By Ruby Ephstein
THERE ARE FEW THINGS in life truly worth loathing, but received wisdom is undeniably this column’s noirest bête noir. Take “The Best Concert Movies of All Time” (Rolling Stone and Rotten Tomatoes) or variations such as “20 Greatest Concert Films” (The Guardian).
For one thing, the words “Pop” and/or “Rock” so implicit in those titles are missing, never mind “Soul”, “Jazz” and “Reggae”, much less any other musical genre. To these eyes and sensibilities, the two most uplifting concert scenes on screen could hardly offer a starker sonic or visual contrast: Bruce Springsteen and The E St Band’s 20-minute re-bonding on Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out from their 2000 NYC reunion (a gift from HBO that never stops giving) and, in Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s imperious impersonation of Lenny Bernstein electrifying Ely Cathedral in 1973, wringing out every ounce of his vast if not always pious passions conducting Mahler’s 2nd.
It feels safe to presume, nonetheless, that a classical music gig will never be a) called a gig, or b) qualify for one of the aforementioned Guardian or Rotten Tomatoes charts. The sticking-point, box-office-wise, is that orchestras are essentially dress-alike covers acts whose idea of stagecraft is leaning forward. So why not clarify matters? Why not bill the ones that do dominate said charts as “Gig Movies”? If nothing else, Mahler fans won’t get miffed.
For another thing, even now, in what may turn out to be their heyday, gig movies are far from 10 a penny. As a genre, unlike musicals, westerns, horror and noir, they’ve barely reached middle-age. Commemorating the inaugural pop/rock festival, Monterey Pop (1968) was the first member of the litter, though aside from Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar alight and Pete Townshend bashing his to bits, its impact was but a pinprick next to Woodstock (1970), the three-hour, multiscreen epic on which Martin Scorsese cut his teeth.
And because gig movies were only ever intended to be a secondhand experience, at best, and thus lacked box-office appeal, it has taken this century’s documentary boom, and the recent advent of simultaneous live Odeon transmissions, to thicken the best-of-breed contenders to any significant degree.
The latest nauseating spot of consensus has it that the best gig movie is Stop Making Sense. David Byrne’s baggy suit, an irresistible electro-funk stew and Jonathan Demme’s imaginative staging are all tremendous fun, granted, but ambition was limited. As Geoffrey Cheshire’s stirring essay for The Criterion Collection put it, this column’s choice, Gimme Shelter (1970), gave the Rolling Stones “what no one had bargained for: a terrifying snapshot of the sudden collapse of the sixties”.
Having only just seen the latter on a big screen for the first time, as part of a European re-release (you can stream it on Amazon), I can only concur wholesouledly with the view that, when it comes to cinema verité, the Maysles brothers’ sickening documentary of the anti-Woodstock, held on the West Coast at Altamont, struck the motherlode.
Sure, the cameras miss Marty Balin, the Jefferson Airplane vocalist, being knocked out by Hell’s Angels, foolishly hired as security (in exchange for a barrel of beer) and brandishing pool cues in a way even Ronnie O’Sullivan might never have countenanced. As it is, we get more than enough of the prelude (Balin mouthing off at the abusive leatherjackets) and the aftermath (Balin’s battered face). And those peace and love vibes at Hyde Park just a few months earlier, where Mick Jagger bid farewell to Brian Jones by releasing a fleet of doves and reading a poem by Shelley? Gone for good.
No scene in the annals of gig movies, nevertheless, is more chilling than when those beer-pumped Angels seize the mile-high, gun-toting Meredith Hunter as he advances towards the stage, then knife and bludgeon him to death.
There had been good reason to fear such a grisly outcome. Not only had Jagger been subjected to death threats, hence the insistence that no audience member be allowed to invade the stage; as he stepped off the helicopter on arrival, he was punched by someone he might reasonably have assumed to be a fan.
Watching him watch Hunter’s murder unfold on a monitor backstage is like surfing an emotional pendulum. No matter how you feel about rock’s first and foremost frontman, it would take an act of astonishing anatomic control not to gulp or shudder at the way his face slides from preening pride – in a terrific band performance, in the way the filming was going – to grim, guilty stupefaction. And the song he happened to be singing as Hunter was savaged? Sympathy for the Devil, what else?
In The New Yorker, Pauline Kael, by no means a rock chick, derided it all as wish-fulfilment and a sham, alleging – wrongly, according to the Mayleses – that the show was designed and lit for the cameras. The ingredients, though, were all in place: a free festival headlined by their satanic majesties for 300,000 drugged-up if not loved-up fans at a San Francisco speedway track in the final month of the most radical yet delusional of decades.
“I think it affected all of us very profoundly,” guitarist Mick Taylor reflected on recordings released only last year. “The only thing we were very upset about was being accused and held responsible for what happened. You can’t really blame anybody in that kind of mass hysteria.”
Nonetheless, Don McLean’s dream that drums and wires could “save your mortal soul” was in tatters. On American Pie, there was nothing ambivalent about his allusions to Jagger (“Jack Flash”): “I saw Satan dancing with delight the day the music died.”
Well, it didn’t die, did it? And Jagger, who has done more than most to keep it alive and rocking, certainly didn’t deserve crucifixion. Understandably, forgivably, he still shies clear of the topic with religious fervour. Even so, one can only imagine how many times his nights have been ruptured by those visual scars.
On the infinitely brighter side, the Stones were in marvellous nick for the Maylses, majestic as well as satanic. MC Mick struts like a coked-up peacock, the consummate rabble-rouser; Bill Wyman cuddles his bass and plucks it with infinitely more dexterity than you ever remembered; from the opening chords of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Richards and Taylor’s complementary twin guitars – so much more diverse and fascinating than the riff-heavy Keef-Ronnie combo – lock into a funky fusion of flying fingers. Needless to add, Charlie was bloody good that night too.
And, as you watch them, you can’t help but be reminded why the other act you’ve known for all these years has now been going more than half a century longer than Sgt Pepper’s squabbling slackers. Love ’em or merely tolerate them (how can you possibly loathe an octogenarian-led band that can still persuade tens of thousands of Brazilians to stump up a week’s wages to see them?), the Stones remain England’s hardiest Sixties tribute act.
Within five years of Altamont, they would be in freefall recording-wise, yet even now, the sellouts (literal, never spiritual) persist. Mick and Keef have pretty much always known that sticking to the same seat in the same carriage on the same track could pay considerable dividends. Happily, Gimme Shelter, which showcases the chemistry responsible, works as celebration as well as damnation.
Top 10 Gig Movies
- Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
- Live In New York City (Bruce Springsteen & The E St Band)
- The Last Waltz (The Band, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters et al)
- Summer of Soul (Stevie Wonder, Sly & The Family Stone, Nina Simone, Staple Singers et al)
- Stop Making Sense (Talking Heads)
- Get Back (The Beatles)
- Sign O’ The Times (Prince)
- Monterey Pop (Jimi Hendrix, Mamas & Papas, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar et al)
- Live At Pompeii (Pink Floyd)
- Woodstock (Janis Joplin, The Who, Santana, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joan Baez et al)
The satanic majesty of Gimme Shelter
By Ruby Ephstein
THERE ARE FEW THINGS in life truly worth loathing, but received wisdom is undeniably this column’s noirest bête noir. Take “The Best Concert Movies of All Time” (Rolling Stone and Rotten Tomatoes) or variations such as “20 Greatest Concert Films” (The Guardian).
For one thing, the words “Pop” and/or “Rock” so implicit in those titles are missing, never mind “Soul”, “Jazz” and “Reggae”, much less any other musical genre. To these eyes and sensibilities, the two most uplifting concert scenes on screen could hardly offer a starker sonic or visual contrast: Bruce Springsteen and The E St Band’s 20-minute re-bonding on Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out from their 2000 NYC reunion (a gift from HBO that never stops giving) and, in Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s imperious impersonation of Lenny Bernstein electrifying Ely Cathedral in 1973, wringing out every ounce of his vast if not always pious passions conducting Mahler’s 2nd.
It feels safe to presume, nonetheless, that a classical music gig will never be a) called a gig, or b) qualify for one of the aforementioned Guardian or Rotten Tomatoes charts. The sticking-point, box-office-wise, is that orchestras are essentially dress-alike covers acts whose idea of stagecraft is leaning forward. So why not clarify matters? Why not bill the ones that do dominate said charts as “Gig Movies”? If nothing else, Mahler fans won’t get miffed.
For another thing, even now, in what may turn out to be their heyday, gig movies are far from 10 a penny. As a genre, unlike musicals, westerns, horror and noir, they’ve barely reached middle-age. Commemorating the inaugural pop/rock festival, Monterey Pop (1968) was the first member of the litter, though aside from Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar alight and Pete Townshend bashing his to bits, its impact was but a pinprick next to Woodstock (1970), the three-hour, multiscreen epic on which Martin Scorsese cut his teeth.
And because gig movies were only ever intended to be a secondhand experience, at best, and thus lacked box-office appeal, it has taken this century’s documentary boom, and the recent advent of simultaneous live Odeon transmissions, to thicken the best-of-breed contenders to any significant degree.
The latest nauseating spot of consensus has it that the best gig movie is Stop Making Sense. David Byrne’s baggy suit, an irresistible electro-funk stew and Jonathan Demme’s imaginative staging are all tremendous fun, granted, but ambition was limited. As Geoffrey Cheshire’s stirring essay for The Criterion Collection put it, this column’s choice, Gimme Shelter (1970), gave the Rolling Stones “what no one had bargained for: a terrifying snapshot of the sudden collapse of the sixties”.
Having only just seen the latter on a big screen for the first time, as part of a European re-release (you can stream it on Amazon), I can only concur wholesouledly with the view that, when it comes to cinema verité, the Maysles brothers’ sickening documentary of the anti-Woodstock, held on the West Coast at Altamont, struck the motherlode.
Sure, the cameras miss Marty Balin, the Jefferson Airplane vocalist, being knocked out by Hell’s Angels, foolishly hired as security (in exchange for a barrel of beer) and brandishing pool cues in a way even Ronnie O’Sullivan might never have countenanced. As it is, we get more than enough of the prelude (Balin mouthing off at the abusive leatherjackets) and the aftermath (Balin’s battered face). And those peace and love vibes at Hyde Park just a few months earlier, where Mick Jagger bid farewell to Brian Jones by releasing a fleet of doves and reading a poem by Shelley? Gone for good.
No scene in the annals of gig movies, nevertheless, is more chilling than when those beer-pumped Angels seize the mile-high, gun-toting Meredith Hunter as he advances towards the stage, then knife and bludgeon him to death.
There had been good reason to fear such a grisly outcome. Not only had Jagger been subjected to death threats, hence the insistence that no audience member be allowed to invade the stage; as he stepped off the helicopter on arrival, he was punched by someone he might reasonably have assumed to be a fan.
Watching him watch Hunter’s murder unfold on a monitor backstage is like surfing an emotional pendulum. No matter how you feel about rock’s first and foremost frontman, it would take an act of astonishing anatomic control not to gulp or shudder at the way his face slides from preening pride – in a terrific band performance, in the way the filming was going – to grim, guilty stupefaction. And the song he happened to be singing as Hunter was savaged? Sympathy for the Devil, what else?
In The New Yorker, Pauline Kael, by no means a rock chick, derided it all as wish-fulfilment and a sham, alleging – wrongly, according to the Mayleses – that the show was designed and lit for the cameras. The ingredients, though, were all in place: a free festival headlined by their satanic majesties for 300,000 drugged-up if not loved-up fans at a San Francisco speedway track in the final month of the most radical yet delusional of decades.
“I think it affected all of us very profoundly,” guitarist Mick Taylor reflected on recordings released only last year. “The only thing we were very upset about was being accused and held responsible for what happened. You can’t really blame anybody in that kind of mass hysteria.”
Nonetheless, Don McLean’s dream that drums and wires could “save your mortal soul” was in tatters. On American Pie, there was nothing ambivalent about his allusions to Jagger (“Jack Flash”): “I saw Satan dancing with delight the day the music died.”
Well, it didn’t die, did it? And Jagger, who has done more than most to keep it alive and rocking, certainly didn’t deserve crucifixion. Understandably, forgivably, he still shies clear of the topic with religious fervour. Even so, one can only imagine how many times his nights have been ruptured by those visual scars.
On the infinitely brighter side, the Stones were in marvellous nick for the Maylses, majestic as well as satanic. MC Mick struts like a coked-up peacock, the consummate rabble-rouser; Bill Wyman cuddles his bass and plucks it with infinitely more dexterity than you ever remembered; from the opening chords of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Richards and Taylor’s complementary twin guitars – so much more diverse and fascinating than the riff-heavy Keef-Ronnie combo – lock into a funky fusion of flying fingers. Needless to add, Charlie was bloody good that night too.
And, as you watch them, you can’t help but be reminded why the other act you’ve known for all these years has now been going more than half a century longer than Sgt Pepper’s squabbling slackers. Love ’em or merely tolerate them (how can you possibly loathe an octogenarian-led band that can still persuade tens of thousands of Brazilians to stump up a week’s wages to see them?), the Stones remain England’s hardiest Sixties tribute act.
Within five years of Altamont, they would be in freefall recording-wise, yet even now, the sellouts (literal, never spiritual) persist. Mick and Keef have pretty much always known that sticking to the same seat in the same carriage on the same track could pay considerable dividends. Happily, Gimme Shelter, which showcases the chemistry responsible, works as celebration as well as damnation.
Top 10 Gig Movies
- Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
- Live In New York City (Bruce Springsteen & The E St Band)
- The Last Waltz (The Band, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters et al)
- Summer of Soul (Stevie Wonder, Sly & The Family Stone, Nina Simone, Staple Singers et al)
- Stop Making Sense (Talking Heads)
- Get Back (The Beatles)
- Sign O’ The Times (Prince)
- Monterey Pop (Jimi Hendrix, Mamas & Papas, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar et al)
- Live At Pompeii (Pink Floyd)
- Woodstock (Janis Joplin, The Who, Santana, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joan Baez et al)
The Whistler 