Despite what a lot of people think about LSTNT, I love it! Would love to see the New Jersey and Tempe shows in full unedited. Top performances. Great thread exilestones!!

Would be great to have a deluxe reissue someday - at the right speed and with bonus material.

Great work,exilestones.
Thanks a lot.
How did you find those pictures from Cologne 4th ? It was my first show and I've never seen this stuff before...

Quote
shortfatfanny
Great work,exilestones.
Thanks a lot.
How did you find those pictures from Cologne 4th ? It was my first show and I've never seen this stuff before...

I don't remember. I just stumble across these photos.

I'm glad people like the thread. Thank you.

Jacques Dayan 1983

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-03 21:04 by exilestones.

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-06 06:35 by exilestones.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-06 06:31 by exilestones.

THEY FILMED AS THE STONES ROLLED
By Robert Palmer
Published: February 6, 1983




''My initial, basic idea was to make a real good hour-and-a-halflong rock and roll album, and capture some real good images to go with it.'' Hal Ashby, a leading Hollywood director whose credits include ''Harold and Maude,'' ''Shampoo,'' and ''Being There,'' was talking about his latest project, ''Let's Spend the Night Together,'' a chronicle of the Rolling Stones' hugely successful 1981 tour of the United States.

''Music,'' he continued, ''always plays a very strong part in my films, and over the years I've developed some strong ideas about how I would go about doing an actual music film. I've known Mick Jagger since the early 1970's, and been a Stones fan for a lot longer than that. So when the band was performing in Los Angeles and Mick asked my advice about who they could get to film some of their shows, I said, 'Why don't I do it?' It happened real fast, but for me it was just a big turn-on.''

''Let's Spend the Night Together,'' which opens Friday at the Astor Plaza, could easily be mistaken for a straightforward concert documentary. Although the footage is drawn from three concerts on the Rolling Stones' 50-concert tour, an extravaganza that broke numerous records established by previous rock tours and played to more than two million people, the film closely follows the programming of an actual concert and includes 25 Rolling Stones songs. There are a few peeks backstage, and a snippet of 1960's newsreel footage intrudes during ''Time Is on My Side,'' but these are momentary diversions, nothing more. This is a concert-on-film, a close-up of rock's reigning super-band performing music from every stage of its 20-year career.




But according to Mick Jagger, who was in New York recently with three of the other four Stones to attend a press screening and reception, ''Let's Spend the Night Together'' only appears to be a documentary.

''It's really Hal's film,'' Mr. Jagger said out of the corner of his mouth as he waded patiently through a milling crowd of invited guests at the reception. ''I didn't want there to be an emphasis on interviews backstage because I figured that had been done, but that's all I really said. I couldn't even get involved in the editing, because we were on the road in Europe. But remember, Hal and his assistant Pablo Ferro had 10 to 20 cameras shooting each concert, and they put together what you see on the screen out of all that footage. You maythink you're seeing something approaching cinema verite, but the less graceful parts, the mistakes, to be blunt, have been edited out.''

Pablo Ferro is billed in the film's credits as Mr. Ashby's creative associate, but according to the director ''he was actually my co-director. Guild requirements are the only thing that prevented him from having that title.'' Mr. Ferro, a small, intense man who is best known for the innovative titles and other special visual effects he contributed to ''Dr. Strangelove,'' ''Midnight Cowboy'' and most of Hal Ashby's films, was standing in a corner at the reception, looking relieved that Mr. Jagger and the other Stones present were the center of attention.

''Hal and I directed the shooting of the concerts from a bank of video monitors,'' Mr. Ferro explained, ''so we could see what each of the cameras was getting at any given time. Hal was directing half the cameras and I had the others. We'd be yelling into the operators' headsets, 'Camera One, stay with Mick, stay with Mick,' and 'Camera Three, looks good on Keith Richards, don't lose him,' and all the while everything they were shooting was being recorded on videotape. It was exhausting, and it got pretty crazy. Later, we went in and edited from the videotapes.''

''Let's Spend the Night Together'' lives up to Mr. Ashby's ideal, the hour-and-a-half live album, in the audio department. The sound was recorded on the most up-to-date equipment and mixed by Bob Clearmountain, whose work on the Rolling Stones' recent ''Tattoo You'' and ''Still Life'' albums brought a new punch and clarity to the band's sound. It's as crisp and immediate as any live album, and clearer by far than the sound at any outdoor concert. But visually, the film is a close-up view of the Stones at work through the eyes of Mr. Ashby and Mr. Ferro, two longtime fans with their own ideas about what makes the Stones tick, and what makes them great.



''One thing a lot of people noticed about this tour was that Keith Richards's presence seemed so strong,'' Mr. Ashby noted. ''There were cynics around who were certain that when all was said and done, we were just going to have a bunch of shots of Mick running around the stage, but Keith's role onstage was so important, and I tried to show as much as I could of how the other musicians and the audiences responded to him. I went to several shows before we started filming, and you could see, following the band on a day-to-day basis, how much they all cared about playing at their best. They all had their private anxieties, their good feelings and bad feelings about how the music was sounding, night by night.''





unknown gif artist

Keith Richards, the Stones' guitarist and musical mastermind and co-writer, with Mick Jagger, of all their songs, was in peak form on the band's 1981 tour. For years he had been rock's most legendary drug-abuser, a stylish but self-destructive desperado who was widely expected to become rock's next drug fatality. But after he was arrested in Toronto in 1978, with a quantity of heroin large enough to warrant being charged with trafficking the drug, he realized that his lifestyle was jeopardizing the Rolling Stones' future as a performing band. And being a Rolling Stone has always seemed to mean more to Keith Richards than it has to anyone else. So he flew directly from Toronto to a private clinic near New York City and underwent treatment for his decade-long habit.

Mr. Richards and Mr. Jagger have always been the heart and mind of the Stones. During the middle and late 1970's, when Mr. Richards's drug problems prevented him from holding up his end, their music and reputation suffered. There were uneven, disappointing albums, some lackluster shows, and widespread fears that Mr. Jagger's jet-set social life was robbing the Stones of their grit and honesty. But ''Tattoo You,'' released just before the beginning of the 1981 tour, was the Stones' strongest album in years. And with a remarkably healthy-looking Mr. Richards practically breathing fire onstage, the 1981 tour triumphantly affirmed the band's mastery of the rock and roll idiom.

''Getting that tour out on the road was such a tremendous amount of work, we didn't even think about filming it before we started,'' Mr. Jagger noted. ''But once we were out there playing, the band started working so well together, I thought it just had to be captured. I'm quite pleased that the band managed to achieve a film like this in the middle of all the insanity of a big tour. I think the Stones really deserved it.''

''Let's Spend the Night Together'' focuses on the remarkable energy and stamina of Mick Jagger's performances as well as on Keith Richards's musical contributions and charisma. But it also captures something else about the band that seems to have eluded earlier filmmakers entirely. By placing as many cameras as possible actually on or just to the side of the stage, Mr. Ashby managed to record the smiles and signals and split-second interactions between all the Rolling Stones that enliven the music, make it fresh again, at each performance.

A Rolling Stones show isn't just Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, however central they may be. It's the guitarist Ron Wood's manic nonstop pace and his fluid musical give-and-take with Mr. Richards. It's the power and the springy, lighter-than-air life in Charlie Watts's drumming, and it's Bill Wyman's sudden, shy smiles as he stands stock still at stage right, nailing down the rhythms with his lyrical but rock-solid bass lines. Take away any of these parts and the whole is no longer the Rolling Stones. It's this understanding of what makes the Rolling Stones a great band that motivated Mr. Ashby and Mr. Ferro, and that earlier films failed to communicate.

Compared to ''Woodstock,'' the first rock concert film to move decisively beyond the hand-held documentary approach, ''Let's Spend the Night Together'' is a triumph of cinema technology. The camera work in that film, and the showy split-screen editing it introduced and turned into an overnight cliche, tended to distract from the music rather than illuminate it. Mr. Ashby's film uses film technology, and the accumulated wisdom of its experienced director, his associates and his crew, to bring the music to life and make it breathe. Back in the ''Woodstock'' era, rock was more readily understood as a happening, a spectacular mass phenomenon, than as music. And while the Rolling Stones tour, especially its mammoth outdoor shows, may have been the most spectacular rock event ever staged, the accent at the shows, and in the film, was on the music. The images on the screen are mostly images of a band that knows just what to do and still enjoys doing it, a band that has been the best definition-in-action of what rock and roll is and can be for almost 20 years.

But compared to Martin Scorsese's ''The Last Waltz,'' a filmed record of the Band's star-studded farewell concert with guest appearances by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and other rock royalty, ''Let's Spend the Night Together'' can almost qualify as a documentary. Mr. Scorsese prepared for the filming of ''The Last Waltz'' by readying an elaborate shooting script for every song that would be performed. Every little guitar fill, every split-second drum break, was in the shooting script and covered by a camera. Mr. Scorsese knew what each musician would be doing at almost every moment, and he choreographed his carefully blocked-out images into a complex visual ballet for his film, which is still the most detailed and intimate filmed record of a rock concert.

Asked about the merits of Mr. Scorsese's approach, Mr. Ashby simply shrugged. ''It's not the way I wanted to work,'' he said. ''And it's not the way the Stones work, either. We talked briefly beforehand about the songs, and of course I knew that during such-and-such a song, Mick would approach the audience, or run out onto one of the ramps at the sides of the stage. I'd tell the camera operators that sort of thing. But I also told them that if they came across somebody who was doing something good, to stay with him.''

The difference in style between ''The Last Waltz'' and ''Let's Spend the Night Together'' reflects a vast difference in style between a group such as the Band, which delivered letter-perfect readings of its best-known songs at each performance, and the Rolling Stones, probably the only rock band that performs in huge outdoor arenas without rehearsing every aspect of its show for maximum impact. Even at the end of their tour, the Stones were never certain whether Ron Wood or Keith Richards or their guest saxophonist Ernie Watts was going to take a solo on certain songs. Sometimes two or or even all three of these musicians would plunge into a solo at once, and keep going, weaving their lines together into a careening, fulltilt ensemble improvisation.

A detailed shooting script simply wouldn't have prepared Mr. Ashby, Mr. Ferro and their camera operators for such inspired chaos, nor would such planning have been of much use when the Stones decided, as they often did, to extend a number that had built up a nice head of steam for several minutes beyond its customary run. The semiimprovisational approach Mr. Ashby and his associates favored seems best suited to the loosely intuitive working methods of the Stones themselves. ''It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done,'' Mr. Ashby concluded. ''And the most fun.''

Rolling Stones - Just My Imagination ( Running Away With Me ) LIVE HD Tempe, Arizona '81 - YouTube

Video: [www.youtube.com]







Rolling Stones - Neighbours LIVE HD
Tiré du film " Let's Spend the Night Together " d' Hal Ashby (1983), live au Sun Devil Stadium, Tempe, Arizona le 13 décembre 1981 pendant la tournée The Rolling Stones American Tour 1981.

Video: [www.youtube.com]

Rolling Stones - Waiting On A Friend LIVE HD Tempe, Arizona '81 - YouTube

Video: [www.youtube.com]

Shirley Watts Uncredited, drummer Charlie Watts' wife as a dancer in the chorus-line of ladies during the "Honky Tonk Women" song and dance sequence.

Jerry Hall Uncredited, the then girlfriend and future wife of Mick Jagger as a dancer in the chorus-line of ladies during the "Honky Tonk Women" song and dance sequence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-11 03:48 by exilestones.

Let's Spend the Night Together
by Roger Ebert
January 1, 1982





It all comes down to the difference between a "concert film" and a documentary. “Let’s Spend The Night Together” is essentially a concert film recording an "ideal" Rolling Stones concert, put together out of footage shot at several outdoor and indoor Stones concerts. If that's what you want, enjoy this movie. I wanted more. I would have been interested in a film exploring the phenomenon of the Rolling Stones, who bill themselves as the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world, and are certainly the most durable. I would have liked to know more about the staging of a modern rock concert, which is arguably the most sensually overpowering nonwartime spectacle in human history, and which may have been invented, in form and in its focus on a single charismatic individual, at @#$%&'s mass rallies. I would have liked to know more about Mick Jagger; how does it feel for an educated, literate, civilized man in his early forties, with a head for figures and a gift for contracts and negotiations, to strut with a codpiece before tens of thousands of screaming, drug-crazed fans?


“Let’s Spend The Night Together” does not answer these questions nor, to be fair, was it intended to. It is wall-to-wall music. The movie sells well in home video form; it's a cinematic Top Forty with Jagger and the Stones performing many of their best-known hits. But after a certain point it grows monotonous. At the beginning of the film I was caught up in the Stones' waves of sound energy, and fascinated by Jagger's exhilarating, limitless onstage energy. By the end of the film I was simply stunned, and not even "(Can't Get No) Satisfaction" could quite rouse me.



The movie was directed by Hal Ashby, a feature director whose credits include “Shampoo” and “The Last Detail”. It was reportedly photographed with twenty-one cameras, under the direction of cinematographers Caleb Deschanel and Gerald Feil. They've got a lot of good stuff on film, but they haven't broken any new ground. The best rock documentary is still “Woodstock” (1970), and the best concert film is probably Bette Midler's “Divine Madness!” (1980). The Stones have been filmed more powerfully before, too, in “Gimme Shelter”, the stunning 1969 documentary of the Stones' Altamont concert, at which a man was killed.
The worst passages in “Let’s Spend The Night Together” are the songs in which Ashby and his collaborators try to get seriously symbolic. There is, for example, a montage of images from a suffering world: starving children, a Buddhist monk immolating himself, the skeleton-like bodies of famine victims, decapitated heads of political prisoners, etc. The idea, I guess, is to provide visual counterpoint to the Stones' apocalyptic images. The effect is disgusting; this particular movie has not earned the right to exploit those real images.

The best passages involve Jagger, who is just about the whole show, with the exception of a truncated Keith Richards solo and a strange interlude during which would-be beauty queens invade the stage and dance along to "Honky Tonk Woman." Jagger is, as always, the arrogant hermaphrodite, strutting proudly before his fans and conducting the songs, the band, and the audience with his perfectly timed body movements. There is an exciting moment when he climbs down into the crowd and, carrying a hand-held mike, sings as he is lifted on a surge of security guards from one side of the auditorium to another.

It's fun, but it's about the only time we see the audience
in this movie; Ashby apparently made a directorial decision
to keep the audience in long-shot, making them into a
collective, pulsating mass. But that limits his possibilities
for setting up visual rhythms in his editing. In such
landmark rock films as “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) and
“Woodstock”, the audience provided not only counterpoint
but also emotional feedback. “Let’s Spend The Night Together”
seems to have been pretty closely calculated as just simply
the record of a performance, and if that's what you want,
that's what you get.

official press photos

Quote
exilestones

Where did they find this photo of Bill to use in this poster? In the 1960's?

From my friend Dan....

Quote
Roger Ebert
Let's Spend the Night Together
by Roger Ebert
January 1, 1982





It all comes down to the difference between a "concert film" and a documentary. “Let’s Spend The Night Together” is essentially a concert film recording an "ideal" Rolling Stones concert, put together out of footage shot at several outdoor and indoor Stones concerts. If that's what you want, enjoy


CUT

In reference to the Roger's review (above):

This is a very fair review. Now the part about the staging of a modern rock concert was used before in Gimme Shelter . THE STAGING or organization was not the primary focus, but we got a great taste of it. Ebert did not live long enough to see Ole Ole Ole, or Havanna Moon, or even Nat. Geo’s story on The Copacabana bigger Bang show. Those all provided more insight into the massive scale of an organized Rolling Stones concert event.

I do not agree with NOT LIKING Ashby’s decision to keep the audience in long shot. I loved that about the film. I want to see the band not the gratuitous shot of fans signing along or reacting. Unless it is for a life changing cultural event like the Havana Cuba show, than we don’t need it. LSTNT/Rocks Off provides a glimpse at how THE BAND sees the crowd…..the largesse of the “sea of humanity” that has many psychological effects both good and harmful to most performers. The shot from the helicopter of the fans on the Mountain outside the stadium was breathtaking! It added SO MUCH excitement. BTW, you know, some fans in the crowd actually caught my eye repeatedly when watching on the big screen.

Not sure why Ebert did not speak about jarring cuts or the harsh edits in the film.

I loved this when it came out, and I still like it today.

Dan

Thanks for keeping this thread going, Exilstones. Although, maybe, the 1981/82 tour was meant to be their last tour it actually was their big comeback tour in a way.
It's a pity though what happened to the band later on in the 80s with the split and solo careers and such.

I thought it was a great tour. I know many other Stones fans were looking for another Brussels '73 or another Get Yer YaYas Out but that was already done.

One friend called 1981 tour a 'cookie cutter tour' where it was the same every night.

I look at it, especially now, that this tour was unique compared to, especially every tour that came afterwards. There were great classic song that were revamped like show openers Under My Thumb and Let's Spend the Night Together and especially Time is on My Side. Brilliant!

Waiting on a Friend is great live, especially from Pontiac (KBFH & DAC069).

Black Limousine from Let's Spend the Night Together I love too.


Black Limousine LIVE HD Tempe, Arizona '81
VIDEO: [www.youtube.com]


I heard that the Stones will release Tempe 1981 in it's entirety. I hope that information is true. That has a great Just My Imagination if we could get the whole song! I used to play Satisfaction Guaranteed over and over especially Neighbours, Black Limousine and Just My Imagination.

I've noticed the mix in the movie often mixes up the sound of what's on the screen such as a sax solo and the guitars disappear. It would be great to have Tempe in a CD mix.



Satisfaction Guaranteed, Tempe Arizona 12-13-1981

Quote
UrbanSteel
Satisfaction Guaranteed , Tempe Arizona 12-13-1981




CD 1

01 Take The A Train
02 Under My Thumb
03 When The Whip Comes Down
04 Let’s Spend The Night Together
05 Shattered
06 Neighbours
07 Black Limousine
08 Just My Imagination
09 Twenty Flight Rock
10 Going To A Go-Go
11 Let Me Go
12 Time Is On My Side
13 Beast Of Burden
14 Waiting On A Friend

CD 2

01 Let It Bleed
02 You Can’t Always Get What You Want
03 Band Introductions
04 Little T & A
05 Tumbling Dice
06 She’s So Cold
07 Hang Fire
08 Miss You
09 Honky Tonk Women
10 Brown Sugar
11 Start Me Up
12 Jumping Jack Flash
13 Satisfaction

range">Thanks to the original uploader.

Comments

Complete show from Tempe, Sun Devil Stadium, Arizona December 13, 1981.
10-Exc. stereo soundboard quality.

Nearly complete show from Phoenix December 13, 1981. Exc. stereo soundboard quality. Obviously the tape ended after Start Me Up, so Jumping Jack Flash and Satisfaction are the shortened versions taken from the Let's Spend The Night Together movie resp. Still Life. 14 mostly shortened tracks of this show are included in the Rocks Off and Let's Spend The Night Together movie. Hang Fire is also available in the 1981 radio show recordings.


Label: Vinyl Gang
Catalog-Nr: VGP 136

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-11 03:28 by exilestones.

[www.dbboots.com]

DAC-141



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-11 03:46 by exilestones.

Quote
exilestones
I thought it was a great tour. I know many other Stones fans were looking for another Brussels '73 or another Get Yer YaYas Out but that was already done.

One friend called 1981 tour a 'cookie cutter tour' where it was the same every night.

I look at it, especially now, that this tour was unique compared to, especially every tour that came afterwards. There were great classic song that were revamped like show openers Under My Thumb and Let's Spend the Night Together and especially Time is on My Side. Brilliant!

Waiting on a Friend is great live, especially from Pontiac (KBFH & DAC069).

Black Limousine from Let's Spend the Night Together I love too.


Black Limousine LIVE HD Tempe, Arizona '81
VIDEO: [www.youtube.com]


I heard that the Stones will release Tempe 1981 in it's entirety. I hope that information is true. That has a great Just My Imagination if we could get the whole song! I used to play Satisfaction Guaranteed over and over especially Neighbours, Black Limousine and Just My Imagination.

I've noticed the mix in the movie often mixes up the sound of what's on the screen such as a sax solo and the guitars disappear. It would be great to have Tempe in a CD mix.



Satisfaction Guaranteed, Tempe Arizona 12-13-1981

Quote
UrbanSteel
Satisfaction Guaranteed , Tempe Arizona 12-13-1981




CD 1

01 Take The A Train
02 Under My Thumb
03 When The Whip Comes Down
04 Let’s Spend The Night Together
05 Shattered
06 Neighbours
07 Black Limousine
08 Just My Imagination
09 Twenty Flight Rock
10 Going To A Go-Go
11 Let Me Go
12 Time Is On My Side
13 Beast Of Burden
14 Waiting On A Friend

CD 2

01 Let It Bleed
02 You Can’t Always Get What You Want
03 Band Introductions
04 Little T & A
05 Tumbling Dice
06 She’s So Cold
07 Hang Fire
08 Miss You
09 Honky Tonk Women
10 Brown Sugar
11 Start Me Up
12 Jumping Jack Flash
13 Satisfaction

range">Thanks to the original uploader.

Comments

Complete show from Tempe, Sun Devil Stadium, Arizona December 13, 1981.
10-Exc. stereo soundboard quality.

Nearly complete show from Phoenix December 13, 1981. Exc. stereo soundboard quality. Obviously the tape ended after Start Me Up, so Jumping Jack Flash and Satisfaction are the shortened versions taken from the Let's Spend The Night Together movie resp. Still Life. 14 mostly shortened tracks of this show are included in the Rocks Off and Let's Spend The Night Together movie. Hang Fire is also available in the 1981 radio show recordings.


Label: Vinyl Gang
Catalog-Nr: VGP 136

Yes and yet i want every single boot from the tour! They were better in 1972/1973 - (and partly 1975 imo) sure but every show was unique.

Thanks for a fantastic thread.

Quote
Redhotcarpet



Yes and yet i want every single boot from the tour! They were better in 1972/1973 - (and partly 1975 imo) sure but every show was unique.

Thanks for a fantastic thread.

You're welcome. Another angle of the point I'm trying to make is that we get another reincarnation (reinvent) of the Stones with some great material.

The long jams of the 70's were over. I was playing Ten Years After's Shhh! album and Uriah Heep's Magicians Birthday, etc.. and they seem dated. The '78 and '81 tours were very timely.

Why compare tours and albums? They are what they are. Who cares if it's the best album since Exile on Main Street. Nothing compares to Exile of the 1981-1982 tour. They are unique.

Quote
exilestones



[www.dbboots.com]

So a CD from the 81 tour has photos from the 78 tour?

Stones '81 Tour Movie Released Under Different Titles


Let's Spend the Night Together is a live concert film, documenting The Rolling Stones'
1981 North American Tour was released to cinemas on Friday, February 18, 1983.

It was subsequently released on VHS and CED Videodisc. It was released in
New Zealand & Australia with the alternative title Time Is on Our Side
on VHS and is currently available on DVD in Japan, Australia and New Zealand
(as L.S.T.N.T. from STUDIO CANAL/UNIVERSAL).

The film was released as Rocks Off in Germany with slightly different footage
and the additional song "When the Whip Comes Down" from Sun Devil Stadium.



Lions Gate Entertainment released the mobie on DVD in the
United States on November 2, 2010.

wiki

Poland



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-20 04:41 by exilestones.