Ladies and gentlemen, the band that would soon become known as the greatest rock ‘n roll band in the world—the Rolling Stones, circa 1965! Timed to coincide with the venerable and still rolling Stones' 50th anniversary in 2012, as well as the release of the latest rockumentary on them, Crossfire Hurricane (Click here for article in documentary.org.), comes this curious document from the band's early days: The Rolling Stones Charlie is my Darling—Ireland 1965, featuring the first professionally shot live concert footage of the then-three-year-old group.
Named for the Stones' stoic drummer, Charlie Watts, the film (now on Blu-ray and DVD through ABKCO Films) was originally commissioned by the band's manager and producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, to capture the young group on a brief, four-gig fall tour to Dublin and Belfast in the wake of its UK chart-topping single, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," released in the summer of '65. Director Peter Whitehead (Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, 1967) was charged with documenting Watts and his fellow bandmates Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman (all but the latter in their early 20s) both on- and off-stage, á la cinema vérité—a style that director Richard Lester mimicked to great effect with his hit feature on the Stones' rivals the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night the year before.
A 35-minute edit of the resulting footage surfaced in 1966, but Charlie is my Darling was not widely shown, nor officially released. Oldham re-edited the film to a 50-minute length in the 1980s, but that cut too had limited screenings. Bootleg copies of both versions, neither of which had synchronized sound in the concert footage, have been around for decades and sought after by collectors. Asked recently by Rolling Stone magazine why the film was shelved and never officially released previously, Oldham said, "Our world was changing at a tremendous rate—Vietnam, civil and racial unrest, Kent State, the second half of the '60s, drugs as a way of life... Charlie is my Darling looked like ‘the Bowery Boys go to Belfast' compared to what was going on."
For the updated, expanded and 65-minute release version of Charlie, director Mick Gochanour and producer Robin Klein (the Grammy Award-winning team who restored and brought to home video the never-aired 1968 British TV special The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus in 1996) scoured through the Stones vaults in London and unearthed hours of Whitehead's unseen 1965 footage-including a priceless scene in which then-budding songwriters Jagger and Richards are working out the riffs and lyrics to the folksy "Sittin' on a Fence" (to appear on the band's 1967 Flowers LP) on an acoustic guitar in a hotel room, with a few diversions into then-recent Lennon-McCartney hits like "I've Just Seen a Face" (which proves to be an influence on their tune), "Eight Days a Week" and "I Feel Fine," sung with a mix of mockery and reverence. This and other Rolling Stones nuggets (that would otherwise be gathering moss) from the shoot flesh out Whitehead's and Oldham's cuts to make Charlie an enjoyable, you-are-there, rock 'n' roll newsreel of their Irish visit.
Most impressive is the painstaking restoration—both visually and sonically—of the original elements, including six complete song performances between the two different cities. More than 90,000 individual film frames of Charlie were hand-restored, and more than half of it had not been seen publicly before. In addition, the separate soundtracks and film were completely un-synched and often unlabeled, according to Gochanour. "We did some pretty serious science on this," he told Billboard. "It took eight months to sync up the [soundtrack] with the live performances," which were recorded on long-obsolete three-track tape by longtime Stones engineer Glyn Johns, who did "a phenomenal job." The director continued, "There were three tracks: the audience, Mick and the band. The audience recording was slightly out-of-sync with the band, and when we aligned them, it gave unbelievable definition to the bass and drums."
Indeed, on first listen to the songs performed in concert in Charlie (which include the R&B and soul covers "Pain in My Heart," "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" and "Time Is on My Side," as well as originals "Play with Fire," "The Last Time" and purportedly one of the first-ever live renditions of "Satisfaction"), one would be forgiven for thinking that the footage was synched up to a pre-recording; the sound is that clear and sharp. It's only when Jagger deviates slightly from the familiar vocal, or Jones or Richards ad lib a guitar riff, that it becomes evident that the sound, albeit enhanced, is authentically live.
Or when the Stones' primal and electrifying take on Bo Diddley's "I'm Alright" is interrupted and ultimately truncated by the terrifyingly hysterical crowd at the Belfast gig, who spontaneously rush and mount the security-unprotected stage to not only touch the musicians but seemingly assault them and (as in Jones' case) tackle them to the floor, grinding the song—and the show—to a sudden, microphone-thudding finale. In a post-show interview, bassist Wyman wryly notes that the audience apparently has a need for "contact, any sort of physical contact...just to say they touched you."—foreshadowing the violence at the Stones' Altamont show in Northern California just over four years later, as expertly captured by vérité veterans the Maysles brothers in Gimme Shelter.
Speaking of premonitions, in the interview clips with the band members about their burgeoning success, the aloof and often obtuse (yet pre-drug-addled) Jones-the founder and guiding force of the early Stones-offers these thoughts: "Let's face it: The future as a Rolling Stone is always uncertain...I've always been a little apprehensive of the future." In less than four years, Jones would be fired from his band, and a month later found dead in his swimming pool of a presumed drug overdose.
As a film, Charlie plays like a cross between the aforementioned A Hard Day's Night and DA Pennebaker's landmark Dylan doc Dont Look Back, also filmed in 1965. Together with Oldham, the fresh-faced quintet in their mod togs and moppish tops mug, cavort and play to the camera (this was their first flush with movie-making, an experience their manager wanted them to have); they chat with, sign autographs for and even run from fans, travel to and around drizzly Ireland by plane, train and car, do interviews with the press and Whitehead, smoke cigarettes, drink tea (and beer) and goof around in hotel rooms and dressing rooms—with Jagger and Richards crooning gin-soaked barroom impersonations of Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Dion after the last Dublin show.
Another interesting observation is how relatively subdued frontman Jagger is in performance, compared to how kinetic-energetic and pinball-like he would be only a few years later, and remains today. On the Irish stages, he is beginning to loosen up and formulate some of the moves for which he is now famous. The Stones, too, still play like a band, and not as sideman to the Mick 'n' Keef show, into which the group has since devolved. This era also finds them on the cusp of transitioning from an R&B and blues-drenched cover act to a bona fide pop-rock band fueled by powerful original songwriting.
More historic docu-diary of a couple of days in the lives of the early Rolling Stones than cohesive documentary, Charlie nonetheless is a noteworthy addition to the pantheon of Stones-on-film projects from over more than four decades. Whitehead/Oldham/Gochanour/Klein's work serves as a preamble to later examinations of the band by such notable filmmakers as Jean Luc-Godard (One Plus One, 1968), Michael Lindsay-Hogg (The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, 1968), Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter, 1970), Robert Frank (Cocksucker Blues, 1972), Hal Ashby (Let's Spend the Night Together, 1982), Julien Temple and others (At the Max, 1991), Martin Scorsese (Shine a Light, 2008), Stephen Kijak (Stones in Exile, 2010) and Brett Morgen (Crossfire Hurricane, 2012). (Editor's Note: Most of these films can be seen through December 2 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.)
Among the many prescient and astute comments made by the thoughtful, 22-year-old Jagger (always the smartest Stone) in the film, he offers his impression of the evolution of the band's music: "When we do do something different, it's not as different as I think. What I mean is, things just don't move as fast as you think they do." Indeed. It's taken some 47 years for Charlie is My Darling to resurface from obscurity. But, as with everything Stones, time is on their side. Yes it is.
Charlie is my Darling—Ireland 1965 premiered at the New York Film Festival in late September and is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from ABKCO Films, as well as in a Super Deluxe Box Set that contains discs in the two formats, both including the original director's cut and the 1980s producer's cut, along with a CD of the original soundtrack and another CD and a 10-inch vinyl record of the Rolling Stones performing live in England in 1965.
Tomm Carroll was a freelance writer on pop music for over 30 years. Currently, he is the editor of CineMontage, the bi-monthly journal of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, where he is publications director. He also serves as editorial consultant for Documentary magazine.