DOUBLE FEATURE 12.11.20
Gimme Shelter + Sympathy for the Devil
Nobody could have predicted what would go down at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival on December 6, 1969. Albert and David Maysles, the documentary filmmakers who were filming the Rolling Stones, the festival’s featured act, on its North American tour, when the Altamont concert plan was hatched. The organizers hoped it would be a “Woodstock West,” and scheduled just four months after the legendary three-day celebration of peace, love, and music in upstate New York. There was a lot of music at Altamont, but no peace or love.
Gimme Shelter, the Maysles brothers’ resulting film, is an unprecedented masterpiece. It’s considered one of the best music-docs ever made, and remains the benchmark of the genre, Direct Cinema. The filmmaker’s role is to capture everything in real-time, an invisible witness with a camera without intruding or interfering. Wherever the camera is, the viewer is. It’s with Mick Jagger trying to calm the crowd; with the band listening to the just-recorded Wild Horses track at the famed Muscle Shoales Studio in Alabama; or, “witnessing” the murder of a drugged-out Altamont audience member by a Hells Angel.
One of the most poignant shots is Stones drummer Charlie Watts viewing footage of Altamont in the editing room. He is still and silent, wearing an expression of profound sadness and dismay. As the clip ends, he quietly mutters, “Oh, what a shame.”
Another film that uniquely captures the Stones is 1968’s Sympathy for the Devil, by master French auteur Jean-Luc Godard. It is a fascinating contrast to Gimme Shelter. Like Godard’s entire oeuvre, Sympathy for the Devil eludes classification. It is a composite of genres, ranging from documentary to avant-garde, and laden with political overtones. The part that involves the band captures them in the studio as they record the film’s titular song. It is enthralling to watch musicians create what would ultimately become an enduring classic, and the chances of being there at that moment with a camera are incredibly slim.
In between the making of Sympathy for the Devil and Gimme Shelter, the Stones suffered the loss of 27-year old Brian Jones, who drowned in his swimming pool. If you watch these films chronologically, it is poignant to see Jones in one of his last sessions with the group he co-founded, and later, his replacement, Mick Taylor, taking the stage at the ill-fated Woodstock West.
