Mick Jagger is 64 (65 in July). Keith Richards is 64. Charlie Watts is 66 (67 in June). And Ronnie Wood is the baby at 60 (61 in June). They each have more energy than I do.
Despite my general hesitance to watch concert films, I really enjoyed this one. It's not the "career spanning" documentary or the "look behind the scenes" of documentary film making that it's purported to be. There is archive footage between some of the songs to fill in a tad bit of history and the beginning offers the viewer a glimpse that is the relationship between the organized and prepared Scorsese and the c'est la vie Rolling Stones but, otherwise, it's just a damned good concert. What makes this one worth watching (besides the fact that the music is good, we'll leave that as a forgone conclusion) is that the viewer really gets to see the interaction between these guys on stage. The four of them have been a band since 1974 when Wood joined (the other three have been together since 1962 with a few members rotating in and out) and they obviously have as much fun together now as they did forty-plus years ago. What's amazing to me is how this film manages to make these rock gods look like normal guys who just rock out in their garage. Charlie Watts seems bemused by the whole thing. Mick Jagger obviously just likes to dance (or his version thereof anyway--it AMAZES me when people who sing and play instruments lack any sense of rhythm or bodily coordination). Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards just want to play guitars, any guitars, on any song (as illustrated by their pre-concert comments about really being excited to see what they were going to play--I'm talking about just before the concert). And Richards seems like the nicest, albeit perhaps sort of confused, guy ever. He gives away all of his guitar picks (even if he's mid-song) by placing them in the palms of audience members, not just tossing them out, and he gives guest Buddy Guy the guitar he played during the song. Richards also sings two songs and is very cute about it. He comes out in a long overcoat with a Pirates of the Caribbean pin on the front and seems to prefer to go stand by Wood as he plays guitar than be in front of the microphone without a guitar. Meanwhile, Richards tosses in some incredibly funny one-liners throughout the film. My one and only complaint about the movie is this: I was so thrilled that Scorsese chose to place the archive footage between songs instead of interrupting the songs but, for whatever reason, he chose to interrupt one and only one song, one of the two Keith Richards sang. I could have done without the end (post-concert) contrivance but I'll get over that.
I was amused by their song choices, though. This was apparently part of a charity thing for Bill Clinton and the environment or something. So, Bill, Hilary, Chelsea, Hilary's mom, etc. are in attendance (oh, that's my other slight complaint: we see these people before the concert and never again--I would have liked even a brief checking-in with them). Jagger includes "Brown Sugar," "Sympathy for the Devil," "Live with Me" (which included a little bump and grind with Christina Aguilera), and the song Buddy Guy sang with them, "Champagne and Reefer." I don't think they should have changed a thing--I just think it's amusing, that's all.
Anyway, you should see it and see it in a theater. Now.
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