A Piece of Rock ‘N’ Roll History

A few things are worth staying awake for, even till 2 AM on a Sunday night. The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, on public television last night, was definitely one of them.

I had no idea it was on. And I had no idea what it was. While casually flipping channels before calling it a night, suddenly there was this dated looking concert going on with a guitarist with a faint resemblence to a very young Pete Townshend in white bell-bottoms and platform heels going absolutely nuts on what looked like an in-studio soundstage. I kept watching, fascinated. And what followed was an absolute blinder of a performance by The Who…tight, spunky and with enough power and intensity to give me a buzz on nothing but some after-dinner orange juice…! The song was their rock-opera’ish medley ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’. It went on for about 10 minutes, and I couldn’t bat an eyelid.

It was only during a commercial break that I found out what I was watching. It was ‘The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus’, an event put together by the Rolling Stones way back in 1968 for television. Performed in front of a small invited audience, and it was shot inside a set resembling a circus tent with the audience outfitted in colorful cloaks and hats. And wait till you hear who else was on stage! Jethro Tull, Clapton, John Lennon, Taj Mahal, Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and of course, The Rolling Stones themselves! That all these legends got together for a single concert and the fact that two bands of the stature of The Who and The Rolling Stones played at the same concert is just fascinating. And while the Stones performed, among the audience, getting drunk and going wild, Taj Mahal, Lennon (with Yoko Ono tagging along all the time) and Townshend…an unbelievable scene straight out of rock and roll history! Legend has it that Mick Jagger had requested Brigette Bardot, and later, Johnny Cash, to host the show…but both declined, probably not inclined to associate themselves with a bunch of social misfits, who, back in 1968, were not really the type of characters you would want your children to emulate.

What is even more fascinating is the history of the film itself. It was organized by the Rolling Stones, but never saw the light of day. The recording went on for almost 20 hours, supposedly. The bands were exhausted and the cameras kept on breaking down. The Who were fresh back from a concert tour and set the stage on fire with their electrifying performance. But the Stones were a bit out of form, as it were, and were the last band to take stage, early in the morning. They felt it was not their finest performance. Added to that was the indignity of being upstaged by The Who at their own event. But that’s all conjecture and rock and roll intrigue. The fact remains that the movie was canned and never released. It was finally released in 1996, though The Who had used their performance footage in a later album.

All in all, a very entertaining piece of history, though surely not the best that these set of musicians ever put out. Besides the performance by The Who, another incredible set of the concert was by a ficticious band called ‘The Dirty Mac’ (so named, apparently as a nod to Fleetwood Mac, the most popular band of the time)…ficticious because it comprised of Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Keith Richards and Mitch Michell (whew !!). They turned out a ripping version of Lennon’s ‘Yer Blues’. Yoko Ono played the spoiler, as usual, when she came on in the next track and completey ruined it by some kind of wailing or mournful shrieking that she continued throughout the song, completely riding over Clapton and Keith Richards, who really looked like they wished she would go away. Never liked Yoko, never understood her so-called ‘art’…I think she was the biggest fake of 60s pop culture. The Stones looked and sounded great to me…though apparently Mick Jagger didn’t think so himself. Fans and they themselves probably compared it to their standard level of live performances. They breezed through Jumping Jack Flash, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Sympathy For the Devil and Salt Of The Earth, which was done sitting among the exhausted audience, with a completely drunk (or stoned?) Pete Townshend visible in the background, swaying with the song with a seat cushion on his head (!?).

This DVD is surely a collector’s item. I don’t really understand the Rolling Stones decision to withhold the release of it for 30 years, but they hold themselves to a high standard. Maybe they were right. It seems like a collector’s item now, but back in 1968 it may have looked like an extremely amateurish attempt at avant-garde rock ‘n’ roll art.

But on Sunday night, it surely gave me a high, making me wonder whether I was born in the wrong generation, rather that at a time when there was a certan earnestness and honesty in music (we’re, of course, not referring to Yoko Ono) in contrast to the manufactured lip-synching synchronized-dancing tv superstars of today.
 

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~ by Shubho on May 15, 2007.