Rolling Stones

DISCOGRAPHY

12x5 (1964) 5/10

Now! (1965) 5/10

Out of Our Heads (US, 1965) 6/10

December's Children (1965) 5/10

Aftermath (US, 1966) 7/10 +

Between the Buttons (US, 1967) 7.5/10

Their Satanic Majesty's Request (1967) 6/10

Beggar's Banquet (1968) 7/10

Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out (live, 1969) 5.5/10

Let It Bleed (1969) 6.5/10

Sticky Fingers (1971) 7.5/10

Exile On Main Street (1972) 8/10

Goats Head Soup (1973) 5/10

It's Only Rock and Roll (1974) 4/10

Black and Blue (1976) 4/10

Some Girls (1978) 5/10

Emotional Rescue (1980) 4/10

Tattoo You (1981) 5.5/10

Undercover (1983) 4/10

Dirty Work (1986) 4/10

Steel Wheels (1989) 4/10

Voodoo Lounge (1994) 4/10

Bridges to Babylon (1997) 3/10

A Bigger Bang (2005) 4/10

Blue & Lonesome (covers, 2015) 4/10

Hackney Diamonds (2023) 4/10

   Filmed on tour following the release of Exile, photographer Robert Frank's Cocksucker Blues is an experimental hodgepodge of undoctored footage portraying the band and their road crew dabbling in degenerate behavior. 

   There are scenes of drug abuse, sex/nudity, and vandalism, but there's always the question of how much of the material was deliberately staged for shock value. A few sequences of dissociative editing give the film a psychedelic style, but these are inconsistent. It also includes some good live performance footage, but that's expected.

   Among the mumbling interviews, backstage conversations, and other filler, the documentary depicts as follows:

• • Keith Richards drops a television outside a hotel window (edge rating: 2/5)

  • Fully nude groupies get fucked by roadies openly in the band's private plane (edge rating: 3/5)

  • We see a groupie injecting heroin (edge rating: 2/5)

  • A roadie forces a laughing/screaming groupie to take off her clothes in the plane while most of the band members watch and play tribal percussion instruments (wtf rating: 4/5)

  • Shortly after this ^ sequence, we see a roadie's fully erect cock for less than a second, a groupie hunched over him as if she had just sucked him off (edge rating: 2/5)

  • A lot of the band members are probably smoking in non-smoking areas (edge rating: 1/5)

   The film would not have an official release as the band would find the finished product as too embarrassing or incriminating; but I think that their real worry was that it was too boring. Had Frank been present for further tour footage and edgy scenery to document, or if he had just edited the whole movie to be dissociative, Cocksucker Blues might have reached its potential as an artsy degenerate rockumentary, but instead there's just a handful of actually shocking material, not enough to be as interesting as it could have been.

   [5/10]

   Emotional Rescue She's So Cold

   The two halves of Tattoo You are virtually separate albums: the first leans to a poppy sort of the band's usual blues-rock, then the second is made up of soft-rock ballads of eclectic styles (the Prince-like Worried About You; the reverb, delay, and sparkling chimes that attempt a dreamy soundscape on Heaven; the pseudo-reggae of Waiting On a Friend). 

   The band recruited jazz giant Sonny Rollins for saxophone parts, but only for three songs. 

   Dirty Work dub-influenced Too Rude; Harlem Shuffle; One Hit to the Body

   Martin Scorsese tried directing the concert film Shine a Light into a documentary, but the documentary aspects are interspersed too distantly and without much conceptual focus (aside from a few old interviews in which members talk about the longevity of the band. There's one where Mick Jagger confidently states he would still be performing when he's sixty, and the audience laughs). The live footage is from the 2006 tour promoting A Bigger Bang, which includes guest musicians Jack White, Buddy Guy, and Christina Aguilera to each perform a song with the Stones (respectively: Loving Cup, Muddy Waters' Champagne & Reefer, and Live with Me). 

   There is a ten-minute sequence of pre-production scrambling tacked on at the start of the film in which Scorsese makes himself a character. There is also a sequence at the end of the show when we see a teleporting Scorsese directing the camera as the it follows the Stones outside to the touring bus and then floats up into the air. Other than that, the creative liberties of Scorsese are sparse. 

   In between maybe every two or three songs of the concert, snippets of archival footage appear without much intention other than to oblige audiences that are expecting more than a concert film. This idea has potential, but Scorsese neglected it. More interesting would've been to show concerts throughout the band's whole career, a different concert per song, rather than the same one in 2006; and snippets should have been between every song, with the footage relative to the next concert's time-frame instead of just being random videos connected only by the fact that they involve the Rolling Stones. Or better, leave out all the obligatory footage and instead edit in a lot of different footage plus interviews to portray an essay on the band or the culture they came from, just as Scorsese did with Bob Dylan on No Direction Home. 

   Alas, this was just a cash-grab for Scorsese, who may have had high hopes to direct a serious documentary on the Stones but only had the time and funds for a concert film instead. But even then, the performances are iffy. For one thing, the sound mixing is off: Mick Jagger's vocals overshadow too much of the other musicians; the brass band behind Loving Cup can barely be heard; Keith's guitar is too loud in times where his underwhelming solos are supposedly the main attraction; the youthful back-up singers (who occasionally sing melodically important notes Mick can't sing anymore) are also deprived of much volume. 

   The only stellar part of the concert is that it is, in fact, the Rolling Stones. Mick is old as hell but is constantly moving and yowling, Keith looks cool in his hippie headwear and cowboy duster, Charlie Watts still has his antisocial personality and delivers his graceful percussion, and Ronnie Wood still outplays Keith's solos.

   [5/10]

   Blue & Lonesome stalls the lo-fi blues sound the entire way through. Recording had taken only three days, but its release had somehow taken a year — perhaps to stir anticipation and pre-order sales. 

TOP 10 SONGS

• 1. Can't You Hear Me Knockin (1970)

  2. Paint It Black (1966)

  3. Brown Sugar (1970)

  4. Wild Horses (1970)

  5. Jumpin Jack Flash (1968)

  6. Gimme Shelter (1969)

  7. Midnight Rambler (1969)

  8. Satisfaction (1965)

  9. Sweet Virginia (1972)

  10. Under My Thumb (1966)

+ Plus many more on my Best of the Rolling Stones Spotify playlist

ROCKUMENTARIES

Jean-Luc Godard: Sympathy for the Devil (1968)

Michael Lindsay-Hogg: Rock and Roll Circus (1968) 7/10

Albert Maysles, David Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin: Gimme Shelter (1970) 5.5/10

Robert Frank: Cocksucker Blues (1972) 5/10

Martin Scorsese: Shine a Light (2008) 5/10

Brett Morgen: Crossfire Hurricane (2012) 6.5/10