Jet-Lagged Stones on Bootlegged Documentary

By Michael Heaton, the Plain DealerMay 13, 2010, 2:29PM

I still love and hate the Rolling Stones. They have always had a difficult relationship with their fans (Altamont anyone?) and the press. but on Tuesday, the band is releasing a newly remastered version of its 1972 double album “Exile on Main Street,” including a bunch of previously unreleased songs.

My new favorite radio station, WNWV FM/107.3, has been playing “Plundered My Soul” the first previously unreleased song from the new “Exile” package, and it has that raggedy, Southern-fried, junkie-eyed sound that became the signature rebel yell for the “greatest rock and roll band in the world.”

plain dealer file photoThe film was never released because the Stones felt that if the American government ever got a whiff of what their life on the road was like, they would never be allowed back in the United States. the Stones fought Frank in court and won a legal ruling ordering that the movie could only be shown if the director were present.

I watched it Saturday night on a computer. I was agog. if “Exile” is the greatest rock album ever made, as so many people claim, then this is the greatest rock film of all time.

Frank’s movie is 95 minutes of brilliant cinematic impressionism. Images, phrases and pieces of music repeat and overlap as they form an unraveling narrative. it was initially hailed for its unblinking eye on the sex, drugs and rock and roll on the tour. And that stuff is there. but there is so much more to it.

Beyond Keith and heroin (his drug of choice) and Mick and Bianca (his drug of choice) you see these guys at the peak of their creative power, turning the impressive trick of enjoying success while making it work for them.

Television interviewer Dick Cavett presses bill Wyman for drug gossip, and celebrities Truman Capote and Andy Warhol fawn backstage while taking photos. Tina Turner and Stevie Wonder open for the band, lending the Stones soul-roots credibility. Keith Richards nods off on a backstage bench, and the tone of the whole tour turns toward respectability when a bored-looking, but fabulously dressed, Bianca Jagger joins her husband for a leg.

Frank left spare cameras around so that anyone from a roadie to Mick Jagger could pick one up at any time and start filming. It’s a detailed and amazingly intimate portrait of one of the most secretive and closed cultures on the planet.

In the end, more normalcy than depravity is exposed. That’s probably what the band objected to most. They were captured as humans, rather than legends being themselves backstage, on airplanes and in hotel rooms.

It’s a movie I never thought I’d get to see. And due to the Stone’s lifelong, impossibly fussy, rock-royalty attitude toward their fans, the film was a huge pain in the butt to find and even harder (technologically) to watch.

But as always with the Rolling Stones, totally worth it.

Jet-Lagged Stones on Bootlegged Documentary

Related Websites

• Rolling Stones’ ‘Exile on Main Street’ tops UK albums chart
• The Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street Reissue
• Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street –

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