| 3rd November 2006 03:21 PM |
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| Saint Sway |
Scorsese's Last Waltz, Stones style
Nov. 3, 2006. 05:53 AM
PETER HOWELL
Martin Scorsese had 17 cameras trained on the Rolling Stones when the band
rocked New York's Beacon Theater this past Sunday and Wednesday nights.
He's making a documentary that might be called The Last Waltz II, a career
summary-plus concert movie that seems built from the template of The Last
Waltz, his 1978 swan song for The Band. It's due out next year.
But there was an 18th camera roaming backstage at the Beacon, an art deco
gem built in 1928 just as silent movies learned how to talk. A
high-definition video lens was carried by legendary documentarian Albert
Maysles, who turns 80 on Nov. 26 and who has his own storied history with
the Stones.
Maysles, along with his brother David, and Charlotte Zwerin, directed the
1970 rock classic Gimme Shelter, the harrowing chronicle of the Stones'
disastrous 1969 free concert at Altamont Speedway in California. Altamont
was an attempt to one-up the magic of Woodstock a few months earlier, but it
ended in disaster after a fan was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell's
Angels motorcycle club, in full view of the Stones and the cameras.
Gimme Shelter and Altamont represent the sour coda to the sunny '60s
optimism that the Maysles Brothers (David died in 1987) helped usher in with
their 1964 doc What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. about the Fab
Four's first American tour.
"My brother and I captured the mood of the time with those two films,"
Maysles said yesterday from his New York office. "Things changed radically
at the very end of that decade. So we had both bookends, if you will."
The Stones still shudder about Altamont. But they obviously don't have any
lingering bad vibes about Gimme Shelter, because both Mick Jagger and Keith
Richards were keen to have Maysles on board for the Beacon shoot.
"They both recommended that I be brought on," Maysles said proudly. "That
was nice. We exchanged hugs as soon as we got to see each other. I'm 80
years old, so I think of them as pretty young guys (Jagger is 63 and
Richards is 62)."
The last time he worked with the band was in 1994, when he flew to Toronto
to chronicle their rehearsals for that year's Voodoo Lounge tour, a TV
project he did for the VH1 music channel stateside.
Maysles also had an in with Scorsese, a one-time protégé whom he's known for
decades.
"Marty called me up and said he'd love to have me do some shooting. They had
17 cameras already, but he thought I would just do my own thing. I'd be free
to just roam around and do whatever I saw fit. And that's what happened."
For a man who has witnessed important events in rock history, Maysles isn't
your typical rock fan — although he does love the Stones.
"I'm not so much a rock 'n' roll guy. My instincts have always been towards
classical music. But I'm knocked out by the Stones. I'm listening to their
music as I'm filming it and it's really stirring. Everybody talks about
their age and so forth but I don't see it. I think their music is just as
good now as it was then."
Jagger's voice sounded in fine shape, Maysles added, despite the persistent
bouts of laryngitis that forced the band to cancel a planned gig last Friday
in Atlantic City. The second Beacon show was also delayed by a day, due to
doctor's orders for Jagger to rest his voice.
It's not clear yet exactly what Scorsese has in mind for his Stones movie,
or even what he'll call it — Maysles is pulling for The Stones Keep Rolling
— but the nickname Last Waltz II seems likely to stick.
That's because of all the special guests who showed up to sing along with
the Stones. Just as in 1976, when Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison,
Muddy Waters and others convened to sing out with The Band for the benefit
of Scorsese's cameras. (Scorsese is into a real rock phase: last year he
released the Dylan biopic No Direction Home and his current hit, The
Departed, has two Stones songs on the soundtrack.)
The special guests for the Stones' Beacon shows included blues great Buddy
Guy, alt-rocker Jack White (late of the White Stripes) and pop diva
Christina Aguilera — who showed up in a tuxedo shirt, stockings, heels and
nada else, to croon "Live With Me" with Jagger.
Sunday night's show was a charity event in honour of the 60th birthday of
former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was there with his wife Hillary, a
likely Democratic challenger in the 2008 presidential campaign.
"I'd like to welcome President Clinton," Jagger quipped. "And I see she's
brought her husband."
The Beacon set list was far more interesting that the greatest hits jukebox
the Stones have been punching on their current A Bigger Bang tour, which
included a stop at Toronto's Rogers Centre in September 2005.
Besides the usual chestnuts of "Satisfaction," "Jumpin' Jack Flash,"
"Sympathy For The Devil" and (yawn) "Start Me Up," the band also rocked
genuine curios like "Loving Cup" (with Jack White), "All Down The Line,"
"Shine A Light" and covers of the Temptations' "Just My Imagination" and
Muddy Waters' "Champagne & Reefer" (with Buddy Guy).
"In Scorsese's hands, I think the film is going to be fabulous," Maysles
said. "He's always had a fierce kind of energy. When he first came into my
studio as a kid, he told me, `All I need is 13,000 bucks and I can make a
feature film! I know where I can get short ends (film stock remnants)!'"
Scorsese's Stones movie may even include a few scenes from the Gimme Shelter
shoot that haven't previously seen the dark of a theatre.
"I've offered him to look at the outs (outtakes) from the Gimme Shelter
days," Maysles said. "His people are going to look at them. I've got 150
hours of film that didn't get into Gimme Shelter."
Maysles enjoys revisiting his old work. He recently recut unused footage
from his 1976 doc Grey Gardens, a chronicle of a mother-daughter duo of
eccentric hermits, to make the new film The Beales of Grey Gardens that he
brought to the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
He'd also like to revisit and expand Gimme Shelter, possibly with an eye to
a multi-disc DVD release. And he's thinking of making new use of his
interview footage from years past with the likes of author Truman Capote and
filmmaker Orson Welles.
On top of that, he's working on a documentary called In Transit, which is
about long-distance railway riders and their stories. He's planning to
travel to Canada to shoot part of it.
It's a pretty frantic schedule for a guy who is now 15 years past the usual
retirement age. But Maysles doesn't believe in letting age slow you down. He
also doesn't buy the current fan theory that this Rolling Stones tour will
be the band's last.
The reason? They're just too young to hang up their guitars.
"I'm 80, for God's sake! The Stones have got a good 20 more years in them!" |
| 3rd November 2006 03:43 PM |
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| gimmekeef |
Thanks nice read....Geez as long as one of those outtakes isnt more footage of the fat naked guy at Altamont... |
| 3rd November 2006 03:48 PM |
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| glencar |
I have a couple of pix I took of him outside the Beacon. I remember one know-it-all saying something dumb like "I bet all these people thinks that guy's Scorcese." Uh, no. |
| 3rd November 2006 06:41 PM |
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| GotToRollMe |
I saw Maysles out in front of the theatre the other night. He spent quite some time out there, looking for interesting people to film. I recognized the face but couldn't place him. I shoulda just approached him. Fuck!
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| 3rd November 2006 06:42 PM |
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| glencar |
Eh, I had a chance & didn't bother. He was asking people what their first Stones concert experience was like. |
| 3rd November 2006 07:39 PM |
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| MrPleasant |
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
He's making a documentary that might be called The Last Waltz II
Does this mean that the Stones are breaking up? |
| 4th November 2006 04:40 AM |
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| Boogie-Woogie |
an expanded gimme shelter with the full msg stones show from 1969!!!!
that would be wicked ;-)...too cool to be real... |
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