14 July 2020

Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste

A few days ago I rewatched the Rolling Stones Rock 'n Roll Circus - the TV special recorded in a circus big-top on 11-12 December 1968 featuring the Stones in their last performance with Brian Jones and joined by plenty of their rockstar pals: John Lennon, Eric Clapton, The Who, Marianne Faithfull, Taj Mahal, and Jethro Tull. 

It wasn't released though for nearly 30 years, in part because Jones died around the time the film was going through final edits, but it's also often rumoured that Mick was (justifiably) dissatisfied with the Stones' performance in comparison with the limelight-stealing king hit of The Who's offering, the swaggering, bravura mini-rock-opera A Quick One, While He's Away, which was the prototype for the following year's record-smashing Tommy. 

And it's not often you get to see Lennon perform with Clapton, Richards and Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums, in the impromptu supergroup The Dirty Mac. But the less said about Yoko the better; suffice to say, Yer Blues is fine because she just sits in a black bag on the stage, but on Whole Lotta Yoko she shrieks into the mic for four minutes while the band plays and it's obviously god-awful.

To be fair, due to lengthy sequence setup times the Stones didn't get to perform their set until 4am (!) and therefore it's not surprising that Charlie, Bill and Brian look absolutely catatonic. Brian in particular was according to Pete Townshend a complete mess earlier in the day due to his drug addiction. But Mick gives a legitimately amazing lead performance in the Stones set, particularly on the climactic Sympathy for the Devil. And overall despite the somnolent Stones, this is still by far a superior performance to that given by the band in its other contemporary concert film, The Stones in the Park from July 1969, in which the band, recently bereaved of their former bandmate Jones and sporting brand-new new guitarist Mick Taylor, is remarkably loose and ill-rehearsed.  

Anyway, for those without the DVD, you can construct a fairly decent summary of proceedings via Youtube. So here's the best two-thirds of the film, if you can tolerate the ads:


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