segments of this seldom seen Stones’ set appeared in the video documentary ‘The Continuing Adventures Of The Rolling Stones’ which is no longer commercially available.
From the same show, a short but very sweet interview with Brian Jones after the jump…
Moody, 2006 short by filmmaker Sam Green meditates on the death of Meredith Hunter, the young man stabbed by a Hells Angel at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont Free Concert, and buried in an unmarked plot, “lot, 63, grave C,” which gives the film its title. While co-directing his documentary, The Weather Underground, Harris heard and read over and over again how Meredith’s death signaled the end of the 60s, the end of hippie, the end of the Woodstock nation, etc, but realized that he never knew anything about, nor had he even seen a photograph of Hunter, whose death was supposedly this pivotal generational loss of innocence event.
It’s interesting to note how time often sands off the finer details of an event like Altamont (even as there is a visual document of the exact moment Meredith was killed in Gimme Shelter, the classic documentary by David and Albert Maysles). Normally, as the story is told, the Hells Angels were hired on the advice of the Grateful Dead for “security,” something denied by Angels leader Sonny Barger (who said they were told that if they kept people from crawling on the low stage area, they could drink free beer all day) as well as the Stones themselves. Still, some 40 years later, it’s generally “remembered” that the Hells Angeles were the ones causing all the problems—not that they were innocent, just ask the Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin, who was knocked unconscious by one—but the not-so insignificant detail that Meredith was brandishing a double-barreled gun tends to be conveniently forgotten by contemporary writers, as if Hunter (who was also on speed at the time) was somehow an “innocent.” caught up in drunken, drugged up biker violence This clearly wasn’t the case.
I’ve even read accounts that said Hunter was targeted by the Angels for having a blonde, white girlfriend, which even if it’s true—and I have no trouble imaging that—still doesn’t excuse the fact that the guy pulled out a big fucking gun and rushed towards the stage! (The jury must have agreed, Alan Passaro, the Angel who was arrested and charged with murder for Meredith’s death, was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense when the jury viewed the Maysles’ footage. Passaro was found dead in 1985 with $10,000 in his pockets).
One final, not exactly “fun” factoid considering the matter at hand, but here goes anyway: George Lucas was one of the cameramen at Altamont. His camera jammed early on, so none of his footage could be used in Gimme Shelter, but how fascinating he was present, eh?
Postscript: As a result of Sam Green’s short, a headstone was purchased for the grave of Meredith Hunter.
British TV show ‘Ready Steady Go!’ devoted an entire program to The Stones in 1966. I’ve seen this in bits and pieces on Youtube, but never in its entirety and never in such pristine quality.
As someone who preferred Brian Jones-era Stones to the later stuff, it’s delightful seeing Brian looking so healthy and beautiful.
Many of The Rolling Stones’ pre-1966 hits were never released in stereo. For example Satisfaction, although originally recorded in stereo, was released only in monophonic sound.
In the mid-80s a true stereo version of Satisfaction appeared on Japanese and German editions of Hot Rocks 1964-67, which are long out of print. They’re available from collectors, but expensive.
In this true stereo version of Satisfaction, you can hear instruments that were mostly inaudible on the mono version. Brian Jones acoustic guitar (left channel) and Jack Nitzsche’s piano are now much more present, particularly Brian’s guitar.
We’re so accustomed to hearing the mono mix, that at first, the stereo mix seems too airy, the stereo spread too wide, the result slightly flabby and lacking punch. We miss the stripped down, punky, intense edge of the mono version. But, after repeated listening, the stereo version yields its own charms, a different but satisfying (pun intended), experience.
If for no other reason than to hear Brian’s guitar with such clarity, the true stereo version of Satisfaction is a great discovery.
