This bloke is not best pleased! For comments posted in response to the below, go to the article via the link and scroll to the end.


Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - film

Has Scorsese shone a light, or turned over a rock?

Denis Seguin

March 6, 2008 2:00 PM

[blogs.guardian.co.uk]


We always hurt the ones we love... Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese at the Berlinale. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP

Shine A Light, Martin Scorsese's film of the Rolling Stones in concert, is less an embarrassment of riches than rich in embarrassment - some of it my own.

I am an unreconstructed fan of the Rolling Stones' recordings. It is perhaps unwise for a 45-year-old father of three to admit it, but I listen to their music at high volume in my minivan. So while other journalists in attendance at the Berlin film festival scoffed at the nonsense of a Stones concert opening Berlin, I thought, "Oh goody."

Two sets, 18 songs, filmed by a team of ace cinematographers, directed by the film-maker who has crafted brilliant movie moments around their music: bring it on.

At first, disorientation: who's that old man stumbling around with a guitar? Jesus Christ, look at the state of Keith. And the geezer behind the drums - Charlie, is that you? And what happened to Mick - how did he get so raddled?

OK, I'm old too. I've got some gray happening. And look how happy Jack White of the White Stripes is, singing Loving Cup with his grandfatherly hero. This is all good. If I'm dry-humping the next Christina Aguilera onstage in 2028, good on me.

But then Mick did something unforgivable.

The trouble began with Some Girls, the lead track from the 1978 album of the same name. The song features perhaps the Stones' raunchiest, most racially charged line. After cataloguing the peccadillos of a United Nations harem of women, Jagger complains, "Black girls just wanna get @#$%& all night, I just don't have that much jam." That line is mysteriously absent from Shine a Light.

Having passed too many teenage nights between the speakers of my parents' beyond-bad phonograph, my brain is tattooed with Mr. Jagger's loquacity. Suffice it to say, if you play with me, you're playing with fire. As soon as I heard - or rather, didn't hear - that line, I visually checked out of the filmed performance and started listening for missing bits. I started to feel spiritually old.

Not that the Stones haven't engaged in self-censorship before. For their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, they infamously complied with their host's demand to rephrase the chorus of Let's Spend The Night Together as "let's spend some time together."

But that was when the Stones were just beginning to roll, when they needed the bread, man. How lame now, at this stage of the game, in the penthouse of wealth, to pander to the masses. Particularly when that means airbrushing one of the most fascinating histories in popular music.

And then they did it again. Baby, it hurt.

Also gone awol was the bit about killing the Kennedys from Sympathy for the Devil. Why might this be so? One can only assume it was because the concert was introduced by the last Democratic president (Bill Clinton) and attended by the potential next Democratic president (Hillary Clinton). But really - were the band (or the film-makers) honestly worried about offending them with the reminder of the deaths of a political dynasty whose surviving members mostly seem to be endorsing Obama anyway?

True, Mick left some racy material intact. In Shine a Light, black girls are not allowed to come, but the dead man of Start Me Up can. Others made the grade by dint of subtlety. In their duet of Live With Me, Uncle Mick grinds against Aguilera while they sing about the senseless French maid who is "wild for Crazy Horse" - code for heroin. But this only served to make the other omissions all the more perplexing.

As the credits rolled, I fell into a depression. The mawkish introduction by Clinton, the plastic grin of Hillary, the audience pimped with gorgeous young blondes who would not otherwise be caught dead at a show. I know the Stones were "over" long ago - a point rammed home here by juxtaposing the concert with archival interviews from the band's heyday - but their recordings have stayed with me across time and format: LP, cassette, CD, MP3. Their lyrics are the band's last tenuous connection with rebellion: lose them, and there is nothing.

It was the old interviews, spliced between images, in living colour, of time's fiendish way with flesh, that pinned my heart to the floor. Jagger was never beautiful in the Bowie manner but, at the zenith of his rock-star ascendancy, he was magic. And when his 1968 voice belts out songs like Monkey Man and Live With Me, I still imagine a big happy mansion brimming over with joyful hedonism, I remember the original 24-hour party people, and how they helped me keep teenage reality at bay.

Shine a Light shined a light. You can't go back. Extreme close-ups on Mick Jagger are a bad idea. They will be excruciating on IMAX.

... i guess he doesn't have many concert albums in his collection -
it's about 23 years late to be griping about the "who killed the Kennedys" line being missing.
but thanks Beast my dear - have some popcorn.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-03-06 22:46 by with sssoul.

maybe i'm wrong, but i swear that the kennedy line comes and goes on different nights, doesnt it? it hasn't been 100% missing for 23 years, has it? am i hearing things?

That's ridiculous! I have never heard the Kennedy line deleted and I've seen the Stones 36 times; I would be pissed too if it's true they left out certain racey lines because Bill Clinton was in the audience! Really! First, why has no one else mentioned this before? Lots of folks were at these shows that I know personally and not one mentioned altered lyrics!

yeah - i mean "yeah it's there sometimes", not "yeah you're hallucinating".
probably was already one of those "off and on" lines in 69 as well.

meanwhile the maid is from the Crazy Horse, not "wild about Crazy Horse".
the guy is sad, i understand, but he really shouldn't take the lyrics so hard



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-03-07 01:38 by with sssoul.

>> if it's true they left out certain racey lines because Bill Clinton was in the audience! <<

whoa: he changed the Some Girls lyrics in 99 too, so i doubt it's a Clinton-Related Thing.
and the Kennedys line has been skipped lots of times. if no one mentioned it maybe that's why: it's nothing new.
i do recall vaguely noticing during the film that in Some Girls Mick didn't attribute all-night desire
to any particular race/nationality - maybe he did he skip that part altogether,
but he's within his rights as far as i'm concerned. i was listening to the guitars
and they didn't skip anything in Some Girls. :E



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-03-07 13:59 by with sssoul.

<<probably was already one of those "off and on" lines in 69 as well>>

Yes. The Kennedy line was left out on more than one occasion. Listen to shows like Los Angeles 2nd, Champaign 1st and Chicago. There are probably more examples from '69...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-03-07 01:49 by Sohoe.

I was at Beacon 2 at Mick did skip the part of the girls wanting to get f@#@ed all night, it was noticable(to a hardcore fan) but for years he changed it to white girls anyway. If something like this spoils the film for you than you should not go. Lets celebrate the 44 years of the Stones and be happy they are still performing.

Quote
mickschix
That's ridiculous! I have never heard the Kennedy line deleted and I've seen the Stones 36 times; I would be pissed too if it's true they left out certain racey lines because Bill Clinton was in the audience! Really! First, why has no one else mentioned this before? Lots of folks were at these shows that I know personally and not one mentioned altered lyrics!

What a miserable blogger - he should post over here to catch some heat.

No 1 who really cares I mean really really cares?
No 2 i wouldn't call myself hardcore (no bootlegs at all and only 15 concerts) but even I know the maid is from the Crazy Horse (a Paris strip club at the time I believe) the guy hasn't really been listening that hard!

Hmmm ... there's only one solution, and it involves a large calibre revolver. Can't be doing with reading bollards like this.

What's the big deal - he often changes lines in performance. Sometimes self censorship; sometimes, sheer devilment; sometimes, one suspects, simply forgetting. Puts me in mind of the Stella Street episode where Keith tries to remind him how JJF goes to hilarious effect!