Sitting on a Fence

So I went to see the Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones concert film over the weekend.

My short review: It's not as good as this.



That said, it's a beautifully staged and shot document of the current Rolling Stones on a pretty good but not great night. It drags a little toward the end -- Mick Jagger famously said he couldn't imagine singing "Satisfaction" when he was 60; I can't speak for Mick, but I can't imagine listening to him singing it again in the pro forma full-tilt boogie version he's been purveying since the early 80s -- and Christina Aquilera flat out sucks, although I must say it's amusing to watch Mick dry humping somebody young enough to be his granddaughter. But most of what's on view is vintage, including a hilarious "Far Away Eyes" and a gorgeous version of "You Got the Silver" sung by Keith Richards (in a long leather coat and sans guitar) as if his life depended on it. The band mostly sounds great, although they're still not even close to slick, and it's perhaps relevant to note that Keith has developed an extremely elastic sense of time in his old age. Here he plays behind the beat (sometimes, it seems, as long as five minutes behind) or simply pretends to be playing a chord, rather than actually playing one, when the mood strikes him. Apparently, at long last, he's finally turned himself into the broken-down 90-year-old black bluesman he's always wanted to be. As for Mick, meanwhile -- well, let's just say that however he's done it, he's found some way to stay Mick Jagger forever. In fact, short of supernatural, perhaps demonic, intervention, I simply can't conceive of how a 64 year old can carry on the way he does here.

In any case, the whole thing is definitely worth seeing, especially in a big theater (I saw it at the Ziegfeld in NYC, which is pretty much state of the art) and whatever you do, don't leave your seat until the final post-show, pre-credits sequence; otherwise you'll miss one of Scorsese's little visual jokes (think of the very last shot in "The Departed") and, in this case, a great one.

Heavy sigh: In one of the backstage sequences, we learn that Jagger was briefly considering including this fairly obscure early Stones beauty in the show's set list.



One of my all time favorite songs of the period, but alas, it was not to be.