mrdeddy911 Reviews

Cocksucker Blues (1972)

Flashy RnR candy has dark center

[7/10 · 7 October 2006]

'Cocksucker Blues' is a cinema-verite style time capsule, filmed by American photographer Robert Frank, who functions as a sort of fly on the dressing room wall, so to speak. As such, comparisons to any other existing "rockumentary" are pointless.

The film is essentially a collection of real life situations captured during the Rolling Stones' infamous 1972 U.S. tour, when their celebrity status had reached critical mass. Viewers are sucked into the band's fishbowl existence, travelling from jet to hotel to venue, spending time, in many cases, in a surprisingly un-glamorous fashion.

If nothing else, the film lets the fan into the eye of the storm; the band's onstage performances are repeatedly set in contrast with their travelling constraints, while around them both the media and the public continually orbit in a veritable feeding frenzy.

The viewers' realization of what is the general event-less reality of a rock band's actual offstage touring experience--even more pointed, given the Stones' worldwide notoriety--makes the live musical highlights all the more impressive, and reveals insight into why no hotel room t.v. is safe from any rock band who can (or, sometimes, can't) pay for what they destroy.

The band's treadmill lifestyle, coupled with the fact that the group is all but isolated from their fans lends perspective to why touring bands tend to indulge in random acts of destruction, self and otherwise. Possibly the most inane segment of the film is the backstage presence of seriously unwelcome hangers on such as writer Truman Capote and Princess Lee Radziwill, tabloid-style jet setters for whom the Stones are merely the Flavour of the Week, their dressing room another place to be "seen".

Obviously, a tour film's main appeal is to the fans of the group. In the case of the Rolling Stones, their inner sanctum is harder to reach than almost any other, and considering the mythology that has built up around the band over the last 30 years, they deserve credit for having the courage to reveal their private world, warts and all.

Anyone who has seen the film can understand why it has never seen official release, and probably never will. And that just makes 'Cocksucker Blues' an even bigger treat for true fans of the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World. See it if you can; regardless of its' flaws, it's still an amazing document of yet another turbulent period in the amazing lifespan of this remarkably resilient band.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones (1973)

Band captured at the height of their mystique

[8/10 · 29 May 2006]

Like so many other Stones projects which involved onetime financial mastermind Allen Klien, 'Ladies & Gentlemen...' remains commercially unavailable due to the heaps of legal red tape tying it up, which is too bad because the film documents the immortal Rolling Stones at or near the very height of their powers.

With the violent Altamont debacle still fresh in everyone's memory, the band had fled England for the Cote' d'Azur in southern France as rock & roll's first tax exiles. It was there, in Keith Richard's £2,400-a-week seaside rental property, that the band created 'Exile on Main Street', their first and only double album, recorded in a sweaty, humid basement amid a hazy, narcotic swirl of Bacchanalian excess.

Dubbed the 'STP Tour', the band barnstormed across North America during June and July of 1972 selling out arenas everywhere, partly on the strength of their then-newest release and partly due to rising speculation that this would be the band's last road trip ever. The STP Tour was one of the first to usher in now-commonplace practices such as using dozens of semi-trailers to haul around a custom-made stage, a massive construct of rented lights, speakers and cables, not to mention a small army of technicians, security goons and bean counters getting it from place to place. The band themselves were attended to by a crew of hairdressers, luggage handlers, and other personal assistants, including Richards' own cadre of substance procurers, as he was in the throes of heroin addiction.

None of this seems to affect the band, however, who consistently deliver a powerful evening of spectacle; feeding off the fanaticism of the fans in the crowd and sending the energy back again, the concert builds to a fever pitch and ends so abruptly no one in the audience is aware than their wild cheers for an encore will never be answered, the band already en route to their hotel.

The hit singles are all here, as well as a slew of classics-to-be from the new album. The band, at all times following the eye contact and body gestures of Keith Richard, are on top form, masters of their craft, while Jagger, as the visual focal point, draws upon his decade-plus of experience in manipulating large crowds, teasing, jiving, grinning and gyrating, his skinny, hairless body contorting into one gigantic pout.

Unlike Stones tours of late, here it's just the band, along with two horns and a piano, much more authentic than the generic sweeteners heard in the last few years. The songs feel authentic, rather than watered down imitations of themselves, something the band has had trouble avoiding since bringing on their team of professional studio mercenaries. Even as mega-stars, once the music starts, it's not hard to tell they aren't necessarily there "for the money."

The other great thing is that the film's sound was, thoughtfully, recorded in true stereo, and attention was paid to quality of signal resulting in a really decent hi-fi live sound. Turn it up!

The STP Tour was marked by a new level of offstage debauchery, chronicled by Robert Frank in "C*cksucker Blues", the controversial cinema-verite film which was shot largely with hand-held cameras in various dressing rooms and hotel suites along the way. This film is yet another unreleased document of the summer of 1972, extremely hard to locate, but not impossible. Add to this the planned-but-never-released Decca live album from the same tour and there's enough bootleg material from the STP Tour to satisfy a Stones fan until, say, 1978 when 'Some Girls',their next great album and tour, came to be.

The only weak link is new boy Mick Taylor, thought by others to be a kind of guitar hero, but careful examination of what he actually plays reveals that it hardly matters what song the rest of the band are playing, at any given time Taylor invariably noodles over top of it, soloing whenever he can, which is almost every time Jagger isn't singing.

For my money, Ronnie Wood might not be half the pure musician that Taylor is, but he's got much more personality, and though the Stones are as strong musically as any other group might care to put up against them, at the end of the day it's the Stones themselves that attract the attention they've received all these years (To this day, many of their live versions of songs grind to an end in musical train wrecks). If it were different, guys like Yngwie Malmsteen would be cultural icons, too, and the satin jumpsuit would finally get more respect.

T.C. Shaw, May '06