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Since the Rolling Stones are artists working in a popular culture
medium who became a global phenomena, many of their works---especially
their most popular albums---are available for purchase in city and suburbs
throughout the industrialized world. Where I live, in the East Village
of Manhattan---just five blocks east of Keith Richards's New York address---rock
and roll is commercially and artistically sanctified. While white Uptown
Manhattan preserves opera, Beethoven, Baroque and chamber music at Carnegie
Hall, The Metropolitan Opera House and other scared architectural and
performance shrines, Downtown does what it can to keep some key aspects
of twentieth century American music alive--by keeping record stores
in business, recording studios active, the doors of CBGBs open, and
renaming Avenue B after Charlie Parker to commemorate the Bird's residency
there.
One of our first research projects was to assemble a collection of Rolling
Stones CDs. To do so, we just walked around the neighborhood looking
for new or used discs to purchase. For white male rock and roll bands
like the Rolling Stones, their legacy survives due to the dedication
of their fans---especially the clerks and owners of record shops. It's
amazing how much these guys at record shops know---in general, they
have at their fingertips more information about their product than any
other sales clerks do. In fact, some of them seem to know more about
rock and roll than most academics know about their fields of interest;
and certainly, it was my experience that the guys who work at record
shops know and care a lot more about what they are selling then most
people who work at contemporary art galleries know about their products.
I say guys---and I mean guys. White guys. At the records shops specializing
in techno, rave, house, rap, and blues in the East Village, the clerks
might be Japanese and Black. And they might even have a young bimbo
woman at the counter. But at the mostly- Rock music havens, the owners
and the clerks are all white guys, and with long hair. Rock and Roll
is their heritage: they cherish, protect--and sell--it.
What do they know? They know which albums are in print. Which song and
which version is on which album. They even know what make of guitar
Keith played on which song and they like to discuss some of the recording
'mysteries'--such as who really did the back-up vocals. Of course some
of the real rock aficionados think it is beneath them to talk about
the Stones: the Stones are too mainstream to be interesting to them.
Even the early Stones music they consider too derivative. They want
to talk about the Stooges instead; or they bring up even more obscure
bands than Iggy Pop and I have no idea what they are talking about.
But it's fascinating: They care as much and as intensely about the history
of Rock and Roll as WWII veterans care about the war.
This really impressed me. Since I have spent twenty years going into
contemporary art galleries as a critic asking for information, where
too often people at the galleries don't know or care too much about
their product (they care about a SALE!), to meet this kind of intensity
in the course of gathering a few CD s was refreshing, sometimes even
exhilarating.
And the sexism: well, the navigation of that is standard. Going into
a white male rocker shop is like going to the hardware store, car repair
shop, photography lab, video editing suite, and other bastions of white
male bonding and ownership. The scenario is pretty predictable. The
men stand around talking to each other, even if there is no other customer
there. They want to make it clear to you that you are not welcome and
that they really would prefer not to work with you, that they know that,
since you are female, you are an idiot. Depending on how evil they are,
they either wait for you to exhibit signs of exasperation or wait for
you to acknowledge your subordination to them by flirting with them.
If you act like you want to suck their cock, they think you are behaving
appropriately to the situation and maybe then they will inquire as to
why you are there.
Since the general scenario is consistent, I have developed my own way
of dealing with the sometimes necessary excursions into the manlands.
I just stand around, pretending not to notice that they are willfully
ignoring me. I wait it out. Sooner or later the tension in the dynamic
reverses: they become uncomfortable that I am impervious to their neglect.
They realize that I am not going to attempt to advance my position by
getting down on my knees to them, metaphorically or otherwise. Sometimes,
in the course of the limited conversation regarding a purchase, they
even treat me like a human being--instead of like a woman.
It went like that in all the record shops. Not only in the East Village,
but also in London, where I started on Denmark Street and wandered through
the labyrinth or record shops around Charring Cross during my weeks
in and out of London while on tour with Not For Sale in December 1998.
But we found all our CD s, even some of the original vinyl. For our
project, we really wanted the original cover art for Sticky Fingers,
because Warhol designed it. Although we still don't know whose body
is featured: the man in the tight white briefs is not Mick Jagger, although
that is one of the mythic inaccuracies that appears over and over again
in the numerous journalistic and fanzine-style books and magazine articles
that have been published on the Rolling Stones.
Some of our notes on some Stones songs:
"Lets Spend the Night Together":
On the Ed Sullivan show, Mick is forced to sing "Let's Spend Some TIME
Together"...and to deal with the compromise, he rolls his eyes to camera
each time he says "time".
"Sympathy for the Devil":
One of the 3 songs Mick and Keith perform in our film-- my favorite,
Godard's film, Altamont's preamble.
"Dear Doctor":
Hilarious fake Southern accents from Mick and Keith. Other misunderstandings
of the culture and geography of the Southern United States abound here
and elsewhere in Mick-Keith lyrics. My favorite: "Bourbon so SOUR."
(Bourbon never 'goes sour.') And Mick's twangy "I'm down in Virginia
with your cousin Lou. (Virginia is the North of the South: we wonder
where his "down" is down from?)
"19th Nervous Breakdown":
This song, we think, is about Marianne Faithfull.
"Jumping Jack Flash":
A classic, but the lyrics are nonsense.
"Street Fighting Man":
Mick's anthem to political revolution, man-style.
"Salt of the Earth":
More leftist leanings in the name of the working MAN.
"Shattered":
Beautiful--and the name of the Stones main fanzine, still publishing.
"When the Whip Comes Down":
Not Lou Reed, but trying.
"Beast of Burden":
Not one of my favorites.
"Play With Fire":
One of the 3 songs Mick and Keith perform in our film--it has everything.
With think of it as the gallery artist's paean to the collector class.
"Happy":
One of the 3 songs Mick and Keith perform in our film. One of the only
Stones song I know of where Keith gets to sing. The lyrics make no sense
whatsoever. "I never got a whole in my pants"!!!! We found no filmed
recording of it--so I couldn't figure out WHAT THE HELL Mick does when
he doesn't have the microphone.
"Satisfaction":
The Ultimate Stones. This song epitomizes 1968. It's one of the theme
songs in our film: so many good bands have done (illegal) covers of
it.
"Jigsaw Puzzle":
This song is completely ridiculous. What WERE they on when they wrote
it? Where did they learn to write and think in English? Have they ever
read Keats? Do they know what a poem is? Not ANYTHING Joni Mitchell
would have penned. Even an advertising writer would have trashed these
lines but, oh well....
"Parachute Woman":
Yet another BLOW JOB homage.
"Lady Jane":
Mick does a great ballad: this one is about love according to the rigid
demands of England's class structure. One of my favorites---though,
of course, too 'soft' to be classic Stones.
"Mother's Little Helper":
Almost a FEMINIST song. Not a song you could ever imagine from The Beatles,
though the melody is gentle enough the lyrics aren't.
"No Expectations":
featured in Yvonne Rainer's first film, Lives of Performers.
COVERS from other Bands we tracked down, most out of print:
Different versions of "Satisfaction" - Devo, The Residents, Jane's
Addiction Half Japanese doing "Paint It Black"
The Flying Lizards doing "Suzanne"--not a Stones song, Leonard
Cohen's, but we wanted it because it resounds in Fassbinder's Beware
the Holy Whore,and the Judy Collins version was my favorites song
when I was 15.
David Bowie doing "Let's Spend the Night Together"--he's talking
to Mick, you know.
OTHER MUSICIANS and MUSIC relevant and useful:
Iggy Pop--especially "Sister Midnight," our nickname for Cosima
von Bonin
More David Bowie, it's all too wonderful
OUR FAVORITE MUSIC MAGAZINE:
MOJO,from London. We love it. So informed. So serious.
So fun. In their summer 1999 issue MOJO ran a long cover story
on Brian Jones on the ocassion of the 30th-year anniversary of his death.
It was published after we had finished shooting, but we appreciated
it anyway. In the fall of 1999 they published a cover story on Satanism
in Rock and Roll--which discussed Mick, Kenneth Anger, Keith, Jim Morrison,
Anita Pallenberg.
And over the past few months they have published great smaller articles,
such as short interviews with Marianne Faithfull that was good and another
really good one with Iggy Pop.
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