The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter - Criterion Collection (1970)

Good as it gets

This appears to be a true and accurate record of these events. Very absorbing and of significant historical interest. The music is good as well!! July 6, 2008

Tragic Classic

I have always heard that it is difficult to make a rock and roll film, let alone one that is also a documentary. Gimme Shelter is both- a filmed concert experience but one that also documents those events that take place behind the scenes.

This one gives the viewer virtually unlimited access to the Rolling Stones for their 1969 tour of America. We see the Stones as they perform at Madison Square Garden, working in the studio, and checking into hotel rooms. For Stones historians, there are brief glimpses of Ian Stewart- founding member and so called "sixth Stone", including one of him at the Altamont concert, asking for a doctor to please come to the front of the stage.

Some of the most fascinating scenes do not even have the Stones in them. These are the meetings that would take place in the office of famed attorney Mel Belli. Here is where the ill-fated Altamont show would be planned.

Last of course, is the Altamont concert. It was here that peace & love would collide with extreme violence with fatal results. Was it the end of an era? Did Altamont somehow symbolize the dawning of a new age in America- one in which Flower Power was replaced by death and destruction illustrated by the war in Vietnam?

Perhaps so but at its heart, Gimme Shelter was never intended to be a comment on the sixties nor was it supposed to make some sort of political statement. Gimme Shelter started out as a concert film about the Rolling Stones and it just happened to record something that went very, very wrong.
June 27, 2008

"Babies"

Saw Gimmie Shelter again last night and suddenly I felt like I was envisioning what the great artist Goya saw when painting the horrors into the faces of his characters. The buildup to Altamont, because you know it's coming, is full of tension and dread cloaked in the mundane. The footage shot from the stage ecompasses almost every emotion and reality known to man -- joy, sadness, fear, anger, sensuality, frivolity, violence, psychotic reaction ... as Goya saw it, the horror of existence and who we are. The most amazing shots: The hatred for everything Mick Jagger stands for etched in the face of a Hell's Angel standing right next to him on stage, staring....In the aftermath of the killing, young men in police caps -- yet clearly not police or police hats -- milling around on the stage ineffectually.
People have ripped the Stones for living in a self-deluded bubble during these times, but you've got to hand it to a horrified, at times speechless Mick -- considered by many in those days the devil himself -- as he tries to calm the crowd, appeal for sense and sanity. "Babies, please..." I'm sure he was scared the Hell's Angels might kill him too.
P.S. -- One of the Angels knocks out Marty Balin, and, go figure!, he got up and wrote the smash hit "Miracles" just a few years later for Starship. Peace. June 20, 2008

Eyeglass to the past

This is a superlative and surprising documentary that clearly shows the business acumen and professionalism of the Rolling Stones as they effortlessly blended their talents and showmanship into the drug racked culture of a 60s rock concert. Not to be missed. June 9, 2008

Gimme Shelter From the Storm

I have written elsewhere in this space that when it comes to musical influences in my youth that the Stones played a key role in developing my tastes. I have also mentioned elsewhere that my youthful alienation was reflected in the language and sound of the group. I mentioned Street Fighting Man and Tumbling Dice, as well as an earlier cover of Little Red Rooster as important. All this is by way of saying that I looked forward recently to re-watching the old Stones documentary Gimme Shelter reviewed here, despite my knowledge of the tragic incidents that occurred at Altamont and marred the whole experience.

If one is to recount the high points of the too short counter cultural explosion of the 1960's one could arbitrarily assign the Summer of Love in 1967 as the height and Altamont as the start of the decline. We can argue that point endlessly but clearly something or some things happened at Altamont that exposed the ugly side of the dope/ counter cultural scene. Moreover, on reflection no one can deny the unreasonableness of having the notorious Hell's Angels, despite favorable press from Tom Wolfe in Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and Hunter Thompson in his classic study Hell's Angels, as security for a 300, 000 person event.

Now, we finally get to the music and the film. And I think that this is about the right place for such comments in the scheme of things. There have been many, many Stones concerts during the past forty years but none have had the cultural significance of Altamont. Most of the film is about how they, good-naturedly if ultimately naively, tried to put the event together. A fair portion of the film is footage of the reaction by the Stones to the events that they witnessed and interspersed in between are parts of the performance.

This film has not aged well, although Mick has. His voice comes off tinny here reflecting an earlier, more primitive sound technology that does not do justice to how Mick and the boys could whip up an audience. A nice surprise though is a very sensual Tina (and Ike) Turner performance. Unfortunately, the Jefferson Airplane afternoon performance is marred by the violence that doomed the event. But here is the skinny. If you need to look at rock and roll history watch this one and one half hour documentary. If you want to hear the Stones at their best then purchase any one of about ten greatest hits albums available. That's the ticket.
June 2, 2008

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