Cocksucker Blues

'Cocksucker Blues' is a cinema-verite style time capsule, filmed by American photographer Robert Frank, who functions as a sort of fly on the dressing room wall, so to speak. As such, comparisons to any other existing "rockumentary" are pointless.

The film is essentially a collection of real life situations captured during the Rolling Stones' infamous 1972 U.S. tour, when their celebrity status had reached critical mass. Viewers are sucked into the band's fishbowl existence, travelling from jet to hotel to venue, spending time, in many cases, in a surprisingly un-glamorous fashion.

If nothing else, the film lets the fan into the eye of the storm; the band's onstage performances are repeatedly set in contrast with their travelling constraints, while around them both the media and the public continually orbit in a veritable feeding frenzy.

The viewers' realization of what is the general event-less reality of a rock band's actual offstage touring experience--even more pointed, given the Stones' worldwide notoriety--makes the live musical highlights all the more impressive, and reveals insight into why no hotel room t.v. is safe from any rock band who can (or, sometimes, can't) pay for what they destroy.

The band's treadmill lifestyle, coupled with the fact that the group is all but isolated from their fans lends perspective to why touring bands tend to indulge in random acts of destruction, self and otherwise. Possibly the most inane segment of the film is the backstage presence of seriously unwelcome hangers on such as writer Truman Capote and Princess Lee Radziwill, tabloid-style jet setters for whom the Stones are merely the Flavour of the Week, their dressing room another place to be "seen".

Obviously, a tour film's main appeal is to the fans of the group. In the case of the Rolling Stones, their inner sanctum is harder to reach than almost any other, and considering the mythology that has built up around the band over the last 30 years, they deserve credit for having the courage to reveal their private world, warts and all.

Anyone who has seen the film can understand why it has never seen official release, and probably never will. And that just makes 'Cocksucker Blues' an even bigger treat for true fans of the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World. See it if you can; regardless of its' flaws, it's still an amazing document of yet another turbulent period in the amazing lifespan of this remarkably resilient band.

An East Village guitar-store owner sold me a bootleg copy of this legendary Robert Frank documentary, which was suppressed by its subjects, the Rolling Stones. Full of arty effects and stony, fragmentative editing, the movie intermittently fascinates in its depiction of a day in the life of the Stones--a life that alternates between massive, almost unthinkable amounts of ego-gratification, and routine, torpid, everyday boredom. The intent seems to be an anthropological portrait of the habits of visiting alien gods: the Stones are made both otherworldly-regal and incalculably drab. Because of the scenes of groupie-shagging and substance abuse, Frank was forced to credit the Stones as "playing characters" in the end credits (if memory serves, Keith Richards plays "Pizza Delivery Man"), and the picture is available to be screened, by Mick-generated court order, only when Frank is present.

Sheer brilliance from Robert Frank, one of the great visual artists of our time. Let's say right at the start that the concert footage (the only portions of "CB" in color) captures some of the Stones' best performances ever on film, including a splendid "Midnight Rambler" and a wonderful medley of "Uptight" and "Satisfaction" with Stevie Wonder.

But the meat of this film is in the off-the-cuff, life-on-the-road footage, shot in a beautiful, grainy black and white. Other important filmmakers worked with the Stones before and after (J-L Godard on "One Plus One," Hal Ashby on the regrettable "Let's Spend the Night Together"), but this is the great one because it does the opposite of glamorizing the band -- it reveals the quotidian nature of their antics on the road. Lots of outrageous things happen: roadies shoot up, Keith Richards throws a TV set out the window and displays himself in various states of extreme intoxication and/or nodding off, groupies are abused on the tour bus, etc.

But Frank reveals it all in his unique deadpan style, letting you see the band members as individuals carrying on an everyday existence rather than as celebrities. In his camera, the excess is all of a piece with the mundane details: Jagger sitting on his hotel bed ordering a bowl of fruit, a conversationless walk along a road, etc.

Frank doesn't deglamorize his subject, either -- despite the squalor of some of what he shows us, he isn't out to debunk the Stones and their hangers-on, but to reveal them to us as part of everyday life and the spectacle they put on as a workaday component of the larger spectacle society feeds to the masses as entertainment. The effect is a little like the messier backstage scenes of such films as von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel," Bergman's "Sawdust and Tinsel," or Fellini's "Variety Lights," where the everyday routine that goes on behind the making of an illusion seems somehow harder and crueller than it would in any other setting. But it's life, as Robert Frank observes it in our airbrushed, late-capitalist world.

The wonderful last shot, as Jagger throws his arm into the air amidst an explosion of lights and camera flashes, ends it with a flourish, but by now we've seen the mess behind the flash. This film grows you up.

Officially, "CB" was the film of the Stones' 1972 US tour, but for murky reasons (one hears it was the shooting-up sequences that did it) the band barred its release and only allows it to be shown occasionally. In its place, the relatively uninspired "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones!" was released. Too bad -- catch "CB" if you can, or seek out one of the many bootleg videotapes circulating, although the color repro on the latter can sometimes be lousy.

semi-staged documentary trying to show the coolness of the rolling stones, but the only thing they can think of doing is taking drugs and trashing hotel rooms. the banality is overwhelming, and displays the collapse of a counter culture into unimaginative squalor. I like the Stones' music, but they make lame celebrities.

I like both Robert Frank and the Rolling Stones, but this combination is not that hot. As the other reviewer ( withnail-4) pointed out, this is pretty banal with lots of drug taking. Robert Frank is a photographer and this film seems like a motor wind gone wild. Imagine the "Exile on Main Street" cover coming to life and you have a pretty good idea of what this film is going to be like. The mystique comes from the fact that the Rolling Stones have done a pretty good job of keeping this off the market and out of the theatres. Thanks to modern technology, this film is pretty readily available in forms of varying quality. In fact, it was a local film groups showing this from a DVD that rekindled my interest in seeing the film. Short of being a serious fan of the Stones, you will be pretty bored with this film. You might even be pretty bored if you are a serious