The Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"
This eerily beautiful movie has the dubious distinction of being the only rockumentary to capture a murder on film.
When I was a baby journalist, I wrote about music and pop culture, feeling I had just found the second act of the best part of my career in the arts.
I found this in my archives today as I was cleaning up my computer and it made me want to watch Gimme Shelter again. If you haven’t seen it, you should.
If you have, you should watch it again.
It’s Not Only Rock ‘n’ Roll
Music and History Collide In 30th Anniversary Release of Gimme Shelter
By Therra Cathryn Gwyn, staff writer
1969. Man walked on the moon. The NY Jets won the Super Bowl. Marilyn Monroe had been dead for five years and the Sex Pistols were still in grade school. Prince Charles officially became the Prince of Wales and Sesame Street debuted on US television. Madonna was 12, Bill Clinton was 23, and rock ‘n’ roll as we know it was not even two decades old.
Yet, even in 1969, the Rolling Stones were knee-deep into their tenure as the bad boys of rock and no one had any idea just how long that tenure would last. The times, indeed, were a-changing and the recent re-release of Gimme Shelter shows a mood and moment like none before or since. Arguably the greatest rock documentary ever made (some will vote for The Last Waltz and I won’t quarrel) this eerily beautiful film has the dubious distinction of being the only rockumentary to capture a murder on film.
Originally released in 1970, filmmakers Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin created a work that almost never made it into general release at all.
From cutting the more colorful language and shots of bare-breasted women (reinserted in this restored version) just to secure a PG rating to wrangling releases from hostile Hell’s Angels (disgruntled over the bad publicity) the film did not have an easy birth.
Columnist Liz Smith said of it, “It’s overwhelming. I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s a wild experience.”
Intended as an onstage and backstage record of the Stones’ 1969 North American tour the movie opens innocently enough with comical footage of drummer Charlie Watts riding a donkey. The film then flips back and forth in time from concert footage at various locales to Mick Jagger & Co. at the famed Muscle Shoals recording studio.
Interspersed throughout the movie and leading up to the events at Altamont Speedway in San Francisco is footage of Watts and Jagger watching unedited clips of the film and concert. They look dazed and confused at times, a postmortem meditation on what went wrong that winter day.