LSTNT
The Rolling Stones, Let’s Spend The Night Together – A great DVD of 24 Stones classics, filmed in 1981, it was also one of Hal Ashby’s last films (the bearded wild man him self appears in a backstage scene halfway through the movie). The film starts off at a stadium show in the afternoon, filmed at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona (13 December 1981), before later on moving into the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey (filmed 5–6 November 1981). I came into this film with fairly low expectations, but it blew me away – in this video Mick is about the same age as I am now, and he’s in amazing shape; he pulls off a great show – the whole band does!
But not everything’s perfect, and the movie is a bit slow starting off – for starters, the opening scenes feel a bit odd, as the song is a bit jarringly studio-sounding, and there’s a non-live feel to it, like it’s been performed in a small empty room with some crowd noises mixed in. We get a nice behind-stage view of Charlie’s bald spot (what happened to it more recently – wig?). Great ariel shot, balloons rising. Mick’s kneepads look quite horrible. Ian Stewart on piano, only four years before he died. Bill Wyman in shell suit (and later in a pastel yellow suit – ewwww!!!). Random backstage shots edited in during some numbers. Mick snarling to Ron about time. Ron’s make-up people do their thing. During the afternoon gig, we get to see edited in goofy shots from the evening gig. Keith looks like a poor man’s Bruce Springsteen at times, he later comes out in these magnificent bare-chested ripped shirts – wow! Mick plays a Gibson SG on some songs (and also an Ovation), using it mostly as a prop rather than actually playing significant (and distinguishable) guitar parts; no big deal, though, he makes great use of it as a prop, and “(Just My Imagination) Running Away With Me” is really awesome!! Funny to see Bill shaking his head at Mick’s guitar antics (me too).
Weird editing – there’s at least one scene, involving a frisbee landing on the deck near Mick’s feet, reused in the film, and then at another point we see Mick being strapped into his Ovation guitar at stage right and in the next frame immediately he’s singing and playing (it’s at 35:00). What’s missing in between? During “Time Is On My Side” we get images of the young Stones, as well as strange political images, and the weird WTF Nazi costume dress stuff (as we see below). Strange! Mick dons an ugly shoulder-padded blazer, double yuck!! There’s another time capture montage during “Going To A Go-Go” when we see the Meadowlands stage being built, with its weird turntable so that the whole stage can rotate to face all four sides of the place through the course of the gig. Nice touch, great design, must have been a strange effect, though (they had wanted to do something similar at Woodstock, actually, it didn’t work out). Great version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, with great sound – we even hear the pop of Mick removing his mic from the mic clip on his mic stand!! There’s another weird montage during “She’s So Cold”. Mick does a weird crotch wash at 59:30, and an awful lot of mincing throughout. Hmmm… at one point Keith takes a relatively fresh cig that he’s already smoking and throws it on the ground. “Let It Bleed” is full of gag reel shots of Bill and Charlie (the rhythm section), like an off-sync Rolling Stones gag reel. During “Honkey Tonk Women”, out come 100 honkey tonk women, including Gerry Hall!! Wow!!! Ron’s daughter in there too?? Bobby Keys finally shows up near the end, in “Brown Sugar”. During “Jumping Jack Flash” Mick moves around by cherry picker. During encore of “Satisfaction” they release a million balloons from the ceiling, they bounce around the stage, Ron blasts some of them with his mouth-held cigarette. Nice shots of Mick draped in US/UK flag, other endings and finales from various evenings are then also spliced in.
Altogether a really fantastic visual document – just love it!!
This showed up in a montage of the band. WTF??
WTF??? This shows up during the ‘Time Is On My Side’ montage
Here are some shots from the show – great images of Keith and Mick!!
Rock ‘n’ roll!
Rock ‘n’ roll!
Rock ‘n’ roll!
Hal Ashby??
Rock ‘n’ Roll!!
Rock ‘n’ Roll!!