Thursday, September 28, 2006
Review: Cocksucker Blues
There aren't too many secrets left. Censorship has loosened enough to let all those eye-popping, turtle-chopping scenes out into the light of day and the DVD explosion has seen studios digging up every last deleted scene and alternative cut for a double or triple dip. Cocksucker Blues, Robert Frank's documentary of The Rolling Stones' 1972 American tour, remains one of the secrets because the band threatened to sue anyone that showed it. As Keith Richards puts it: 'if anyone in America saw it, we'd never be let in the country again'. It may not have the geek cred of the spider pit, or the cineaste cred of the original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, but for any fan of rock'n'roll excess, or underground film-making, it's still a catch and, unlike the first two, actually floating around if you know the right people. The question with any tour film, though, is whether it gives you any reason not to just watch Spinal Tap again.
I caught it at a screening in an arts space just down the road from me where someone had a who-knows-how-many generation copy of it on DVD. It plays very much like Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, which followed Bob Dylan on his 1966 tour of England, except with a couple more spliffs, or lines, in its blood. It's mostly grainy black and white, shaky hand-held footage and the sound quality moves through varying degrees of terrible. This is possibly a result of the copying process, which only adds to the 'secret' (and the stoned) charm of it, but does make some of the dialogue difficult to make out.
There's very little sense of narrative driving the film forwards, possibly because nothing as iconically interesting as Altamont happened on this tour. Instead we get vaguely themed sequences showing the Stones and their entourage trying to talk to the press, or meeting famous people, or having sex with groupies, or taking increasingly harder drugs. Several people sitting near me, admittedly fairly stoned themselves, fell asleep by about half-way through. This does feel a lot longer than it is, and there's not much in the way of a statement or overall picture being made. If anything it tells us that touring is boring and, if a band is giving all their energy to the gig in the evening, they will either do very stupid things in the downtime between shows or listlessly do nothing at all.
Robert Frank was a photographer by trade, and his strengths lay in simply capturing what happened as truthfully as possible. As such, the joy of the film is in the small moments when the glamour of rock'n'roll lifestyle is put up against the realities of actually trying to live up to it.
There are hilarious moments of trying to order fruit from middle-american room service, of the careful, if wasted, preparations of trying to catch the spontaneous rebellious act of throwing a tv out of a window on camera, and of Mick Jagger trying to talk in sentences to various journalists.
The film is interspersed with concert footage shot in colour and mostly from the side of the stage. What I found most interesting was how rapidly they could change from being a truly elemental blues-rock band to being a bunch of English art school students playing with daddy's record collection. Also how quickly Mick could change from being a malevolent sex god to being an awkward twat with no co-ordination. Also how bad an idea the circus costumes were. It is telling that by far the best bit of music comes when Stevie Wonder joins them on stage for a medly of 'Up Tight, Out Of Sight' and 'Satisfaction'.
There is plenty of rock'n'roll excess shown, but it is mostly done by people surrounding the band, rather than Mick and Keith themselves. Mostly they are wondering around in a daze or collapsed in a corner while someone, either the saxophonist or keyboardist I think, molests the groupies. There is a scene on a private plane where he is ripping off the t-shirts of groupies and forcing himself on them that is fairly awesome/revolting, especially as everyone else on the plane is happily looking on. Are they egging him on or are they going along with it because they feel they have an image to act up to? We also get shots of a skinny backside pumping away at a groupie, of someone re-enacting the cover of Sticky Fingers, and of a wet but flaccid cock. It is not revealed who any of these body parts belong to. Impressive girth, though.
We get long stretches of everyone being entirely wasted. We get hipsters banging on about organising heroin users into an organisation for fair, quality distribution and educational field-trips and we get a groupie, legs wide open, rubbing something into her breasts while a man wonders where his room keys are.
There has obviously been a lot of editing going on, which can always lead to charges of manipulating the truth, especially in a film made by someone who makes claims of capturing 'how it is'. Keith Richards has said that, while he'll never allow it to be shown, it is his favourite music documentary as, yes, it was actually like that.
The problem is that there's nothing particularly surprising or shocking in any of it if you've seen Spinal Tap. Even if Blues was banned, the makers of that film obviously saw it and took notes. All the bases are covered there, only with pace and much better jokes. Even the seedier and more unpleasant aspects are shown, seediness intact, in the equally excellent deleted scenes on that DVD, which are cut together to almost make a film in themselves.
In terms of serious music documentaries, Gimme Shelter (which covered the tour ending in the infamous Altamont gig), Don't Look Back and The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years are all far more insightful.
Cocksucker Blues really only has going for it the fact that it has a real, iconic band in it and a lingering sense of tragedy from knowing that these are real people making messes of themselves. There is one fan shown trying to get a ticket explaining how bewildered she was her baby was taken away from her because she was permanently on acid for the pregnancy and declaring that she only lives for the Stones and would jump off a bridge if she didn't get to see the show.
It's impossible to rate Cocksucker Blues as it is more a piece of rock folklore than a film these days, but it is the real deal and it will also give you cred to have been able to see it. Ultimately, the most telling part of the film comes right at the beginning when it is explained they called it Cocksucker Blues too piss off a stuffy record executive, so proving that Mick and Keith were still just public school boys flipping their fingers behind the back of the headmaster. That said, it does have 70's style pubic hair.7 farewell tours out of 10
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