"I'm Michael Lindsay-Hogg." "I directed The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus." "I'm Tony Richmond and I was the cinematographer on the Circus." " Shall I start then?" " You should." " I know more!" " I don't know how it came about!" "OK, how it came about." "Mick Jagger, specifically, and the Rolling Stones in general, wanted to do something other than, something bigger than just release a record because they'd started doing videos." " Tony and I did Jumping Jack Flash." " And Child Of The Moon." "Dressed up as cowboys or Indians in a tree." "Yeah, Brian Jones in a tree!" "We'd done the videos for Jumping Jack Flash and Child Of The Moon and the Stones got a taste for doing something other than making a record." "So Mick said to me, because I was the directeur du jour because I'd done the videos," ""Can you come up with an idea for a TV show?"" "I said, "Sure." He said, "We can do it in December," ""so we'll have a TV show in December."" "The clock was ticking and I had no idea." "Mick had no idea." "No one had any idea what a Rolling Stones TV show should be." "One day, I was sitting in their offices in Maddox Street, in London, and I was doodling and I doodled on the pad a circle." "Circle, circle..." "And then I thought, "That's funny."" "Then I thought, "Circus, circle, circus." Then I had the title, which was The Rolling Stones Circus." ""Circus" had a kind of flavor to it." "It was the time of Fellini, who I also know the Stones wanted to do some work with." "Then Tony did the Godard picture with the Stones, Sympathy For The Devil." "One Plus One/Sympathy For The Devil." "So I had this idea." "Circle" " The Rolling Stones Circus." "Then I thought, "Not quite." It should be The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus." "So we had a kind of concept without knowing what it was." "I called Mick and I said, "I've got this really great idea."" "He said, "What?"" "I said, "The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus."" "The title had a kind of bite to it." "So we then set to work on trying to come up with what The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus would be." "And what we thought was that it shouldn't be a glamorous circus, it should be a tacky, travelling European circus." "And that's the kind of set we designed." "We wanted a series of performers who would be right for the circus." "We got some tumblers and acrobats and clowns - the clowns footage was lost." "The man who threw choppers, or tomahawks." " Had his daughter on a wheel." " Yes, that got lost, too." " Oh, really?" " It was fantastic." "The daughter was on this wheel and he threw this chopper!" "I was standing in the wings and it came right past me!" "Went nowhere near her!" "That may have been when the French cameras broke." "Probably." " We had a lot of trouble." " The lady kept falling off the horse." "But fortunately not off the trapeze." "So then, what we thought was, "What kind of performers would we get?"" "We had the dates planned sometime in December of that year." "We had to come up with choosing the musicians." "We knew it would be the Rolling Stones and also The Who." "One of the other things - we were going to chose an unknown band, a band which was not yet famous, given that we had the Rolling Stones and were going to have a supergroup band and The Who." "And we got a lot of demos, which we listened to." "Mick and I liked Jethro Tull." "We'd seen Jethro Tull on a BBC show and we thought lan Anderson was a really interesting performer." "And I think Mick thought so too but his interestingness was not rivalrous to Mick's." "It was another performance-based band with interesting music." "But of the demos that were submitted to us, another was to be the runner-up and contender for Jethro Tull's spot." "We both thought it was good but it was very guitary." "It had a lot of heavy guitar, which Mick didn't like." "I said I didn't either." "So we did get Jethro Tull but we turned down Led Zeppelin, which, as history went on, who knows?" "But that would have been a good show." "Lan Anderson was a spectacular performer, if you'd never seen that before." "Very original." "That one-legged performance." "And his flute and his wild Celtic look." "They really got him." "He was really good." "They liked him." "We shot the show on one day." "The day before, we rehearsed a bit and shot Taj Mahal's material in the space we had in the circus, which was still being built." "The day before, we'd taken a ballroom in a hotel in central London." "Remember?" " Right, where you rehearsed." " That's when we chose the songs." "That's when Jethro Tull ran through three songs." "We thought we'd use two of them or one of them but not the third one." "So we did some primitive rehearsal for the musicians." "Then we went out to the circus the day before." "What we'd do then is the camera rehearsal." "We'd go through it once with the cameras to make sure it was OK, whether it was a backing track or they were playing live, and if the music was loud enough." "Then we'd shoot it." "We'd usually shoot it two, once, twice, three times, until we thought we had a take, either a complete take, or something where we could use the best bits for the musicians." "But most of it is unedited - not dropping take one into take two." "It usually is all one thing." "I had a cigar in my mouth." "I used to smoke them" " I still do!" "Keith said, "I need a prop or something here", and he took my cigar out of my mouth and put it in his mouth." " Was it wet at the end?" " I wasn't a wet smoker." "OK, just checking." "I wasn't too wet of a smoker." "I think he was right." "It gives a very kind of raffish touch to his outfit, which looks pretty good, anyway." "He wanted to introduce The Who." "I forget who introduced what but Keith asked to introduce The Who." "They were spectacular." "They were spectacular." "They were, and rumor has it that that's one of the reasons the show didn't come out for such a long time." "Such a long time - 28 years." "You called me and said we were going to re-shoot the Stones' part." " I did." " That won't be on the DVD." "They'll cut that out." "We were going to re-shoot the Stones." " And then Brian died?" " No." "What happened was... we were going to re-shoot the Stones' part and I think it was either Mick or Allen who had the idea of shooting it in the original circus, which was the Colosseum, in Rome." "And whoever was sent out to book the Colosseum, on behalf of "the management", tied up all the necessary rights, like the balloons and programs but didn't get permission from the city fathers of Rome" "and, in the Italian papers, it said - in Italian, of course, because the Italians don't read English that much " ""Where Once Lions Roared Will The Stones Now Play."" "And we were then denied to shoot in Rome." "But the other problem was that I didn't want to fly to Rome." " You didn't like flying?" " No." "I'd been booked by the travel agent." "I was just about OK to go on Alitalia but I was booked on Air Libya." "Bad one in those days!" "I was booked on Air Libya and that made me anxious, so I didn't go." "The thing had fallen apart, anyway, because there wasn't permission to shoot in Rome." "But people blamed it a little bit on me, sort of for not showing up." " I don't know if you'd gone out then, Tony?" " No." "Why didn't we fly together?" "Were you doing another movie?" "I think I was doing another movie." " I really can't remember that." " All those years on the Cognac." "I think you were doing another movie." "Maybe that's why I wanted to delay it." "Anyway, we were going to shoot it in Rome." "We didn't." " You didn't get permission." " Right." "Then Brian died and then everything changed." "There's a thing about rock and roll projects, of which this, for a time, was one." "In those days, there was so much energy and so many ideas crashing around that, if a rock and roll project lost momentum - if you didn't shoot it and everybody wasn't totally enthusiastic right away " "it could spend years in a drawer and not come out." "It didn't happen with Let It Be." "It happened to the Circus but for reasons which had nothing to do with anyone." "For whatever reason, The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus, the film, was lost, virtually, for 15 years." "We decided to hold it up and do some more work on it and then, the Rolling Stones, for tax reasons, went to live in France." "The cutting room had been closed down and the cans of film had been stored in their big office in Maddox Street." "In France, they didn't need a big office, so had a smaller one, and yet there were these cans of film." "The cans of film were moved to the smaller office and there was no room, they were put in the bathroom." "These were all the negatives and rough cuts of the Circus." "There was no room and they were to be thrown out because, who knew what?" "The Stones were away, they were in France." "And lan Stewart, who was called their road manager but was like the sixth Stone, their friend, their ally, he thought that, one day, maybe someone would need this footage." "So he took it out of the small office, where it was stuck in the bathroom and brought it out to his farmhouse in the country, where he lived with his family." "He put all the cans of film in the barn." "And then years went by and I did videos with the Stones while you were away, making Don't Look Now with Nick Roeg and so on." "And we would say to ourselves," ""Whatever happened to the Circus?" And no one knew." "I guess Stu wasn't in the room then." "We said, "There was good stuff in there." ""The Who were good and we were pretty good, even though it was 5am."" "And then, when lan Stewart died, his widow Cynthia was looking around the property." "She went out to the barn and she found all these cans of film with the tape peeling off, saying, "'oiling Stones 'ock and 'oll 'ircus."" "There was a rake and gumboots leaning next to them and a whole pile of hay or something." "So that's where The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus was for 15 years - lost." "One of the reasons that the filming - the actual day's filming, except for Taj, which began at noon, and went on till five the following morning, which was not the plan, actually, was because the cameras kept breaking down." "So you'd have these absolutely fabulous musicians standing around while some Frenchmen with screwdrivers would come in..." "All that mumbo jumbo!" "Not knocking the French, because I love them and I want to go there right now!" "They had their screwdrivers and the cameras kept breaking." "Many things happened as a result because it was such a long day." " A hugely long day in the end." " Yeah, one of the things which happened." "Well, some guys came over with the cameras, yeah." "I guess they came with some engineers, didn't they?" " They came with engineers." " They had a lot of gear." "They brought a truck." "A control truck, like a live broadcast." "And they brought five cameras and some French guys, who would - I think the current word is "interface" - with the English technicians." "We had to have those as well, in order to figure out what was happening to the cameras." "And the Brits and the French have never got on!" "In the very old days we'd go to Paris in our rowing boats." "Bit of rape and pillage and back for lunch." "Brian felt good around the circus performers." "I think, because he was falling apart at the time, alas." "And maybe he felt some kinship with them." "I don't know." " These were..." " They were pretty old." "They were part of the circus performers." "They were about three feet off the ground, too." "That's why there's no safety line." "Yes, the ground is nearby..." "You can tell." "There we go." "And we thought..." "We thought it should be people..." "The Rolling Stones, because of what you might call their rough image..." "This is the high-wire act!" "It's not that we couldn't afford to go higher, just that the guy was a bit frightened!" "And we thought that they were in keeping with the spirit of the Stones' Circus, which had this slightly threadbare Middle-European look to it." "That was the idea, so we wanted performers who'd been around a while." "The audience response was not total thrilldom." "But then this shot and they had to clap." "So they clapped and that was nice." "They liked it." " That was a nurse." " That was one of the nurses." "Keith Richards wanted Taj Mahal." "Taj Mahal and his band we'd asked to come in but we'd asked them because of a problem - either the paperwork wasn't done or there was a problem that he couldn't get his immigration papers," "which you needed in those days." "There was a problem with the music union." "In any event, his appearance in the show, if anyone knew about it, would be illegal, and, if anybody found out about it, they could stop the show." "So, I think, whoever was talking to their management, or maybe it was Keith talking to Taj himself, we asked the band to come in not looking like musicians." "Maybe wearing suits or something, so they wouldn't be..." "But, alas, they came in looking like musicians, with sombreros and guitar cases and plecs and strings and everything like that." "They were busted at the airport and they were told that they had to leave the country in 24 hours or 48 hours." "So, this was the night before we were going to start rehearsing." "We rehearsed day one, remember?" " Right." " And then we shot day two." "Taj was coming for rehearsal and Mick and I thought, "Gee, too bad." "We'll get someone else." ""We really wanted Taj to be on the show but they can't be," ""because we don't want any trouble with the Musicians' Union or the law."" "So there was a meeting that night at Mick's house in Chelsea." "There was Mick and me and Keith." "Keith came over hearing of this and we were all sitting there and Keith launched this vitriolic attack on Mick and me for being cissies, cowards, pussies... for giving in to whatever the prevailing wind was, and, if Taj Mahal was not in the show, he wouldn't be either." " We thought, "Huh?"" " There you go." "And really, it was just the three of us." "It was the first time" "I'd seen the other side of a certain relationship between Mick and Keith." "They'd known each other for four million years." "One day one will be stronger, one day, weaker, but this was Keith at his most aggressive, which, I'm here to tell you, can be quite aggressive." "The next day, we went out to the place." " Instead of rehearsing Taj..." " You shot him." "One of the reasons, when you see the show, a lot of the stuff with Taj is very tight, like close-ups..." "We had no extras." "The sombreros weren't made then." "We had an audience." "We thought it would be nice for color." "And matching." "We couldn't keep them there." "If we put ponchos and sombreros in the audience - a great idea." "I still have mine." "I have mine from the showing of the Circus." "Not the hat but I've got the poncho." "We had these ponchos, which was a really good idea." "I wanted to do it again, because you have this colorful audience and there's no problem matching." " Also, the audience was in shifts." " Yeah." "One got phone calls from people who'd lost their children." "Really!" "True, they phoned the studio, right?" "We weren't quite up to speed with Taj, because he was..." "Being deported?" "And so we figured, "Let's do all we can." Let's do what we can with him and see which ended up in the show." "He was a riveting performer, so we just got as much as we could." "He looks like Boy George, look!" " It's a girl, isn't it?" " Yeah." "This is the only crane shot." "This is always as we imagined it." "She had that beautiful dress." "And Tony said, because we're doing TV cameras and they don't have the same mobility as a movie camera can have if you designed the shot, we really need, especially if someone is sitting down..." "She's very beautiful, isn't she?" "My God, this girl was a knockout." "And it's so interesting to look at her, knowing what happened to her a few years later and how her life collapsed on her, really, to do with drugs and things." "And then how she's remade herself into a wonderful cabaret singer, performer, recording artist." "I mean, you have this beautiful young woman here, who's gorgeous, but you also have the woman that Marianne has become, which is a really interesting human being and a wonderful girl." "The crane shot..." "Tony said TV cameras don't have the same way of moving around as a movie camera, so, because Marianne is here, with this beautiful dress, let's find some sort of crane shot which gives us a different kind of movement" "than the rock and roll movement we've had in the rest of the thing." "The look of it, I don't think Mick was involved with." "Involved with anything, really!" "Was he?" "In terms of the look of the show." "No." "He obviously signed off on the set and stuff like that and any idea that we had we'd always run by him because he was the final arbiter in that way." "But he was spending his time in the wings or backstage, really, trying to hold everything together, making sure people weren't going to quit." "Or get bored and go home." "It was quite extraordinary." " It took a long time." " Yeah." "Because these were the days, even though this was a unique occasion everybody felt glad to be part of..." "Keith looks so great there." "They also always wanted to run back to Elvira's, didn't they?" "The interesting thing here is Donyale Luna, who's about to appear." " She's passed on now?" " Yeah." "She was a very successful model at the time and a very nice girl - an American girl." "Many people who are in this show have died and many of them too early." "She was one of the ones who died too early." "She was the first one of the people in the show who didn't get out of her twenties or early thirties, I think." "She was a very nice girl." "My worry was, as the show was going on, as the hours were grinding on, that some people might, although they loved the idea of the thing, might just bale on us." "Leave or maybe get a little tired." "A little tired or what Private Eye calls "tired and emotional."" "Not cry, just do other things." "And I think..." "Anyway, so I was afraid they might leave." "So one of the things Mick was doing was trying to make sure everything was OK backstage." " In charge of the greenroom." " Yeah, exactly." "Exactly." "Because it was a very, very long day." "This is one of the most extraordinary two shots to come out of the period." "You have these gods and they hadn't rehearsed this, this kind of mock American Johnny Carson-type interview." "But John is so quick-witted and Mick is so quick-witted." "Although I think John gets the better of this here." "They were..." "Mugging to the camera, too." "They were great friends and great rivals." "It was an extraordinary time, rivals were friends and friends were rivals." "And this is one of the moments in the Rock And Roll Circus I like the best, because you have the two of them together." "Mick thought it would be great to have a supergroup made up of musicians, cos there hadn't been many." "They didn't exist, really, then, musicians from other bands who wanted to play together." "His first idea" " I forget the other guys - was going to be Stevie Winwood." "Oh, that's right." "It was gonna be Stevie Winwood who was gonna be the vocalist, as they used to call them in the '40s." "And as we were planning the show and as the show was getting nearer," "Stevie didn't seem to be around much." "You couldn't get him on the phone or something like that." "And when Mick and I could get him on the phone, he sounded very hoarse and he kept talking like that, he was really tired..." ""Roll me another one!"" "Not unlike that!" "And he said his voice was very sore." "So Mick and I thought that Stevie mightn't make it for that particular time that you needed him." "So we thought we needed to come up with another band." "Mick's first thought was to see if Paul McCartney wanted to do it." "Mick had his phone book in his hand." "He was standing by the phone in Maddox Street just going through it." "McCartney?" "Maybe not." "Maybe it'll take him too long to make up his mind, because the show was going to be in two or three days." "He was thumbing through and then got to "L" in his phone book, which probably had a lot of girls' numbers in it. "L" was John Lennon." "So then he called John." "Enthusiasm, when John was motivated, was one of his great qualities." "John said, "Sure." He said he'd get Eric Clapton." "Then Keith wanted to play." "They got Mitch Mitchell." "But it originally was going to be Stevie Winwood in the band, almost McCartney, and then, very quickly, when John was asked, he said yes and completely bought into the idea and loved the idea." "And the other thing, which is really interesting about The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus is it would be very hard to do it nowadays." "It was pretty much created by the musicians themselves." "Yes, money had to pay for it, and that came from whatever source it came from but it was just a few people on the telephone who said, "Do you want to join in?"" "It was completely from within the musical community of the time when there were these extraordinary figures." "I think it's very raw and I think you wouldn't get that today." "There would be too much outside influence, marketing people." "Exactly." "It is very raw." "In its rawness it's very attractive." "I agree with you." "It's very pure for what it is." "It comes completely from those musicians." "Obviously, Yoko travelled with John but no one had any idea she would be in the musical part of the show." "We didn't have any idea she was going to be in the musical part until during the song that she was singing - the black bag opened up..." " And out she popped." " And out she popped!" "There's the bag, in the right of the frame." "Someone was saying, "What's that?"" "Yeah, on the right of the frame is the black bag with Yoko Ono in it." "It was like someone had brought it on stage and this thing was moving." "And because we hadn't been told the black bag was going to figure in our lives, and indeed in John and Yoko's lives, we just thought there was a black bag on stage." "Because it was black we didn't really notice it." "It was just vaguely in the shot." "But we just wanted the shot." "The black bag didn't matter." "It added to the sense of the Rock And Roll Circus." "It was also a surprise to the camera guys." "What's that black bag doing?" "The thing was moving!" "It was also a surprise to the violinist..." "Ivry Gitlis." "He looked a bit pissed off." "Oh, I think he was." "Very pissed off." "She was stealing his thunder." "Ivry Gitlis had been brought over from Paris, where he was a very respected violinist." "The French camera technicians got very excited." "And you'll see, as the song progresses, that his expression seems to change in subtle ways." "I think he'd been enlisted by John, I'm not sure, to come in." "We thought, to have a violinist would be great." "He was a very famous violinist." "But I think he thought, not unnaturally, that this was his spot." "Playing violin with these great musicians might be good for his career, who knows?" "As he's playing, he thinks that, when Yoko starts singing, this is some kind of what the French would call a blague - a joke." "And then he thinks it can't go on any longer, this singing, Yoko singing, which is very much of its own character, Yoko's singing." " Fascinating." " It has a sort of charm." "I thought it was great and she's so beautiful and so exotic." "Then Ivry Gitlis thinks Yoko's going to stop, I think." "Then you see John mouthing to Yoko, "No, no, go on, go on."" "And then Ivry Gitlis does look a little, as Tony says, pissed off." "I think he was." "And the idea was jamming a classical instrument with rock and roll musicians." " It was a good idea." " Yeah." "Trying to match the pitch of his violin." "And the other musicians" " Keith and Eric - no matter what they might have thought of Yoko's singing, were very respectful to the partner of their comrade." "So they'd go along for the ride, whatever it was." " That's Taj." " But everybody hung around." "Yeah, Taj stayed with these couple of guys from his band." " He's sort of changing a little bit now." " Yeah." ""Keep going." "It's OK." "Keep going." "You really want me to?"" ""OK, I'm having a good time."" "It's very French, though." " Now, this is what, midnight?" " Yes." "The Stones were the last?" "They came on about two?" "The Stones came on about two." "This was about 11 or 12." "It had been a long day." "We'd been there since ten, getting it ready." "I like Yoko." "When she was younger she was very beautiful - that wonderful straight nose." "A shrewd brain." ""I'm smiling again." "Yes, this is good." ""Do I have to do any more of this?"" "Over the years, people suggested we shorten this number but part of the charm is it goes on such a long time, with all the interplay between the people." "He looks very pained there." "Part of the pleasure of this song is the duration." "You keep thinking, perhaps even hoping, it will stop and it doesn't." "I love that shot." "She's got that beautiful little nose." "There, it's stopped now." "No?" "There you go." "I think John was very happy with the way it turned out, from Yoko's point of view." "This was a happy moment for them." "Now, this is interesting, only because this was not shot when we shot the Circus." "This was shot when we " "Tony, me and the Beatles - were doing Let It Be and because we didn't have an introduction to the Rolling Stones, we asked John three weeks later - I guess it was at Apple." "It was in their studio in Apple." "Yes, I think this is the studio in Apple, if John would introduce the Rolling Stones." "Again, this is such a small world." "I love this introduction." "John and Yoko and Eric and that band got off stage, I would say, about midnight." "To set the Stones up and get everything ready, given the general energy level, probably took an hour and a half, or two hours." "So the Stones didn't get on stage till 2am." "And they'd been there for 14 hours." "And, as someone wrote," ""Even a bunch of nuns hanging round for 14 hours" ""might not be in the best shape."" "Tony was working hard up on the floor to try to get things going and keep things moving, ensuring the lights were in the right place, and also, in so far as he could, trying to deal with the French" " with the cameras always breaking." " I didn't speak French." "No, that did slow things up a bit." "And I remember, there was yet another delay, another pause." "The musicians had all arrived on time, which was unusual." "We did the players' entrance - that was great." "Then Jethro Tull." "That was great." "We'd done Taj the day before." "The Who got on about four o'clock." "And we did" " I can't remember - two takes?" "Two takes." "And they were on fire, The Who." "They knew that this was the World Series of rock and roll and, boy, they were going to clean up, and they did." "But they were having a lot of fun even before they came on." "You can see at the end, too." "They were on fire as a band, so they got finished about five o'clock." "Then the cameras broke down again." "Then there was, like, an hour and we had to have a meal break." "Suddenly, four o'clock became seven o'clock and we hadn't done Marianne, we hadn't done John or the Rolling Stones." "So, rather than looking like a nice walk into the afternoon, the show would all be over and we'd all be drinking in the restaurant at ten, the show began to look, not like a path, but like a mountain." "We just knew it was going to go on forever." "It did, but, I must say, I found it very exciting." "It was exciting, but there was a time..." "For the performers it must have been horrendous." "And also, one of the things, with Mick being in charge of the greenroom..." "I think Mick also realised that - because he's nothing if not smart - is that the energy level was dropping." "The energy level was dropping, not only just to do with the mood of what was going on, with what everybody might have been doing to while away the time but also that the Stones were going to be the last people on" "and energy level was going to be important, especially with any of the weaker members of the band." "There was one great moment, though, before the break got so long that people became dispirited." "I went back to one of the dressing rooms to see how everybody was while the cameras were breaking down and I remember... in the dressing room there was Eric Clapton, Keith, Pete, Keith Moon..." "There were most of the musicians on the show who weren't about to be performing themselves, who were just jamming." "And it was really an extraordinary, memorable sight to see all these men in their mid-twenties, who'd taken over the world, sitting in a room together with Keith Moon playing a pair of chopsticks on a tabletop" "and some big guys trading guitars and doing old Motown and blues and stuff." " Extraordinary." " An extraordinary bunch in a little room." "But as the evening went on energy did drop..." "So by the time..." "The big break was before John got on with his band." "The mood had changed a little bit, from being a euphoric thing to something which had a little more element of desperation to it, because we had yet to do the Rolling Stones." "It is dated but in another sense it is not dated." "It really transports you right back to that time." "I think that's part of its charm, part of its rawness." "To me, I don't know how you feel, it's like a group of people got together - "Hey, let's do this sort of thing."" "Michael and Mick brought the groups together and then we all got in there and did it for them." "That's part of its everlasting charm." "It's a piece of rock and roll history." "I agree with you, Tony, and... although I pride myself on stringing words together," "I couldn't have done it better." "That exactly conveys the mood" " and the joy of the show." " It's got a great naiveté about it." "That's Nicky Hopkins." "I don't know if you can see, on the far left, playing piano." "Or you'll see him later." "He was the great session piano man of the time." " Is Nicky Hopkins alive?" " No, he died." "There are a lot of casualties in this show." "And again, too young." "Nicky lived into his fifties, he wasn't one of the ones who died in their twenties or thirties." "So the Stones got on stage at about 2am and Mick was in good shape." " Brian doesn't look so good there." " No, Brian was not... at his best then." "And after the rehearsal day, the day before this..." "I was living up in Parliament Hill, in Hampstead, with my girlfriend Jean, who Tony's known forever and further up the street was where Brian Jones was renting his apartment." "So, about midnight - we'd finished rehearsal at 10 and I was eating back at home - the phone rings." "It was Brian, sounding very teary." "He said, "I'm not going to do the show tomorrow."" "I said, "Why?" and he said, "Because they're being mean to me."" "I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "They're not talking to me." ""They're really slighting me and I just don't feel part of the Rolling Stones any more." ""I'm not having a good time." "I'm just not going to do it tomorrow."" "It was late at night and I think he'd been - whatever he was doing at the time, which would make him feel worse or more vulnerable." "I said what I believed at the time," ""Brian, what would the Rolling Stones be without you?" ""What would they be without Mick or Keith or Bill or Charlie?" ""You've got to be there." "This is the Rolling Stones."" "So he said, "OK, I'll do it." And then, we know what happened." "He was fired three months later and died six months later." "So he was prescient in a way." "In those days, the bands weren't breaking up yet." "There were a couple." "Paul Jones had left Manfred Mann and The Searchers had broken up." "I don't know if Graham Nash had left the Hollies yet but... bands really weren't breaking up the way they were about to do." "So the idea of Brian, one of these mega gods, not being part of the team any more, seemed so unlikely." "So, we are now probably hitting three o'clock in the morning," " and yet..." " And Brian's at about six o'clock." "Yeah, Brian's at six in the morning." "And Mick is still holding everything together." "He's a very unusual character because Mick has willpower, which will not be bucked." "He's complex, there's many aspects of him but if he decides pretty much that's the way he's going to go and that's what he's going to do, that's what'll happen." "As the evening goes on and when we get to Sympathy For The Devil, it is only Mick's willpower that keeps the Rolling Stones going." "He gives this extraordinary performance." "If Mick is willpower and Keith is honor," "Charlie is both but in a slightly more palatable dosage." "Charlie is a wonderful man who has sort of been a glue which has kept the Stones together when otherwise they might have broken." "When Keith was in his most difficult period of drug addiction and Mick was trying to keep it together," "Charlie was always the ally in making it keep on going." "He's a wonderful man, he's the funniest man." "He's got great clothes, he's got great style." "I mean, I could wax eloquent." "I won't, I just love him." "So we're hitting 3:30 in the morning here." "He's very strong, Mick, in the way sinewy people are strong." "I think he's got the same body now as he had 40 years ago." "He's got a body like a marathon runner, with that kind of stamina too." "It's amazing, to keep that energy up for that length of time." "Bill, who I think was probably the oldest of the Stones," "Bill, probably, here, was in his thirties." "He's a wonderful bass player, great bass player for the Stones." "He always was a slight outsider, in that Mick and Keith, with Charlie, were the kind of nexus of the band." "Brian was on the odds with them and Bill was slightly different in temperament than the others but a great baseball - bass player!" "A great baseball player, too!" "A great bass player and part of what we all think of as the Rolling Stones." "They've never really replaced him." "You can't replace him but he's probably happier now because he runs a model agency." " Really?" " Yeah, and a string of restaurants." " Where?" " In England." "He runs or he bought into a model agency, so there's always nice girls to..." " An endless supply of women." "...to hostess in his restaurants." "Though I think he's married again now." "Yes, because he married the 16-year-old and then his son went out with the mother and then he's married someone else's mother." "I like Bill." "He's funny." "And Bill had a bit of a solo career." "I did Bill's first videos too, when he put out a solo album." "Then he had a hit in France - he had a beautiful house in France - called Je Suis Un Rock Star." "He lived in St-Paul-de-Vence." "It's a beautiful, old walled village and he became a great friend of the painter Marc Chagall," "who was a neighbor of his in this village." "He's very sophisticated, Bill." "When they went to France for their year or so out, they learnt to speak French." "They speak good French." "These English boys." "Bill's very sophisticated." "He's very knowledgeable, and, for a long time, was the Rolling Stones' archivist." "If anyone kept all the documents, all the contracts, had made diary notes on what was happening, most of them accurate, not everything accurate - a lot of the documentation is to do with Bill." " That's a great shot." " Yes." "He had a little look to the side before wondering if he was going to switch to the other camera." "But this was where Mick was..." "The other thing is..." "Another great thing about the Rock And Roll Circus is most people are used to seeing Mick as this tiny little stick figure in a stadium or a slightly larger stick figure but this is rock god number one right up close and playing right to you" "because of the nature of the set, where he was and what he was doing at the time, with the cameras on." "Yeah, the punters, the people, were so close there." "There's one of those old cameras." "And also, you'll notice behind him, the crowd did seem to be thinning out." "It's not quite as packed as it was before, because these are the die-hard fans who won't go home." "It's not all that thick back there, because now we're coming to 3:30-4:00am." "John Lennon and Taj." "OK, Sympathy For The Devil." "I think we did three takes, anyway." "And by this time, the camera guys, the crew..." " They wanted to go home, if I remember." " Yeah, they'd had it." "15 hours earlier, with one meal break and some sandwiches..." "The idea of the show was great." "The cameramen were exhausted." "It was work for them, though." "It wasn't..." "It was work but they also were exhausted because they'd been pushing those cameras around for 15 hours and it was hot and it was getting later and later." "So the mood wasn't good and they were certainly not." "They were all good camera guys, hand picked." "A lot of them had done Ready, Steady Go." "They were excellent guys but they were just getting tired and they weren't as sharp as they had been." "You remember, when you were an operator, looking through a viewfinder for 15 hours, you get tired." "You do get tired." "So they weren't on top of their game and in the truck the cameras were still breaking down." "There were technical problems." "The sound truck, they were tired." "Jimmy Miller and Glyn Johns." "So we did Sympathy For The Devil and when we arrived, at noon that day," "Sympathy For The Devil was the song we were looking forward to." "This was it." "This was the seventh game of the World Series, the one we all wanted." "So there was a sense, certainly in my heart, of real dismay and discouragement that we were hitting this song at four in the morning." "And we did a couple of takes." "We'd start it and Glyn or Jimmy would say, "No, we need to go again," ""I can't get that mic", and then the camera guys would sigh and then miss some shots." "The clock was going on and nothing was getting better." "So we did half takes and whole takes and Mick is trying to do it each time, although he's getting tired, let alone the rest of the band." "And there's a real sense of, at the moment when we want to have achieved everything," " that we were going to fall apart." " So I said to him, standing in that little runway after take two or three," "I said, "Can you do one more?"" "He was tired and he said, "Can you get all your guys to do one more?"" ""If I can do it, they can't fuck up, you know, if I can do it one more time."" "So we decided that we were going to do just one more take, otherwise, come back the next day." "And that had financial ramifications." "There was a meeting." "Were we going to be able to finish the show?" "If finishing meant doing Sympathy For The Devil were we going to take 12 hours off and come back 12 hours later?" "There was a whole little clutch of us." "We were all talking and I said to Tony, "Do you think we can?" There's Keith Moon." "Still enjoying himself." " We had no trouble with The Who." " They should have been on the cameras." "They would have..." "The Who should have been on the cameras." "So, we had this meeting - could we finish the show?" "Was it still inside of everyone to do it?" "So Mick said, could we get our act together and we said yeah." "I talked to the guys." "Tony talked to the cameramen, too." "And then Mick said to the band," ""One more time." "It's got to be it."" "Then, this performance that we see now, with Mick doing Sympathy For The Devil, was at quarter to five in the morning." "It's one of the greatest performances recorded by any camera medium of one of the greatest stars of the history of rock and roll." "And I think it's extraordinary what he did." "And this is pulling every ounce of what I call his willpower and fibre and strength, out of himself." " It's nearly over now." " That's..." "They're still enjoying themselves." " They really did enjoy themselves." " Yeah." "I think they were still dancing when we'd all gone home." " They stayed." " They helped clean up." "I think they were just looking for empty bottles." "There's JL." " My then wife was here." " She did the make-up." "She did Mick's make-up and the tattoo on Mick's chest." "Yes, Linda was the make-up artist." "Had been on Jumping Jack Flash, on Performance and also here." "She's the one that did the tattoo on Mick." " Here comes..." " The shirt." " Then we'll reveal the tattoo." " Where was the idea for the tattoo from?" "Was it Mick's or Mick and Linda?" "I wasn't part of that very much." "No, I think it was Mick's idea, with Linda." "I know they were talking and then she said, "I'm going to do a tattoo on Mick."" "It was amazing." "Been on for hours, too." "Mick's hair, I think, was post Performance, wasn't it?" "Hadn't he grown his hair for Performance?" "It was black because of Performance." "And in one of the songs, Tony, you'd wanted a light, a kind of neon light..." "Light stick, yeah." "And we didn't, in the end, have it." "Because of Nick Roeg, who directed Performance." "He was going to use that same thing in Performance, so pleaded with us not to." "And when your great pal comes to you and says..." " "Don't do this", you don't do it." " Yeah." "All this stuff - if you were to do this now, it's so much easier." "The equipment is infinitely better." "Every light would be on dimmers now." "You'd have those swivel lights and everything would be automatic." "We didn't have anything like that." "It was just a standard old item." "Yes, yes." "Primitive." "But again, as you say, part of its charm." "And also, the Rolling Stones have been playing for almost 40 years and they now are looked upon as part of the fabric of the establishment" "of the popular arts and everything like that." "But this was at a time when they still were rebels, their safety was not secure." "They were always about to be thrown into prison for drug offences or moral turpitude or something." "And you can see exactly why the Rolling Stones are what they were and stayed to become what they've become." "They're just so good." "That shot you don't get in any other rock and roll project, with John Lennon in the audience, cheering Mick Jagger." " And The Who dancing." " Yeah, and The Who dancing." "I was on the floor when they were shooting and every now and again I'd look over my shoulder at the back, by the exit, throughout the evening." "The different sorts of celebrities that were turning up just to get in on it, to watch, to be part of it." "That's one of the reasons that this is such an extraordinary thing, which Tony and I were critical in making but which we were thrilled to be part of because what you see is all these people at this time." "Right." "I love this." " This is after five in the morning." " Five thirty, six." "I think we walked out of the place between - I know it was light." " It was light and it was December." " It would have been eight when you left." " At seven thirty, eight in the morning." " And went for some breakfast." "So, this was now 18, 19 hours later and these are our hosts, the Rolling Stones." "Again, they sort of keep it going." "I love this song, too." "We had breakfast, lunch and dinner with the Stones." "There was Nicky, Bill," "Charlie, who was pretty tired," "Brian..." "Poor boy." "He's just barely holding it together, isn't he?" "Rocky." "They did two versions of this song." "One is slightly more cynical, which is this singing of it, and one was a more straightforward version." "I can't remember why we did this." "Maybe Mick liked this version better." "Pete Townshend in the middle of the frame, wearing one of the seats." "No one knows who that guy is." "No one knows who that guy is and I think the medics are waiting to take him away." "They couldn't stand up any more, I think." "Everybody was so tired they had to sit down, except for The Who." "They're still enjoying themselves." "There's all sorts of strange stuff on their heads." "And there's Keith lying down there!" "You couldn't compete with The Who to do with partying then." "People stayed up late and drank and drugged but The Who were in a special hall of fame category, I think." "The reason we did it here is people really couldn't stand up any more." "There's that guy again, look." "And there's Marianne, on the left." "It's a great song." "They really wrote wonderful songs, Mick and Keith, didn't they?" " Look at his eyes." " I think Pete's been up a long time too." "And again, with The Who, things have always got a chance of turning a little bit rowdy." "Because they had one..." " Is that Jo Bergman?" " Oh, Jo." "And I think the guy in the bottom right..." "Wasn't that Spanish Tony?" "Down at the bottom." "Wasn't he the guy that helped people get whatever they wanted to get?" "I think so, yes." "There's Keith." "As Tony says, The Who know how to enjoy themselves." "They sure do." "Got a big mouth, Mick, doesn't he?" " That is it." " That's it."