Ladies
and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones – the concert film complement to Cocksucker
Blues
By
Zack
Wilson
The other week at Couch Thing we took a
closer look at the Rolling Stones’ famous ‘lost movie’ Cocksucker Blues, Robert
Frank’s fly on the wall ‘rockumentary’ about the band’s 1972 American tour.
While that film was suppressed for years,
and can only be seen these days thanks to some kind soul posting it on YouTube,
another film document of that 1972 tour was released in 1974.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones’ is
purely a concert film, and features the band playing many of the songs which
have since become standards.
The performances are taken from a number of
concerts on the tour, as can be seen from the band’s costume changes.
Most of those numbers were very new at the
time, of course.
If you want to know about the Rolling
Stones, a copy of this film is really all you need.
If you want to know what rock n roll used
to actually mean, this film is really you need.
And if you want to know why the Stones
acquired the soubriquet of the ‘greatest rock n roll band in the world’, this
film is really all you need.
The movie begins in darkness, and we hear
Chip Monck and other assorted road crew bantering away in the background, as
the call goes out that the Stones are on their way to the stage.
The excitement is palpable, even at this
distance in time and space, and when a clipped English voice announces, ‘Ladies
and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones’ then hairs will rise on the back of your
neck.
The band’s entrance onto the stage is
fantastic. Charlie Watts battering shit out of his drum kit in excitement, just
before Mick Jagger emerges.
Jagger is full of sneering, sexy bravado, a
skinny punk before punk was a thing, pointing at the crowd, challenging them,
confronting them.
Keith Richards emerges from the shadows
like the Prince of Darkness he wanted to be but never quite could manage, then
kicks the rest of the band into life with the intro to Brown Sugar.
Jagger immediately springs into life,
borrowing a lot from Tina Turner as he struts around the stage, delivering his
vocals like a world of pent-up energy is being released.
But that energy gets its fullest expression
the band’s next number, Bitch.
If anyone ever asks you to pinpoint the
essence of rock n roll, show them this performance.
Jagger is a whirlwind of denim-jacketed movement,
his gestures wired and tense, but also fluidly sexual.
The band drive through the song, high on
their own sense of exhilaration. The axis of Watts and Richards is perfectly
complemented by Bill Wyman’s underrated bass playing and Taylor’s supreme
ability on the guitar.
Taylor plays second fiddle to Richards
during the number, but it is his riff that grinds away under it, making it
complete.
Gimme Shelter, up next, falters a little
bit here, simply because the song’s epic and heartbreaking qualities were
almost impossible to recreate with this line-up.
Nevertheless, the grinding riffs from
Richards and Taylor working in perfect tandem make it more than just another
rock song.
Jagger also works so hard to make the song
at least a little bit transcendent that it’s hard to fault the performance, as
he moves around the stage in his silver jacket.
That graft from Jagger is really noticeable
all over these songs. It’s hard to point to a harder working front man in rock
history.
Despite the famed decadence off-stage, it’s
worth noting just what perfectionists the Stones were at that time when it came
to live performance.
Taylor’s guitar work is outstanding too,
and his wild licks come closest to capturing the sense of heartbreaking doom
that the recorded version of the song possesses.
Dead Flowers comes next, with Richards and
Jagger singing it almost as a duet. The interplay between the Glimmer Twins
here is fun to watch, and that sense of fun extends into Happy, Keith’s theme
song, which comes after.
Jagger’s reputation as a vanity ridden
egoist takes a battering during Happy. Keith was never a natural front man, and
it’s his old blood brother who takes most of the spotlight, even as he wiggles
his arse and points to Keith as the main man.
It’s Jagger’s vocals that keep the song
moving too, as Keith, perhaps understandably given the amount of heroin
coursing through his veins at this time, sometimes focuses more on his guitar
work than the vocals.
Tumbling Dice brings another epic Jagger
performance. In an interview conducted many years later, and available on DVD
versions of the movie, the singer admits that this song is tricky one to do
with no backing vocalists.
You never notice, though, as he drives the
song into epic territory almost as an act of pure will.
Then things calm down, as he announces
that, “We’re gonna do a blues for ya,” and asks if “anyone can ‘ear in the
back?”
That blues is Love in Vain and the song has
heartbreaking quality that should give the lie to the notion of the Stones
being cynical and insincere.
Some acoustic numbers follow, with Bobby
Keys and his sax taking deserved centre stage for a rousing version of Sweet
Virginia.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want follows,
and its brilliant and fresh performance here reminds us of what the song really
is, after it was adopted by some TV show wanker who became President of the
USA.
Keith’s emotive mannerisms as he strums his
favourite Telecaster tell you plenty about the Human Riff’s emotional
involvement in his work.
Richards never looks complete unless he is
holding a guitar, and the close-ups on him here show a man perfectly in his
element.
All Down the Line is one of the songs from
Exile on Main Street that appear in this film, and it’s enjoyable enough.
Midnight Rambler and its blues opera serial
killer storyline get the full Jagger treatment next, even though from a
distance of almost 50 years it’s difficult to appreciate just how chilling and transgressive
this song was, especially when performed like this.
Bye Bye Johnny is filler, it’s just giving
Keith a chance to play some Chuck Berry stuff, and it segues into an
unmemorable version of Rip This Joint.
Two iconic Stones classics complete the
set, with Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man played with an energy and
lightning fast purpose that they have lacked in live performance for decades.
The sense in the latter is that the
“marching, charging feet” might actually be about to kick the door down.
It’s worth noting the band’s additional
members at this time too. Bobby Keys and Jim Price provided a real blockbuster
sound on horns, while Nicky Hopkins and Ian Stewart (on Bye Bye Johnny) can be
heard on piano.
The Stones at this time were never a
five-piece, they were an eight-piece live band, and those guys deserve plenty
of credit.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you want to know
why the Stones remain such an iconic and fixed part of popular culture, watch
this movie.
But make sure you watch Cocksucker Blues
first.
Bio:
Zack Wilson is a writer from Sheffield, in the
North of England. He used to write short fiction and his novel is
available from Epic Rites Press. It's called Stumbles and Half Steps
and it can be purchased on Amazon
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