Blocked Rolling Stones documentary exposes the sadness behind fame

GEOFF PEVERE

Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jan. 16 2014

Nothing looms quite like something you can’t see, and in the 42 years since Robert Frank shot his vérité documentary account of the Rolling Stones’ North American tour of 1972, CS Blues has taken on the aura of a darkly magical and mysterious forbidden artifact. Blocked from release by the band, the film – by the renowned Beat-era Swiss still photographer who had designed the photo collage cover of Exile on Main St. – is possibly the most bootlegged, sought-after and, it now seems, misunderstood film in rock-movie history.

It is permitted only single screenings once a year in cities where the filmmaker has been present – although Frank, now 89, is not expected to appear at the Toronto screening, presented as part of the TIFF Cinematheque’s Free Screen series today at 6:30 p.m. at the Bell Lightbox. Captured with Frank’s deftly unobtrusive 16-millimetre camera, CS Blues takes its full, proper title (which sounds a lot like Cork Shucker Blues) and its tone from a song about dissolute gay hustling that Mick Jagger composed to render null the band’s contract with Decca Records.

If the song, never officially released, occupies the mournful place where desire has been corrupted, hope abandoned and the soul ruined by the body’s wholesale surrender to fleeting pleasure, CS Blues is that state configured as one of the most beautifully listless, dreamily anesthetized and utterly un-sensational rock docs ever made. Rampant drug use, wanton groupie abuse and gratuitously defenestrated hotel TV sets notwithstanding, Frank’s movie is about fame as a supreme drag and protracted state of existential limbo. It is a condition best captured by the recurring sight of a junked-out Keith Richards nodding off into habitual oblivion.

Since arriving on the mid-fifties global cultural scene with The Americans, a book of photographs that depicted Eisenhower’s domestic empire as a sprawling kingdom of grim flyover loneliness, Frank had become famous for his jaundiced but immaculate stranger’s-eye view of the United States. This was precisely what his lens regarded when the Rolling Stones embarked on their first American tour since the 1969 debacle (so famously captured in Gimme Shelter, by Albert and David Maysles) at Altamont Speedway, at which a fan was killed, on camera, by Hells Angels security goons.

If that movie marked the end of the myth of the Stones as a people’s rock band – or, as has been widely suggested, the end of the sixties dream of peaceful, universal co-existence – CS Blues is a cold report from the other side of the castle wall: This is what living inside the fame fortress is really like, where insulation from fans, immersion in perpetual indulgence, and life lived as a holding pattern between performances – which were, it must be said, as exciting as any in rock history – seemingly verifies the Devil’s pact inSympathy for the Devil, where the price of fame, wealth and beauty is the soul laid to waste.

If the Stones were horrified by what they saw – and that’s how the story goes – what is now clearer than ever is that they were right to be, and not because of the cheaply sensational images of naked groupies, Mick playing trouser billiards, or drugs being consumed at an industrial level. It’s because their lives look so pathetically, fundamentally and irredeemably sad. Whether it’s Richards perpetually nodding off, Jagger’s world-class yawn or Bianca’s transfixed stare at a music box, the story told here is of the living death that fame imposes; and the revelation, much more subversive than smack or groupie sex, that it sucks to be a Stone.

Unfolding largely in such transient zones as hotel rooms, dressing rooms, airports, airplanes and lobbies, and fleetingly visited by such period celebrity pilot fish as Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Dick Cavett and Lee Radziwill, this account of a Stone’s life circa ’72 is a gorgeously rendered, vaporously grainy, sustained stupor of a movie. It is a neglected high point of its particular documentary style, a radical subversion of rock mythology and a lingeringly unsettling work of art.

At the age of 15, I’d have traded my youngest sibling into white slavery in order to see it, but that was when I’d have confused it for a movie about my favourite band on Earth. And it would have disappointed if not crushed me, as the Stones knew when they threw down the block to its release. It was the last movie about themselves they wanted anyone to see, let alone those who wished to be one of them. Along with Nixon’s tapes, CS Blues was 1972’s other great act of omission.

[www.theglobeandmail.com]

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting.

<<If the Stones were horrified by what they saw – and that’s how the story goes – what is now clearer than ever is that they were right to be, and not because of the cheaply sensational images of naked groupies, Mick playing trouser billiards, or drugs being consumed at an industrial level. It’s because their lives look so pathetically, fundamentally and irredeemably sad. Whether it’s Richards perpetually nodding off, Jagger’s world-class yawn or Bianca’s transfixed stare at a music box, the story told here is of the living death that fame imposes; and the revelation, much more subversive than smack or groupie sex, that it sucks to be a Stone.>>

I am not sure I would have felt this way if I had seen the movie way back when, but when I did catch up with it many, many years later...This is pretty much how I felt about it. It has been awhile, but isn't there a scene when Jagger is in a car (with Taylor I believe...as usual) and he expresses relief just to get away from everyone. Perhaps he was just happy to be outside. There's a certain feeling of misguided claustrophobia in that movie that is exhausting. As if the band was trying to transfer the excitement it experienced on stage to everyday life and everyone else was trying the opposite.

Maybe @#$%& Blues caught them on the edge of exhaustion. The toll of making their greatest album, and if not their greatest, their most famous tour. Of course they weren't suspended in amber the rest of their lives. They moved on from that period. Keith farther away from the jet set, Mick closer to it. But it was probably the end of the group being physically close for long amounts of time.

I'd still like to sit down and watch this film in a theater. It can't all be real. As 'reality' television has shown us, it's practically impossible for people to be in front of a camera and not be on. It's silly to keep it from us. Most of the places that would sell a DVD in public are gone. You'd have to buy it on the internet with little fanfare. I wonder if Amazon would sell it with that title?

before reading this article , i only had a passing curiosity about cs blues . now after reading this i am very curious / intrested to view robert frank's film . this will be on my list to view.

Gotta watch it atleast one time.

Overall kinda meh, with some interesting parts.

I agree with the assessment of the film. Bought it like 25 yrs ago on bootleg VHS. Its a sad movie

I think this article was well written but slightly pretentious. And it didn't tell me anything new about the movie or the circumstances around its making, blocking and possible future release. But I do love the movie and I think it's essential viewing if you're a big fan of early '70s Stones. Many fan find it boring, though, so make up your own mind. If anything, I think all the live clips in it are better than most of Ladies & Gentlemen.

Personally I don't think we'll see an official release of CS Blues in any foreseeable future. Mick has said he thinks the movie's "great", but I'd be very surprised if he wanted to release it. I've also read that its being held back out of respect for featured people's families.

Got my hands on a copy of it a few years back and to tell you the truth, it never ever lived up to the hype----- it was ok, not shocking, kind of boring actually.Best scenes for me were Keith playing boogie woogie piano, Keith and Bobby Keys tossing a tv out the window, and of course the performance scenes which were pretty spectacular. But the rest of it was kind of.....forced ?

Not nearly as good as the myth built up around it

Most boring movie EVER

The tossing the TV part was maybe more forced than anything else.

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bob r
Got my hands on a copy of it a few years back and to tell you the truth, it never ever lived up to the hype----- it was ok, not shocking, kind of boring actually.Best scenes for me were Keith playing boogie woogie piano, Keith and Bobby Keys tossing a tv out the window, and of course the performance scenes which were pretty spectacular. But the rest of it was kind of.....forced ?

Not nearly as good as the myth built up around it

.

Totally agree with these comments.

I think Don DeLillo maybe to blame on the mythic status of CS Blues: he devotes whole swathes of Underworld to it.

Tossing the TV out the window was probably the most forced scene ( besides the airplane scene) but I liked it because I never actually saw anyone do that and it looked like fun....plus I like how Keith cracks up after they do it---however, the movie still stunk overall.....

It's TOTALLY a Robert Frank movie so yeah it's not your bland and predictable "behind-the-scenes and onstage" tour rock doc.

CS has everything other Frank works (films or photos) have : a fascination/disgust for America, for human behavior (the more extreme the better) for the BEAT of music, for film itself its dirt and its grain.

Jagger chose Frank after turning the pages of his seminal photobook "The Americans". Imo it's compulsory to look at that book to understand CSBlues. Otherwise you miss Frank's point.

As many of us, I was very interested in seeing this movie when I was a teenager.

Many years later, I have seen some parts of it : a sad movie where to be a Rolling Stones seems to be a boring and completly not interesting activity.

But it is just a snapshot on a particular tour. You cannot resume the Rolling Stones way of life by this movie. CS is very surprising because what is shown is unexpected. But maybe the 70's weren't so nice after all (too much drugs and bad experience).

I downloaded the movie some years ago via "Hot Stuff" courtesy of the much missed UrbanSteel and watched it out of interest to see what the fuss was about.
As has already been said in this thread, it's worth watching once.
I started to watch it again a couple of years ago but gave up long before the end because, as has also been stated, it's incredibly boring.
An interesting document but a lousy documentary.


"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

A great review that gives the movie its due place, as a "work of art" which it most certainly is.

For the detractors here including the person who calls it the "most boring movie ever" well all I can say is you just can't appreciate it. But that is understandable becuase it takes time to appreciate CS Blues. I saw it in one of the first showings back in 1974 and was confused. And I would watch it several times over the next decade. And I would say that it took me about 10 viewings before I really came to like it and now it is one of my all-time favoritie movies. It is a beautiful movie about a time long gone. In some ways it parallels Exile on Main St which was panned by a lot of people when it came out but which is now regarded as one of the greatest albums ever recorderd. If CS Blues is commercially released at some point I thnk the serious critics will see it as the guy in the Globe and Mail sees it.

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RiffKichards
a sad movie where to be a Rolling Stones seems to be a boring and completly not interesting activity.

You're100% right : that's maybe because Frank considers life to be "a boring and completely not interesting activity" hence his decision to pick the most boring parts of the tour (that is the ones that don't take place on the West or East Coast).

What the stones should do is to combine all the footage of CS blues with the ladies and gentlemen footage, 15 mins of CS blues then a couple of songs from ladies and gentlemen. Take all other footage of 72 from newsreels the dick cavett show, interview from old grey whistle, etc and make the ultimate concert film.

I am surprised no bootlegger has ever done it but it would work far better than 2 seperate films and probably be hailed as one of the best concert films ever made

Films need some something to make them work, a story, a sense of pacing. To be frank, what would Gimme Shelter have been without that epic build-up to Altamont? Because there, you know something is going to be happening, chaos and murder. But to be (Robert) Frank, we see what a Rolling Stones tour documentary would have been without that sacrificial element in C.S. Blues. Great for the performances, but what is the point besides that, just a lot of nameless faceless wasted people in a lot of pointless moments, a film full of outtakes that may as well be named for an outtake song. Not Gimme Shelter, just gimme a break. You kind of had to have been there, with a syringe or a spoon or a straw.

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stonehearted
Films need some something to make them work, a story, a sense of pacing. To be frank, what would Gimme Shelter have been without that epic build-up to Altamont? Because there, you know something is going to be happening, chaos and murder. But to be (Robert) Frank, we see what a Rolling Stones tour documentary would have been without that sacrificial element in C.S. Blues. Great for the performances, but what is the point besides that, just a lot of nameless faceless wasted people in a lot of pointless moments, a film full of outtakes that may as well be named for an outtake song. Not Gimme Shelter, just gimme a break. You kind of had to have been there, with a syringe or a spoon or a straw.

CS Blues is a collage of American life in 1972. As such I don't think it really needs a story line. The images, the music are powerful enough. If you watch it with the same sensibilities, expectations that you have when you watch a "regular" movie of course you will be disappointed.

<<a collage of American life in XXXX>>

You could say that about any film that was shot of them any year. It doesn't mean that it's automatically a great movie just because they're being filmed. It takes a great filmmaker to make a great film.

Saw it a while back when Tate Modern in London did a Robert Frank retrospective - magnificent by the way esp. "The Americans" - and the film is, the only word I can think of is bleak. Best bits are the performance sections particularly with Stevie Wonder and the funniest bits are Mick after Tina Turner leaves the dressing room "Well, I would..." and BK and KR throwing the TV out. Saddest bits are the injections and just the overwhelming sense of a squalid boredom. You can see why MT felt he had to go (in the end). I wouldn't bother watching it twice.

I love the movie mostly because of the aesthetics of it -- the atmosphere, the '70s vibe of everything, the places, the hotel rooms, the backstage rooms, all the people and of course the Rolling Stones at the height of musical success and decadent excess. There's no story to it, no big revelations, no important spoken lines, but it's a beautiful and a little bit exciting document of the Stones, their hangers-on, and America in 1972.

I doesn't bother me that some scenes -- like the airplane strip or the tv tossing -- were mostly staged. The fact that they staged things like that at all is part of the debauchery they indulged in in those days. Compare with what they would have done today -- airbrushed the hell out of anything close to tv smashing or pot smoking.

Robert Frank attempted to show some of the "myths" of the Stones and didn't just write about it like a gazillion other people, and I think he succeeded pretty well.

Totally grim & depressing. Wish there was more of the performances in it. The jam with Stevie Wonder is awesome.

Love jagger singing Its Funny in his panties

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GOO
Love jagger singing Its Funny in his panties

Love that song! I've been looking for more information about it but never found any. Could be a Jagger(/Richards) original that they never developed into something real.

A sad, badly shot, badly edited amateurish film which has only received the status it has because of its unavailability. The Stones made the right decision not to release it.

I have tried to watch it several times but have never gotten further into it than about the 20 minute mark. God knows I have tried.

I have a copy of Frank's The Americans and have made it through that at least.