After 60 years, The Rolling Stones are still at it, making music and filming music videos.
Their latest music video stars Nicholas Hoult and was directed by Calmatic, who has also done videos for Lil Nas X, Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, and Zayn Malik.
Enjoy!
“You know, when you drive through Bakersfield on a Sunday morning or Sunday evening, all the country music radio stations start broadcasting black gospel services live from LA. And that’s what the song refers to. But the song’s really about driving alone, listening to the radio.”
— Mick Jagger on Far Away Eyes in 1978, to Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stones do country!
Actually, the Stones were always heavily influenced by both the Blues and Country music. This song was written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and there’s a bootleg version of Richards singing the lyrics. The official version, with Jagger singing, was the sixth track on the Stones’s 1978 album, Some Girls.
The video, a clip of the Stones performing the song in an intimate studio, was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who did a number of videos for both the Stones and the Beatles. For instance, Lindsay-Hogg is the credited director on Let It Be.
Enjoy!
“The song sounds a lot different than the title. The theme is that Mick is talking to a girl saying, ‘All I hear from you is doom and gloom – let’s go party, let’s go dance.’ It’s an uptempo tune.”
— Organist Chuck Leavell on Doom and Gloom
“At first I said, Hey Mick, ‘Doom and Gloom’ is a kind of weird title for a 50-year celebration, you know? But you know what the Stones are like, it’s always against the grain. But he came up with it and it’s a great track and a really quite ‘funny’ song, actually – there are some great lyrics.”
— Keith Richards on Doom and Gloom
Also according to Keith, Doom and Gloom was one of the quickest recordings that the Rolling Stones ever did. It only took three takes to lay down the track. Richards credits that to the chemistry that the Stones have when they’re playing together. As Keith puts it, the only problem when it comes to recording a new Rolling Stones song is finding a time when everyone can actually get together.
As for the video, it was filmed in a warehouse in Paris and it was directed by Jonas Akerlund, a prolific video director who is best-known for his work with Madonna. The video stars Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who starred in the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy and who later appeared in Prometheus.
One thing about the Stones: they don’t quit. The band has existed for nearly six decades and they’re still making music that demands to be played loud.
Enjoy!
“Just let me be cynical for a moment. First of all, it’s really NOT about waiting on a woman friend. It’s just about a FRIEND; it doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. I can see people saying, Oh, we’re all much older now, Mick’s writing this much more compassionate stuff, must be about a real person. But that’s only in their perception of it.”
— Mick Jagger on Waiting For A Friend
Is our man Mick waiting for a friend or is he waiting for his drug connection? Since the video features Mick hanging out in front of a building in New York and waiting for Keith Richards to come walking up, I guess both could be true. Interestingly enough, Keith has often said that he and Mick have a strained relationship in real life, though Keith also wrote in his autobiography, “”I still love him dearly … your friends don’t have to be perfect.”
This video was popular in the early days of MTV. At a time when many of the big rock bands were still skeptical about the music video format and many were also predicting that MTV would never last, the network was happy to have a video from a group as legendary as the Stones. The video was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was doing videos even before MTV was a thing. Waiting with Jagger in front of the building is Peter Tosh.
Enjoy!
“The story here is the miracle that we ever found that track. I was convinced – and I think Mick was – that it was definitely a reggae song. And we did it in 38 takes – ‘Start me up. Yeah, man, cool. You know, you know, Jah Rastafari.’ And it didn’t make it. And somewhere in the middle of a break, just to break the tension, Charlie and I hit the rock and roll version. And right after that we went straight back to reggae. And we forgot totally about this one little burst in the middle, until about five years later when somebody sifted all the way through these reggae takes. After doing about 70 takes of ‘Start Me Up’ he found that one in the middle. It was just buried in there. Suddenly I had it. Nobody remembered cutting it. But we leapt on it again. We did a few overdubs on it, and it was like a gift, you know? One of the great luxuries of The Stones is we have an enormous, great big can of stuff. I mean what anybody hears is just the tip of an iceberg, you know. And down there is vaults of stuff. But you have to have the patience and the time to actually sift through it.”
— Keith Richards on Start Me Up
Since today is Oscar Sunday, let’s start the day with a video that was directed by an Oscar winner.
Hal Ashby got his start as an editor and a favorite collaborator of director Norman Jewison. Ashby won his only Oscar for editing the 1967 best picture winner, In the Heat of the Night. Ashby then went on to become a director himself and, in that role, he was responsible for some of the most important films of the 1970s. Check out this list of credits: Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, Being There, and Let’s Spend the Night Together. All of these films were directed by Hal Ashby.
Let’s Spend The Night Together was a Rolling Stones concert film and I imagine that his work on that film is probably what led to Ashby directing this music video. Like a lot of the great 70s directors, his career struggled as people like Don Simpson took over Hollywood and the industry’s focus shifted away from empowering directors to keeping studio executives happy. While Ashby found himself practically unemployable in Hollywood, he was still able to make a living with work like this video and directing television episodes.
Hal Ashby died in 1988 of pancreatic cancer. Bruce Dern famously said that the way Ashby was treated in Hollywood was the “most disgusting thing” that he had ever seen over the course of his long career. Fortunately, movies are forever and Ashby’s work has since been rediscovered and continues to influence aspiring filmmakers all over. Richard Linklater is a huge fan and paid homage to Ashby with Last Flag Flying.
Enjoy!
Love is Strong was the first single to be released off of the Rolling Stones’s 1994 album, Voodoo Lounge. Since everyone already knew that the Rolling Stones were giants of music, the video for Love is Strong took the idea one step further by casting the Stones as actual giants, towering over New York City.
The video was directed by David Fincher. Having already made a name for himself as a talented music video director before even making his first feature film, Fincher did this video after directing Alien 3 but before Seven. Fincher has said that Alien 3 was such a frustrating experience that, after completing the film, he had no desire to ever make another feature. (Of course, he would change his mind upon reading the script for Seven.) As this video shows, even if Fincher had stopped making movies after Alien 3, he would still be remembered and highly regarded for his music videos.
Love is Strong subsequently won the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video-winning song.
Imagine Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart and his broken leg replaced by Mick Jagger and the other members of the Rolling Stones and you have the concept behind the video for today’s music video of the day.
Neighbours first appeared on Tattoo You and was inspired by Keith Richards’s problems with his own neighbours in New York City. According to Richards, his neighbours got him evicted from his New York apartment building because they felt that he played his music too loudly. The actual lyrics were written by Mick Jagger, who, again according to Richards, never had any trouble with his own neighbours.
The video was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who directed several videos for The Rolling Stones but who is perhaps best known for directing the documentary about the final days of the Beatles, Let It Be.
How does it feel….
Needless to say, this song was not originally recorded by The Rolling Stones. Despite what the title has led some people to assume, the song actually has nothing to do with the Rolling Stones. Instead, the song was written by Bob Dylan. It’s long been debated just who exactly Dylan was addressing in the lyrics. Some people think that Dylan was writing about Edie Sedgwick. Grace Zabriskie, who is probably best known for playing Sarah Palmer on Twin Peaks, has long claimed that she was the one who inspired the song. It would appear that only Bob Dylan knows for sure and it’s reasonable to assume that he’ll never tell.
Regardless, I really like this song. A part of it is because I relate to the lyrics. I almost feel like they could have been written about me at a certain time in my life. The other reason I love the song is because the taunting tone of the lyrics makes them perfect whenever you’re looking for something to say to someone who you dislike. For example, someone once unfollowed me on twitter and I responded by tweeting the lyrics of this song at her until she finally deleted her account. That was fun.
Anyway, it seemed somewhat inevitable that this song would be covered by The Rolling Stones. This video, which was directed by the prolific Michel Gondry, follows a young woman as she discovers how it feels to be a complete unknown. The woman in the video is played by future Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette.
Enjoy!
After you watch Woodstock, you owe it to yourself to watch another documentary from 1970. This one is called Gimme Shelter and it deals with the infamous Altamont Free Concert. Taking place a few months after Woodstock, Altamont was originally envisioned as being Woodstock West but, as Gimme Shelter illustrates in disturbing detail, it ultimately became something far different.
Here are a few images from both Gimme Shelter and the Altamont Free Concert:
This is Mick Jagger, the lead singer of The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones were the final act to perform at the Altamont Free Concert and their performance was meant to be the conclusion of their 1969 American tour. Gimme Shelter was originally meant to be a documentary about the final days of the tour and clips of a confident and charismatic Jagger performing in Madison Square Garden are sprinkled throughout the first 40 minutes of the film. They provide a striking contrast to the chaos of the second half of the film, in which Jagger finds himself ineffectually trying to maintain order as fights break out in front of the stage.
This is Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones’s drummer. Though Gimme Shelter is usually referred to as being a documentary about the Rolling Stones, the film pretty much centers around Mick and Charlie. Gimme Shelter‘s framing device involves Mick and Charlie watching a rough cut of the documentary itself. While Mick always seems to maintain an air of deliberate detachment, Charlie seems to be visibly disturbed by what happened during their performance at Altamont.
(In another memorable scene, the group is shown listening to their latest recording. While this rest of the group plays up to the filmmakers, Charlie quietly takes in the music and appears to be surprised when he notices that he’s being filmed.)
This is the Melvin Belli. An attorney, Belli appears throughout the first half of Gimme Shelter, making the arrangements for the Altamont Free Concert and obviously having a great time showing off for the camera. At one point, Belli makes a comment about opening for the Stones. While Belli’s joking, it’s obvious from the tone of his voice that he’d love nothing more than to do so. In fact, Belli is so busy being entertaining that he really doesn’t seem to notice that, even during the planning stages, the Altamont Free Concert doesn’t sound like a good idea.
This is Sonny Barger, a founding member of the Hell’s Angels. He’s standing on the Altamont stage, watching Mick Jagger perform. Why is Barger on stage? He’s there because, for some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to hire the Hell’s Angels to handle security at the concert. (Barger is heard, in the film, saying that he was told that he could sit on the stage and drink beer and all he had to do was keep anyone else from approaching the musicians.)
What is Barger thinking as he watches Jagger perform? This is a question that I think anyone who has ever watched Gimme Shelter has asked themselves. Is he annoyed with or menacing Jagger or is he just doing his job and making sure that no one rushes the singer? Perhaps it’s all of the above.
The man in green is Meredith Hunter. This shot is the first time that Hunter appears in the film. The second time is when he’s getting stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels security force. Watching the documentary, Jagger asks to rewatch the scene of Hunter’s murder. The filmmakers slow down the scene and show him both the knife being held by the Hell’s Angel and the gun being held by Hunter.
Even before Hunter’s death, Gimme Shelter has already shown us enough to convince us that the counter culture dream of Woodstock was the exception as opposed to the rule. The final hour of Gimme Shelter takes place at the Altamont Free Concert and almost every scene feels like an angry rebuke to the positivity of Woodstock. The crowds were angrier. The scenery was far less aesthetically pleasing. (Woodstock took place on a farm. Altamont took place on a cement race track.) Whereas Woodstock famously featured warnings about the “brown acid,” Gimme Shelter features one of the concert promoters reacting to concerns about the bad acid circulating in the crowd by saying, “Tough shit.” Even the naked people at Altamont were far less attractive than the naked people at Woodstock. Jefferson Airplane played at both festivals. At Woodstock, they apparently had sound issues but otherwise, there were no problems. At Altamont, as the cameras rolled, lead singer Marty Balin was knocked unconscious by a Hell’s Angel with a pool cue.
(“I’d like to mention that the Hell’s Angels just smashed Marty Balin in the face and knocked him out for a bit. I’d like to thank you for that,” one of the members of the band announced.)
A few more images from Altamont:
Before the concert starts, this man cheerfully yelled “LSD! Mescaline!” at everyone walking by. I’m not sure if that was his dog or not. But speaking of dogs…
…this dog casually wandered across the stage during the Rolling Stones’s performance. It’s never clear where he came from or where he went after he left the stage.
Even with the Hell’s Angels beating up everyone in sight, a few people still enjoyed the concert. This is who I relate to in the film because she was determined to enjoy herself no matter how weird things got.
But then there’s this guy, who was standing only a few feet away from Jagger when he started to freak out:
If Woodstock is ultimately all about peace and life, Gimme Shelter is a film that is suffused with conflict and death. If you’re going to watch one, you owe it to yourself to watch the other. In the end, the two documentaries together provide us with a view of a counterculture that had so much potential but which couldn’t escape the darkness that hid behind the light.
(Interestingly enough, future director George Lucas was one of the cameramen at Altamont that day. Just as how Altamont was often cited as the end of the 60s, the blockbuster success of Lucas’s Star Wars would often be cited as the beginning of the 80s.)
I’ll end this review with a quote from Grace Slick, one that is still relevant today. As she said as she watched Altamont descend into chaos: “You don’t hassle with anybody in particular. You gotta keep your bodies off each other unless you intend love. People get weird, and you need people like the Angels to keep people in line. But the Angels also – you know, you don’t bust people in the head – for nothing. So both sides are fucking up temporarily; let’s not keep FUCKING UP!”
Does this seem familiar? It’s because Val already shared her thoughts about this video. This is a song that means a lot to me, especially on this day, so that’s why I’m sharing my thoughts now. It’s either that or else I forgot to check on whether this video had been previous shared before I wrote and scheduled this post.
Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony this life
Trying to make ends meet, you’re a slave to the money then you die.
I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet, yeah.
No change, I can’t change, I can’t change, I can’t change,
but I’m here in my mold, I am here in my mold.
But I’m a million different people from one day to the next
I can’t change my mold, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
Bitter Sweet Symphony. It’s a beautiful song that, on days like today, means a lot to me. The lyrics were written by Richard Ashcroft, the lead singer of The Verve. That’s him in the video, lurching Frankenstein-like down Hoxton Street in London.
The famous orchestral riff, which has been heard in so many movies and commercials, was lifted from a 1965 song by The Rolling Stones, The Last Time. When the band tried to get permission to use the sample, there was a lot of confusion about who actually owned the rights. You can read all the details on Songfacts. It’s a bit too complicated for me to even try to put my mind around.
Well I never pray,
But tonight I’m on my knees, yeah.
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah.
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now.
But the airwaves are clean and there’s nobody singing to me now.
The video,I assume, was very carefully orchestrated. Personally, I’d love to imagine that Ashcroft just started walking down the street, intentionally crashing into anyone or anything that got in his way. I especially relate to the woman who gets in Ashcroft’s face after he walks over her car. That would be me.
The video was directed by Walter Stern, who has sixteen credits listed on the imvdb. Supposedly the video was inspired by another music video, this one for Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy. I’ve never seen the Massive Attack video but apparently it also features a lead singer lurching down a street. Though Walter Stern didn’t direct Unfinished Sympathy, he did do a different video for Massive Attack (Tear Drop) shortly before doing Bitter Sweet Symphony.
No change, I can’t change, I can’t change, I can’t change,
But I’m here in my mold, I am here in my mold.
And I’m a million different people from one day to the next
I can’t change my mold, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
(Well have you ever been down?)
(I can’t change, I can’t change)
When I rewatched this video for this post, I was struck by just how tall Richard Ashcroft is. Honestly, I would probably get out of his way. Unless he walked across my car, of course. Then I’d get in his face and start yelling.
Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony this life.
Trying to make ends meet, trying to find some money then you die.
I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet, yeah.
No change, I can’t change, I can’t change, I can’t change,
but I’m here in my mold, I am here in my mold.
But I’m a million different people from one day to the next
I can’t change my mold, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
I can’t change my mold, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
I can’t change my mold, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
Despite the fact that The Verve was opposed to having their music appear in commercials, they didn’t control the rights. As such, Bitter Sweet Symphony was used in a campaign for Nike. The Verve donated the money that they made to the Red Cross Land Mine Appeal. Of course, the song’s appeared in a lot of commercials and movies since then.
It’s just sex and violence melody and silence
It’s just sex and violence melody and silence (I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down)
It’s just sex and violence melody and silence
It’s just sex and violence melody and silence
It’s just sex and violence melody and silence (I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down)
(It’s just sex and violence melody and silence)Been down
(Ever been down)
(Ever been down)
(Ever been down)
(Ever been down)
(Ever been down)
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 