Sympathy for th Devil (Film):
In 1968, Jean Luc Godard decided to make a movie with The Rolling Stones. He moved to London to film them while they were recording the Sympathy for the Devil.That’s why the movie is called “Sympathy for the Devil” (but originally called “One+One”)
In the movie, we can see The Rolling Stones creating this song step by step, and Godard mixed that with some scenes of the Black Panthers or others weird shots…
I saw the movie, and from my opinion, that’s crap. Maybe, I can’t reach the “genius” of Godart in this movie but maybe He should reach the way of thinking of his audience. At least , its a good documentary about how The Rolling Stones did the song and how Brian Jones was already put aside of the band at this time.
Even Keith Richards hated this movie, in his autobiography Life, he said some words about the movie and Godard:
Politics came for us whether we liked it or not, once in the odd personage of Jean-Luc Godard, the great French cinematic innovator. He somehow got fascinated with what was happening in London in that year, and he wanted to do something wildly different from what he had done before. He probably took a few things he shouldn’t have, not being used to it, just to get himself in the mood. Nobody, I think, has ever quite honestly been able to figure out what the hell he was aiming at. The film Sympathy for the Devil is by chance a record of the song by us of that name being born in the studio. The song turned after many takes from a Dylanesque, rather turgid folk song into a rocking samba—from a turkey into a hit—by a shift of rhythm, all recorded in stages by Jean-Luc. The voice of Jimmy Miller can be heard on the film, complaining, “Where’s the groove?” on the earlier takes. There wasn’t one. There are some rare instrumental switches. I play bass, Bill Wyman plays maracas, Charlie Watts actually sings in the wooo-woooo chorus. As did Anita and maybe Marianne too. So far so good. I’m glad he filmed that, but Godard! I couldn’t believe it; he looked like a French bank clerk. Where the hell did he think he was going? He had no coherent plan at all except to get out of France and score a bit of the London scene.
The film was a total load of crap—the maidens on the Thames barge, the blood, the feeble scene of some brothers, aka Black Panthers, awkwardly handing weapons to one another in a Battersea scrap yard. Jean-Luc Godard up until then made very well-crafted, almost Hitchcockian work. Mind you, it was one of those years when anything was flyable. Whether it would actually take off was another thing. I mean, why, of all people, would Jean-Luc Godard be interested in a minor hippie revolution in England and try to translate it into something else? I think somebody slipped him some acid and he went into that phony year of ideological overdrive.
Godard at least managed to set Olympic Studios on fire. Studio one, where we were playing, used to be a cinema. To diffuse the light, he had tissue paper taped up under these very hot lights on the ceiling. And halfway through—I think there are some outtakes where you can actually see this—all of this tissue paper and the whole ceiling caught alight at ferocious speed. It was like being inside the Hindenburg. All of the heavy light rigging started to crash to the floor because it had burned through the cables; lights going out, sparks. Talk about sympathy for the fucking devil. Let’s get the fuck out of here. It was the last days of Berlin, down to the bunker. The end. Fin.
So good luck with that if you want to see the movie !
Want some more of Keith Richards with his guitar ?
The Band section continue with now the presentation of Keith Richards !
What will be a Blog on The Rolling Stones without their songs on it ?!
That’s why you can now listen the better songs of The Rolling Stones ( according to me of course) with the widget located in the top of my Blog. You can choose the song you want with top-right button or just press play and enjoy my ultimate playlist !
PS: For those who are interrested in this type of widget. I just found it on Wikplayer website. It’s easy to set-up, in my case it’s just playing one of my Youtube Playlist but you can also use your SoundClound playlist, RSS Podcast or even make a Manual Playlist with all the URL of your songs and it gives you the HTML code to paste.
