Posts Tagged ‘The Rolling Stones’

SATANISM IN HOLLYWOOD | KENNETH ANGER’S GOLDEN AGE OF OCCULT 1969

Posted: April 5, 2012 in Film, History, Music
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Dr Alfred Kinsey and Kenneth Anger unearth Aleister Crowley’s Satanic frescoes in Thelema Abbey, Sicily.

Geoff Stanton

“As Keith and Anita learned more about the powers of darkness, they grew secretive. They knew the subject frightened me, and they got rid of me when Kenneth Anger or other demonic friends came to call. Keith was impressed when Kenneth ticked off all the great artistic rebels who’d flirted with black magic – Blake, Byron, Oscar Wilde, Yeats and De Quincey…” (Tony Sanchez, Up and Down with the Rolling Stones)

There is something largely missing from popular cinema and music these days, and that’s Satan. I might be sounding old-fashioned – but Satanism had some style. While 1969 turned many things bad – Hells Angels, heroin, peyote, Charles Manson, Dick Van Dyke – Kenneth Anger’s pact with the devil was reaping psychedelic fruit. Anger was a powerful force. His grasp of the symbolic – reckoned with the Satanic creed of ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ – alchemised into works such as Scorpio Rising and Invocation of My Demon Brother, and dealt the decade a final score.

And along the way he also scared some people. In fact, his “awesomely evil 11-minute masterpiece” Invocation – starring himself, Anton LaVey (the High Priest of the Church of Satan), Charles Manson sidekick Bobby Beausoleil (later to serve life imprisonment with Manson for first degree murder), and featuring documentary footage from a satanic cat funeral, a ceremonial skull smoking session, a mummified psychic and a synthesized Moog soundtrack by Mick Jagger – was not as out of this world as the man himself.

Kenneth Anger, camera in crowd, shooting footage that will end up in ‘Invocation of My Demon Brother’.

“We all were just a little afraid of Kenneth” said Tony Sanchez, the Rolling Stones’ drug manager, in his Stones biography. “Again and again inexplicable things involving him would happen. Once, for example, Robert Fraser arranged an opening party for some white sculptures that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had created. I saw Kenneth clearly at the party, but when I went across to talk to him he seemed to have vanished.

“I thought little of it at the time until that afternoon when Anita, Marianne, Keith and Mick all said that they too had seen Kenneth but had been unable to find him. ‘Anyway’ said Anita ‘it’s very strange because Kenneth told me he wouldn’t be able to come to the exhibition because he was going away on business in Germany’. Kenneth didn’t return to London for two weeks, and by then numerous people all remarked on having seen Kenneth across the crowded room, but had been unable to speak to him. Eventually we asked almost everyone who had been there if they has spoken to him – and none of them had”.

Kenneth Anger sporting his trademark Lucifer tattoo.

The myth of Kenneth Anger quickly spread through the shakers’ inner circles.  The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithful, Jimmy Page – all were eager to move in its current. “Kenneth Anger told me I was his right hand man” Keith Richards told Rolling Stone Magazine. “It’s just what you feel. Whether you’ve got that good and evil thing together. Left-hand path, right hand path, how far do you want to go down? Once you start there’s no going back.”

By ’69 Anger was considered a fierce original in Europe and the United States – both influential and genuinely independent.  From his early 1947 film Fireworks, through to Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) and Lucifer Rising (1972), Anger became, as Jonas Mekas put it “one of the most complex personalities working in cinema.  Whatever he does, be it cinema or life, he does it fully, to the bottom… Kenneth Anger, the True Cosmic Explorer.”

The Kenneth Anger enigma begins in 1935, back-dated by his own hand, where he claimed to have performed the role of the Changeling Prince in the Warner Brothers film A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Whether or not the child was him is debatable – studio key books state the character was played by a girl named Sheila Brown. Anger’s biographer denies this. Bullshit or not, the claim somehow adds to Anger’s ability to transcend the chair.

“Kenneth Anger claimed to be a Magus, though he refused to reveal whether toad sacrifices had been necessary for his promotion” wrote Sanchez. “What is indisputable is that Anger does appear to have certain powers, and he has been linked with extraordinary incidents.”

Kenneth Anger/ Sheila Brown as The Changleing Prince from 1935′s Midsummer Night’s Dream. IMDB goes with Brown. His later work Rabbit’s Moon was also influenced by this film.

At the Cinémathèque Française, 1955.

With an interest in the occult piqued at an early age by Frank L Baum’s Oz books, by the 1950s Anger was travelling the Satanic grottoes of Europe – voyaging firstly through Italy to make a film about the sixteenth century occultist Cardinal d’Este, before emerging in Paris around 1955 (where he met Jean Cocteau). He continued to produce short films, filming 20 minutes of footage for his film Rabbit’s Moon (set under a blue filter, it involves a clown longing for the moon) at the Films du Pantheon Studio. When the studio closed the production down, footage was stored in the labyrinthine archive of the Cinémathèque Française.

In 1955 Anger spent three months in Cefalu, Sicily to shoot a documentary about Aleister Crowley’s frescoes in Thelema Abbey. The Abbey of Thelema was a small villa establised as a temple and spiritual centre by Crowley  in 1920. The name was taken from Rabelais’ satire Gargantua and Pantagruel, where the Abbey of Thélème was an ‘anti-monastery’ in which inhabitants spent time “not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure.”

Thelema Abbey, Cefalù, Sicily, circa Kenneth Anger.

Early Hollywood star Jane Wolfe at Abbey of Thelema at Cefalù, Sicily. She lived there from 1920 until it closed in 1923. Wolfe kept records of magic practice, later published by the College of Thelema in Northern California, as The Cefalu Diaries. She gave up a Hollywood career to join Crowley.

Anger’s film would have made an fascinating excursion – complete with shuddering organ, grotesque undercoats and a resident evil, no doubt. But unfortunately it has been lost. “The film was made for Houlton Television which was  a branch of Picture Post – an extinct British Magazine.” said Anger “They lost it. I tried to find it and it’s untraceable. I lived in Crowley’s house, alone, but that kind of thing doesn’t bother me. I had to. It was the only way to get it done.

“I spent three months there scraping the whitewash, which had turned to stone, off the walls. They were still there – all those hyper-psychedelic murals: goblins and demons in fabulous color, scarlet and pumpkin-red. Actually they were good paintings, similar in feel to Ensor”.

But it was the 1960s that truly brought the demons to the surface.

Satan was getting a lot of press. And Anton LaVey – founder and head of the Church of Satan – was spearheading business. The symbolism and ritual of the occult appealed to the anti-establishment; hippies were looking further than flowers, thinkers were pressing the boundaries. On the screen, occult-obsessed films had sprung from the drying patch of Hammer horror – movies such as Eye of the Devil (starring Roman Polanksi’s beautiful but doomed wife Sharon Tate), The Devil Rides Out, The Devils Own and – perhaps – later on The Exorcist. Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby was the cream of the crop – LaVey adding it was “the best paid commercial for Satanism since the Inquisition.”

Anton LaVey in Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Brother Demon. He plays … Satan! He would later be technical adviser for The Devil’s Rain, a story of a cult of devil worshippers starring Ernest Borgnine, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, and John Travolta.

In 1966 blonde starlet Jayne Mansfield - reputedly a Church of Satan Priestess (following some publicity shots she did with LaVey) -  stole the headlines after being virtually decapitated in a car accident, alongside boyfriend Sam Brody. Anton LaVey, reportedly obsessed with Mansfield, took it badly. He had put the curse on Brody.

Gossip now dragged Satan through the undertow of magazines and media. And LaVey seized the wheel. In 1969 he publicly married journalist John Raymond and socialite Judith Case, performed a satanic funeral of Navy machinist-repairman Edward Olsen at Treasure Island (reciting the eulogy while a Navy musician played Taps), performed a satanic baptism on his own 3-year-old daughter Zeena (who chewed gum throughout), appeared on Johnny Carson’s seventh anniversary show and released the Satanic Bible.

A Satanic wedding in the 1960s.

Satanists Michael Aquino and Anton LaVey with Sammy Davis Jr, Circle Star Theater. Davis reportedly noticed Anton LaVey in the front row, and gave him the Sign of the Horns. He was later presented with a second-degree certificate, medallion, and membership card for the Church of Satan.

LaVey and Jayne Mansfield in a series of publicity shots, shortly before her death.

It was also around this time Anger began to gather a reputation. And around the time he started working on his opus, Lucifer Rising.

Again to Sanchez: “His life’s work was to have been a film of homage to the devil, Lucifer Rising. For the role of Lucifer Anger employed a good looking young man named Bobby Beausoleil, who played guitar with the Californian rock band Love. Mysteriously, after many months of filming, Beausoleil appeared to go beserk and carried out a singularly bestial murder which ended with his writing on a wall with his victim’s blood”.

Rumour has it that Beausoleil was kicked out by Anger after he hid an enormous parcel of marijuana in house. Anger later claimed that the guitarist took the footage for Lucifer Rising with him, and buried it somewhere in Death Valley. Kenneth Anger therefore placed ‘the curse of the frog’ on him – by trapping a frog in a well.

It was not long afterwards that  Beausoleil became associated with the Manson family and murdered music teacher Gary Hinman – after a bulk sale of LSD to some bikers went bad. He is currently serving a life sentence for first degree murder.

Bobby Beausoleil on the doorstep of Anger’s Russian House, ‘Do What Thou Wilt’. Bobby Beausoleil did, and is now spending his life in prison. 

The role of Lucifer was subsequently offered to Mick Jagger, with Jimmy Page brought in to compose the soundtrack. Page’s interest in the occult is well known – from the early seventies he owned an occult bookshop and publishing house, “The Equinox Booksellers and Publishers” in Kensington High Street, London. The company published a facsimile of English occultist’s Aleister Crowley’s 1904 edition of The Goetia. Page had also purchased and lived in Crowley’s estate of Boleskine – an old home by the side of Loch Ness in Scotland, originally purchased by Crowley because its isolation and layout reflected the order required to speak to spirits, as per instructions found in the The Book of the Sacred Magick of Abra-Melin the Mage.

“I feel Aleister Crowley is a misunderstood genius of the 20th century” Page told Sounds Magazine in 1978. “Because his whole thing was liberation of the person, of the entity, and that restrictions would foul you up, lead to frustration which leads to violence, crime, mental breakdown, depending on what sort of makeup you have underneath. The further this age we’re in now gets into technology and alienation, a lot of the points he’s made seem to manifest themselves all down the line.”

For personal reasons – heroin – Page never completed the job. What he did deliver was twenty-three minutes of music three years later – five minutes short of Anger’s demands and the final cut. Page recently released the recording as ‘Lucifer Rising and Other Soundtracks’ in 2012.

Anger’s view of Page has meanwhile soured over the years.  “He’s a multi-millionaire miser,” he told Mark Berry, in a great interview for Bizarre Magazine. “He and Charlotte, that horrible vampire girl – the druggie that got him on heroin – they’re both junkies. They had so many servants, yet they would never offer me a cup of tea or a sandwich. Which is such a mistake on their part because I put the curse of king Midas on them. If you’re greedy and just amass gold you’ll get an illness. So I did turn her and Jimmy Page into statues of gold because they’ve both lost their minds. He can’t write songs anymore.”

The final soundtrack was delivered – remarkably – by the incarcerated Beausoleil. And it is quite stunning; an hypnotic reel of looping psychedelic guitar, with ancient harmonics fuzzing at the core. It was Anger’s most expensive film because it involved a trip to Egypt. In the film Marianne Faithfull played Lilith – a demon. “I said to Marianne Faithfull, don’t bring any drugs because they’ll execute you” recalled Anger. “So she hid her heroin in her makeup box underneath her face powder. I think she was powdering her face with heroin.”

Marianne Faithfull before The Sphinx as Lilith the demon, in Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising.

And the hallucinogenic stories from The Rolling Stones camp meanwhile continued to flourish. Tony Sanchez relates Anger’s participation in the wedding of Kieth Richards and Anita Pallenberg – which he suggested be a pagan ceremony. He then explained that the door of the house where the ceremony is held must be painted gold with a magical paint containing special herbs, which represent the sun.

“The next morning I was awakened by Anita yelling hysterically to Keith from the hallway” says Sanchez. “I pulled on my dressing gown and ran downstairs to see what all the commotion was about. ‘Look Tony, look’ she screamed pointing to the door. I was astonished to discover that it had been fastidiously painted inside and out in gold. ‘It must have been Kenneth, but I can’t work out how he did it’ said Keith. ‘The security people put the strongest lock you can buy in that door, and there’s no way anyone could have got a spare key.’ ‘It must be another of Kenneth’s powers’ said Anita. ‘It means he can fly into the house anytime he wants to’.

On the subject of magic, Anger cryptically told Mark Berry: “I never talk about it with people that aren’t magicians. Because they would think you were a fucking liar.”

Anger himself offers a more sober assessment of his transmuting abilities. In Out! Demons Out!: An Oral History of the 1967 Exorcism of the Pentagon, Anger recalled his method of infiltrating the Pentagon to attack Mars, the God of War. “I just walked right in. I had studied how the Pentagon staff were dressed, and I was just like them. I wore a dark blue conservative suit. I even had a small American flag on my lapel. There were these hothead lefties, who, their idea was they would take over and kill the capitalists – not very practical.

“I had a map of the Pentagon. I went into every single men’s room and left—in a place where it was bound to be discovered, usually on the seat —a talisman which was written on parchment paper, drawn in india ink. Each one was drawn individually using one of Crowley’s talismans as my guide. They probably could figure out it was something occult. They know about those things, and they have a reference library.”

“He’s still our ruling god. Mars loves bloodshed, and he is a force that’s still operating in the world—it’s a force that according to modern thinking is irrational, but nevertheless there. Freud would have called it the unconscious or something but I believe that these are actual living entities. Not ‘living’ in the way like humans living and breathing, [but] living in a way that are much beyond our capacity, because they’ll never die.

“I didn’t stop until I had scattered all 93 of my talismans—because 93 is a sacred number for Crowley. Then I walked out, it was all very inconspicuous. The security guard looked at me and gave me a nice look, like we’re all looking after each other. If I’d been stopped and put in handcuffs that would’ve been unpleasant. That isn’t the way I want to spend my time in Washington—I had a ticket to the opera for later that week.

Film makers Donald Cammell, Dennis Hopper, Alejandro Jodorowsky & Kenneth Anger. Message to Hollywood 2012: Pull your socks up and make some decent pacts.

By the 1980s Anger was living largely in retirement, screening his films at universities and film festivals. He was also living off the pulp-gossip of his Hollywood Babylon books 1 and 2, which trawled through the scandalous underbelly of Hollywood stardom. They contained highly litigious litanies of debauch and revelation (including the Fatty Arbuckle sexual assault scandal, the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the Hollywood Blacklist and the murder of Sharon Tate) most of which continue to be debunked. Film historian Kevin Brownlow criticized the work, quoting Anger as saying his research method was “mental telepathy, mostly”.  A documentary of Anger called Kenneth Anger’s Magick was also released around this time. Its director Kit Fitzgerald claimed Anger told her he was now so broke he had been forced to sell his air conditioner.

Anger has said Hollywood Babylon 3 has been written, but is on hold in his top drawer – he can’t afford the inevitable litigation from The Church of Scientology. He has called today’s Hollywood a “dried-out prune of a place”, with stars that are not worth gossiping about. “I covered most of the people who were interesting to me in the first two books.”

Mental telepathy – mostly.

But among the murders, madness, drug addictions and demons, the best of Kenneth Anger stands out for the hypnotic power of his films. “Like many people, I was astonished when I saw Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising for the first time,” Martin Scorsese said in an introduction to the released DVD. “Every cut, every camera movement, every color, and every texture seemed, somehow, inevitable, in the same way that images of the Virgin in Renaissance painting seem inevitable—in other words, pre-existing but dormant, and brought back to life through some kind of evocation.” Anger’s splicing of pop soundtracks with imagery – as far back as 1964 – is also regarded as pioneering, influencing Scorsese’s generation first-hand.

And whether his other-world powers remain intact or not, Anger today remains a rarity and a raconteur, stranded somewhere between Old Hollywood and modern oblivion. He remains both reviled and respected. Depending on where you stand.

As mentioned, there are a number of interesting interviews with the man. Check out Mark Berry’s intriguing chat with the bloke. Below are videos Lucifer Rising, Anger’s commentary on Invocation of My Demon Brother and lastly his 2004 revisit to the Crowley’s Thelema Abbey.

THE GUNS OF BRIXTON | LONDON RIOT SOUNDTRACKS REVISITED 2011

Posted: August 13, 2011 in Music
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by Geoff Stanton

It used to be you could tell a good riot from the soundtrack. Just look at the peasant revolt of 1381 – five hundred and ninety years before Johnny Rotten, its rabble-rousers still being covered by Chumbawamba. The banditry of Robin Hood was later formalised; British communists had a Little Red Songbook “to fan the flames of discontent” while smashing Fascists in the street. The fifties and sixites gave us Folk Music, Frontmen, Highways, Hells Angels – and magazines have long since fossilized the punk and reggae rush through the spot-fires.

Yep, every decent riot needs a good soundtrack.

So what was the soundtrack for looting a Footlocker or nicking a plasma? While the 2011 London riots look familiar against a century of images – hi-res fireballs and swarms of hoodie aside – overt political causes are muted by sheer adrenalin and rage.

But the genuine voices are out there. “We just have to hunt them down,” veteran musician Bruce Cockburn told The Star in 2010, on talking about how music has been forced underground again. “We just don’t hear them. We don’t hear anything worthwhile these days unless we go looking for it.”

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Reg Weston recalled the rioteers ‘Little Red Songbook’ (published between 1905 and 1973, it was originally called Songs of the Workers, on the Road, in the Jungles, and in the Shops—Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent), used during Weston’s involvement in the London riot of 1936. “The fascists were assembling by the Royal Mint” he said. “And police started to make baton charges, both foot and mounted, to try to clear a way for them to escort a march. They did not succeed.”

Oswald Mosley does the two step past adoring fascists at a rally in east London, 1936. Photograph by Imagno/Getty Image

“We sang the traditional working class marching songs and anthems.  The Internationale (“Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers”); the Italian revolutionary Bandiera Rossa (“Avanti popoli, alla riscossa”, “Forward ye workers, into the struggle”, “Fling to the breezes the scarlet banner”); the Berlin workers’ song Rote Wedding (“Left, left .. the workers are marching again”); the Polish Varshavianka, and the old Wobbly song “Solidarity Forever”, with the appropriate words: “We’ll hang Oswald Mosley on a sour apple tree … when the red revolution comes”.

“A barricade started to go up. A lorry was overturned, furniture was piled up, paving stones and a builders yard helped to complete the barrier. The police managed to clear the first, but found a second behind it and then a third. Marbles were thrown under the hooves of the police horses; volleys of bricks met every baton charge.”

London bobbies dismantle a communist built barricade near Mark Lane to clear the street for Mosley's fascist march, 1936. Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

“Back in Stepney and the East End there was almost unbelievable delight. We had won. The fascists had been defeated and humiliated. The police too and the authorities had been proved unable to protect them.”

“Hastily a victory march had been organised to follow the route from Cable Street to Victoria Park where Mosley had planned to address his army. Hundreds joined in. Thousands stood on the pavements and in the roads, clapping and cheering as we marched on. In those days we marched, often in ranks of fours, under the leadership of the ex-servicemen of the not so far away World War I. We marched and we sang.”

A bobbie standing by a burning car, set alight during a communist march in the East End of London, 1936. Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

Baton charge on demonstrating strikers at Walworth, South London. Image taken during the General Strike, 6th May 1926. Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images.


Woody Guthrie lights up, providing inspiration to the folk singers of Britain. The 'Dust Bowl Troubadour's' music remains a vivid voice and rich oral history.

Bob Dylan in London, 1962. Ewan MacColl, father of the late Kirsty MacColl and legendary British folk singer, sits to the far right. A leading writer of English protest songs in the 1950s, he also wrote the very awesome ‘Dirty Old Town’ – immortalised by The Pogues.

By the 1950s the sounds of US folk singers such as Woody Guthrie had seeped into the working quarters of Britain, much the same way that Dylan would shift its youth culture a decade later. Guthrie had traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California, learning traditional folk and blues songs. His songs recorded experiences in the ‘Dust Bowl’ era of the Great Depression. Known as the “Dust Bowl Troubadour” Guthrie was associated with Communist Party groups throughout his life – but never a member.

“Working people have always known that songs are a good way to say what you got to say about work, wages, school, cats, love, marriage, keeping house or doctors bills. If the fight gets hot, the songs get hotter. If the going gets tough, the songs get tougher.” (Woody Guthrie)

Folk was seized by a politically charged element and used as a standard. Ewan MacColl, father of the late Kirsty MacColl, was a leading writer of English protest songs in the 1950s, with pro-communist songs such as “The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh”, “The Ballad of Stalin”, and songs about the nuclear threat such as “Against the Atom Bomb”. He also wrote ‘Dirty Old Town’,  later immortalised by The Pogues.

A young Ewan MacColl.

Notting Hill, 1958 – the riot blueprint for generations. Simmering racial tension and poverty (check out the 1955 Pathe newsreel Our Jamaican Problem) led to the riots of Notting Hill – also eventually resulting in the Notting Hill Carnival, a celebration of diversity and music. Organised by Claudia Jones (black nationalist, journalist, activist and local) as a response to the race tensions of ’58, the festival  was a huge success, despite being held indoors. The hippie London Free School reinvented the festival as an outside event in August 1966.

Notting Hill, 1958.

Keep Britain White, Notting Hill 1958.

Meanwhile ... just a little bit of history repeating. A fight between anti-Fascists and supporters of Oswald Mosley's Union Movement at Charing Cross Station in London, 12th May 1963. The UM members planned to proceed to their headquarters in Vauxhall Bridge Road on their May Day march. The march was cancelled due to the escalating tension. Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

“The words ‘protest songs’ give me the willies,” Cockburn told The Star. “They conjure up the worst music of the 1960s – songs like ‘Eve of Destruction,’ which I hated when I first heard it. It’s pretentious posturing, manufactured nonsense, bad songwriting and just plain ignorant, compared to Dylan’s work in the same period. ‘A Hard Rain’ and ‘Masters of War’ are beautifully constructed and artfully created. They hit the right emotional buttons and they nail their targets.”

Iconic protester of the 1960s, Bob Dylan, and natural-born-protester (in the making), John Lennon.

The Rolling Stones scatter the seeds of unrest down the charts, 1964.

The kids are alright...just. Moments before they trash a music hall. The Rolling Stones riot, Zurich 1964, when the rioters soundtrack hit middle class mainstream. Keith Richards said that at this particular riot, girls' underwear was hanging from the chandeliers.

The Rolling Stones riot - images from the Flash Project's Street Fighting Man Exhibition: 50 years of youth protest.

The anti-Vietnam protest in London’s Grosvenor Square, now known as The Battle of Grosvenor Square, was a watershed moment in the rise of Britain’s so-called counter-culture. The target of the march was the United States Embassy, and the resulting riot was the inspiration for The Rolling Stones’ Street Fighting Man after Mick Jagger attended the rally and got swept up in some of the heat. An enormous crowd began to squeeze into the confined square, with reports that as many as 6,000 to 10,000 people made there way to the protest. The police reportedly handled the protest with kid gloves. Until the protesters tried to storm the US embassy.

Vanessa Redgrave and political activist Tariq Ali speak out against the Vietnam War at a rally in Trafalgar Square. It would shortly move on to Grosvenor Square, London, 1968.

Police confront thousands. Grosvenor Square, March 18, 1968.

“I remember being terrified at being chased down by what seemed like scores of mounted police with truncheons flailing about while the square was blocked off so that none who found themselves on the inside could get out” recalled Robert Newsom, from the University of California. “But the police seemed as frightened as the protesters. I remember also seeing Mick Jagger standing coolly on the steps of a house in the square surveying the chaos”

UK Police History London 1968

If you are the guy getting his hair pulled, please contact The Barrelhouse. Grosvenor Square 1968.

For the conservative observer of the 21st century, 1968 still delivers apoplexy. “The remarkable thing is that the half-baked and narcissistic ideologies of that dismal 12 months are still with us” moans columnist Rod Liddle in The Daily Mail. “In our schools, in our law courts, in our social services. They have permeated every facet of our lives. A disrespect for authority, contempt for the family unit, multiculturalism, “yoof culcha” and an emphasis upon rights rather than responsibilities. A permissiveness and indulgence shown towards every anti-social phenomenon from the use of illegal narcotics to single mothers and suicide bombers (‘We really need to understand them better’)”.

Strangely enough, Liddle didn’t seem to mind punk when it came around. Perhaps he liked Sid’s shock-value swastika.

London councillor Bernard Brook Partridge didn’t. “Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death” he stoically observed on London’s emerging punk phenomenon. “The worst of the punk rock groups I suppose currently are the Sex Pistols. They are unbelievably nauseating. They are the antithesis of humankind. I would like to see somebody dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the whole bloody lot down it.”

Dig your own hole. Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten.

Punk’s place in the riot littered seventies is well documented. And Anarchy in the UK still ticks every box.  Rotten’s ‘just another council tenancy’ bark sounds almost mournful enough to be timeless. And it might be more in step with the personal politics of our day, more so than the socially driven Clash or protest folk and rock of the 1960s.

“It’s a loser’s emblem (swastika), because the Nazis lost the war. It’s ridiculous to suggest we are involved with fascists. All my best friends are black, gay, Irish or criminals.” (Johnny Rotten)

The Clash’s ‘White Riot‘ was written during the fermentation of London’s civil unrest. Joe Strummer, sartorial social barometer that he was, recalled getting caught up in the Notting Hill riots of 1978 under the Westway, along Malton Mews by Ladbroke Grove; starting with a group of “blue helmets sticking up like a conga line”, going through the crowd. It started with one can being lobbed through the air, one man hit – followed by a pelting hail of cans in every direction.

“The crowd drew back suddenly and the Notting Hill riot of 1976 was sparked. We were thrown back, women and children too, against a fence which sagged back dangerously over a drop. I can clearly see Bernie Rhodes, even now, frozen at the centre of a massive painting by Rabelais or Michelangelo… as around him a full riot breaks out and 200 screaming people running in every direction. The screaming started it all. Those fat black ladies started screaming the minute it broke out, soon there was fighting 10 blocks in every direction.”

Joe Strummer developed his love of rock music listening to The Beach Boys - as well as American folk-singer Woody Guthrie. He even went by the nickname "Woody"in his earlier band years. In 1970 his brother David had joined the National Front. His suicide in July profoundly affected Strummer.

Another notorious incident in the build-up of tension was the Southall riot. In the great tradition of Mosley, the National Front met the local candidate for upcoming parliamentary elections, who was pledging to “bulldoze Southall to the ground and replace it with an English hamlet“.

Among the inevitable clashes a young teacher named Blair Peach was knocked unconscious (reportedly by a rubberised police radio) and died the next day. Another victim was Clarence Baker, the manager of the British reggae band Misty In Roots. Baker was left with a fractured skull and a blood clot in his brain. He took a year to recover. Peach later became a national protest icon, memorialized by dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson in his song ‘Reggae Fi Peach‘. Baker’s assault meanwhile inspired The Ruts classic ‘Jah War‘.

The Southall riot that lead to the death of Blair Peach, 1978.

Sloganeering - The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Specials have all peddled their way once again through the standard of riot tunes, with The Kaiser Chiefs ‘I predict a riot’ being the most recent addition to the list.

Between July 3rd and July 11 of 1981 more riots fueled by racial and social discord in Birmingham, London, Liverpool, and Manchester. There were also smaller episodes of unrest in Leeds, Leicester, Southampton, Halifax, Bedford, Gloucester, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Bristol, and Edinburgh.

The Brixton riots were the first real explosion of fury to hit the London Metropolitan Police since it had formed in 1829. The metropolitan police website still calls it ‘the first serious British riot of the 20th century’ to wreak substantial destruction on property.

Amongst the recent media white noise, a spotlight has this time swiveled onto Grime – a sub-sound of UK Garage, breakbeat and hip hop.

“As the glaziers and magistrates go to work after four nights of riots across London and the UK,” wrote the Guardian after the August 2011 riots “the search for understanding and the finger of blame are simultaneously pointing towards the MCs and rappers who Bizzle told me in January were ‘the real prime ministers of this country’”.

“For Professor Green, a top 10 artist, like Chipmunk and Wretch, and one of the MCs who has been most eager to illuminate the causes of the riots, it’s a story of a country that has elected to forget about many of its young people. ‘What needs to be understood here is there is a lot of anger in the underclass’ responded Green. “And a lot of the youth aren’t quite sure where to aim their anger. There are also a lot of underprivileged children who’ve grown up without boundaries”

The Guardian goes on to describe Grime’s place in the recent unrest:”Grime describes the world politicians of all parties have ignored – its misery (eg Dizzee Rascal’s Sitting Here), its volatile energy (Lethal Bizzle’s Pow), its gleeful rowdiness (Mr Wong’s Orchestra Boroughs), its self-knowledge (Wiley’s Oxford Street), its local pride (Southside Allstars’ Southside Run Tings), down even to minor specifics. When some Londoners expressed their surprise and admiration at the quasi-vigilantism of “Turksec” in Dalston and Hackney, the north London Turkish community who fought off looters with a mixture of togetherness and baseball bats, most grime fans’ first thought was Wiley’s offhand lyric: “I had this Turkish bredrin from school, all his family were gangsters.”

“People concerned about the issues that have always troubled us are more likely to turn to Facebook to find a like-minded community than to sing songs in the streets, the way we did in the 1960s,” Cockburn told The Star. “There are plenty of protest songs out there, but they just aren’t part of the cultural mainstream any more. Radio doesn’t play them, and people don’t seem to do things together, as a community. We’re all connected individually to some kind of device, working alone, amusing ourselves alone, enlightening ourselves alone.”

Yet the roots of rhythm remain. Even if thirty million CDs did go up in flames at the Sony warehouse.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE | THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE KELLY GANG

Posted: April 25, 2011 in Film, Music
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By Geoff Stanton

 

When Mick Jagger set stirrup for the lead role in 1969’s Ned Kelly, history was meant to bear him somewhere between Billy the Kid and a ballsy Irish folk song. “The more I worked on it the more I thought I could make it by adopting a ballad, almost country and western formula” recounted Tony Richardson, the flamboyant British director behind such celebrated epics as The Charge of the Light Brigade and Tom Jones (and father of the late actress Natasha Richardson). But while the cinematography would unfurl with beautifully haunting reverie, any romantic re-imagining was swiftly ringbarked by the dramas of rock stardom, careless rewrites and worst of all (according to Richardson) – Australians. Ned Kelly is indeed a renowned tale of thuggery, violence and an indomitable mythology – and that was just behind the camera.

 
Jagger and the Iron Outlaw

“Ned Kelly?” reminisced a skull-jewelled Keith Richards to FILMINK in 2008. “With that bucket on the head!? I said, ‘Don’t do it, Mick!’. Mick’s not natural cinema food. But what he does in his spare time is up to him.”

“Having gone for Mick I should have made a very different film” conceded Richardson years later in his autobiography Long Distance Runner. “Maybe a kind of collage that capitalised on the striking contrasts of his talent, instead of trying to push Mick into being an incipient John Wayne.”

But if there is anyone who can authoritatively recount the curious left-bend Kelly took, it is veteran Australian screenwriter Ian Jones. Whilst helming legendary production company Crawfords as writer, producer and director (where he pioneered Homicide, Hunter and Division Four) Jones began helping Richardson draft the original script for Ned Kelly. Jones was (and also remains) a leading Kelly tragic and authority. Indeed, much of his interest in the dynamic between crime and authority sprang from this devotional source.

“When I was about ten I read The Complete History of the Kelly Gang, in which he was a Robin Hood figure” recounts Jones. “Then I read The True Story of the Kelly Gang, in which Ned was the villain and the police were the heroes. I realised that if I wanted to know the true story of the Kelly Gang I’d have to find it out for myself.” By the time Jones was twelve he was going through newspaper files, and by fifteen he had started going through the minutes of the Kelly Royal Commission.  By the 1950s this had inevitably lead to an amateur Kelly film.  “I spent two hundred pounds to get two hundred feet of film.” After wrangling paddle-steamers and coaches for the project was aborted midway after Jones stepped a broken bottle in a billabong. “One hundred and fifty feet and that was it – a pretty disastrous exercise”.

But it would take more than that to ultimately deter him. “At Crawfords we were actually talking about making a Ned Kelly film shortly before Tony Richardson arrived in Australia in 1968. It was a god-send to suddenly get a phone call asking me to arrange lunch with Tony Richardson to talk about making a Kelly film. We were gearing up to do Division Four, having got Homicide on the rails and Hunter – so I could only be loaned for 3 weeks. I arrived in London on New Years Eve 1968 and began working with Tony on New Years Day 1969.”

The journey began well. Richardson met Jones to begin work on the script with a flute of Moet Chandon in hand. “And a silver swizzle stick to keep it lively!” laughs Jones. “He had a bit of a hangover. He was an amazing man – incredibly flamboyant. He had a script already written, and I can’t remember who wrote it, but I remember Tony saying “I don’t want to make a film about a caveman who wants to wear a helmet!”.

 

Casting the Helmet

It is ironic that Kelly’s legend was borne from a desperate desire to be left alone. There are at least twelve films to leave the iron outlaw swinging. But between knocks Ned has roused a genre. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) (flagged as the world’s first feature) and 2003s Ned Kelly (starring Heath Ledger) bracket dozens of films (including Captain Midnight, King of the Road, Captain Starlight) that consistently ignite interest, but never the depth of passion Kelly lore evokes.

The original Ned Kelly, 1880

Ian Jones recognised the opportunity to show Kelly as he really was – a wily, charismatic Irishman. He was initially pleased that Richardson appeared to share the same view.  “Tony saw a lot of poetry in Ned and thought, as I did, that the Irish roots were very, very important and that Ned should speak and think with an Irish accent. This was revolutionary at the time. Ned was always archetypically Australian. Think of an AFL footballer with an Australian accent – typified by Bob Chitty in The Glenrowan Affair (1951).”

Casting threw a seasoned assortment of names into the mix. “At that stage it was a Columbian film, and they were coming up with names like Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris and Warren Beatty” recounts Jones. “Ian McKellen had also recently done Richard II and Tony was very impressed – so we gave him a bit of the Jerilderie letter (Kelly’s famous letter and manifesto) and filmed him in costume with some stubble in a stable somewhere – and he really gave a very very powerful Ned.”

But he could not have guessed where the tin hat would land. “There were a couple of little flashes of danger early in the piece though,” he ruminates. “Tony said ‘Ian, when you think of Ned Kelly what do you see?’. I said ‘I see a big bearded man sitting on a horse’. And Tony said ‘Ah! But the fact that he was big isn’t important! It is no more important than the colour of his hair!’”. I should have hammered home the point that part of Ned’s tragedy was that he was such an indomitable figure. To me that was an inescapable part of his tragedy. He could not escape attention. He could not avoid being drawn into a fight.”

The strutting quaver of a willowy frontman was clearly not on Jones’ list of candidates. “‘Mick Jagger!?’ I said. Tony said excitedly ‘Oh, do you know him?’.  I said ‘No, Tony!!’. And he said “Well, have you ever seen him act? He’s maaarvelous!’ I said ‘But Tony, he’s not exactly a big man, is he?’ Tony said “Christ no! He’s the smallest fucking man you’ve ever seen! But he’s got a very big head!!’”

                               Ned Kelly, 1969. Image by © Robert Whitaker     via

“I had tested some very good actors,” reminisced Richardson. “And Mick was suggested. Mick was sniffing at a career as an actor. I’d always been a fan of the Stones and was excited by the prospect. The wicked battered Irish face was perfect for Ned. We discussed the problems the role would present in terms of its physical demands. He would have to handle horses and guns. He was sure it was only a question of practice, and, astonished by his magnetism, energy and freedom on stage, I persuaded myself that there was a way his body, with the speed of an urban street cobra, could be transformed into that of an outdoor bushman. It was a mistake.”
With casting misadventure now in the wings, Richardson was also about to pass through his antipodean Ninth Gate.

 
A Mysterious and Unsympathetic Land

“The most striking impression (of Australia) was the monotony of the ubiquitous eucalyptus trees, broken only where the forests had been ring barked and burnt, the result like great black scars on the dull green land” wrote Richardson. “While Sydney seemed to combine the worst elements of Glasgow and San Francisco”.

“Tony didn’t like Australia.” says Jones. “None of the British crew did. I mean, it was a terribly tough shoot. And the English unions kicked up like hell about the number of Australians Tony was using. They virtually called a strike towards the end of filming and sent telegrams to the members of crew. Tony held them until the film was finished,” laughs Jones “which was a fairly Tony way of doing things”.

Richardson flew to Queensland for an initial recce.  “Social activity for the whole district, an area of probably 1000 square miles, was centred on one bar from four o’clock in the afternoon. There was a tiny band who bawled dirty lyrics, to the roars and leers of the clientele, who poured down beer after beer until they went outside to throw up and then returned to the bar. There was nothing to do except drink. Finally I found (our host’s friends) – they’d picked up two nurses, and their VW was already packed but somehow we sandwiched in. They hurtled off at about 120 mph. Kangaroos leaped across the road and the brothers whooped and gunned forward trying to hit the animals. When we finally got back the girls were told to “fuck off home” – another 100 miles away. We set out to devour all that remained in the freezer – frozen French fries.”

A ‘man of wealth and taste’ was on his way, however. For Jagger it had been one hell of a year. While The Rolling Stones were at the top of their game, dishing out raw-knuckle soundtracks synonymous with sixties decline, heroin was setting cracks in the edifice; Richards had been arrested for drug possession, Brian Jones was dead and Jagger’s sidekick Marianne Faithfull – now cast alongside Jagger as Kelly’s sister Maggie – was in the grip of withdrawal and frail as a leaf.  After the famous memorial gig for Jones in Hyde Park, Jagger and Faithfull skipped the funeral straight for Australia. Jagger initially seized hungrily upon the role. After starring as a self-absorbed rock star in Nic Roeg’s cult film Performance – perhaps an echo of his own spook – cinema had become another professional paramour. But Kelly was to be a different creature.

“I’ve never done many parts, only one really; and this isn’t as difficult” reasoned Jagger initially. “I’m playing someone very different from myself so it’s much easier going. It won’t look like anything like me, with hips swinging and so on. I will look very Victorian. As far as the role’s concerned, I’m taking it very seriously. It’s not a joke, otherwise it’d be a bad movie.”
“Will it be hard with Marianne Faithfull playing your sister?” quipped one reporter.
“No” retorted Jagger.  “I’ve always wanted an incestuous relationship.”

Daily Mail's image of Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull after fronting court over the drug bust, 1969.

Australian media had not lapped at rock dignitary this thoroughly since The Beatles tour of ‘63. For publicity it was a major coup. But for Jones it was having a profounder effect. “The notoriety of the Rolling Stones was a hell of a hurdle. Not helped by the fact that Marianne Faithful was about to have a disastrous drug overdose upon arriving in Australia”. Faithfull had been “fatigued” by the journey, the press conference was told, and was now resting. She had in fact swallowed one hundred and fifty barbiturate tablets and was now within a tailcoat of Brian Jones. Journalists were soon wise.

“The Australian press behaved like a ravening pack of hunting-dogs” recalled Richardson. “The hotel where we were staying had to have massive security to prevent them breaking into Mick’s suite. There had to be massive security at the intensive care ward. The security was eventually broken by a pressman who disguised himself in a white coat as an intern. Escaping when discovered, he managed to knock over the IV equipment of a dozen dying patients. Nevertheless, in triumph, one of the papers boasted its scoop – a huge front page out-of-focus photo of an unrecognisable Marianne with blurred tubes in her mouth and nostrils.”

“That rock n’ roll image was already being reinforced” says Jones. Columbia had already dropped their support following the casting decision. “But fortunately the character of Maggie wasn’t going to be used for some time and the lovely Australian actress Diane Craig swung in – and played the role beautifully.”

 

Welcome to Kelly Country

With lurid dramas percolating the fringe, other aspects came together extremely well. In terms of viscerally creating Kelly’s rustic world the film succeeds beautifully.  “Jocelyn Herbert (the designer) was absolutely wonderful. She trod the tightrope between Mick as Ned Kelly and Mick as a pop figure. The interesting thing was that flares were in, and flares were also very big during the Kelly period. Putting him in flares was really quite accurate – although giving him a sort of lacey affair to rob the banks in was possibly going a bit far.”

“Jocelyn’s Kelly homestead was an awesome creation. Tony had found this old site way out somewhere near Braidwood that was virtually just a chimney, so he decided this was where he wanted to film because this was where people had lived and died – had children and suffered. Jocelyn borrowed slabs from around the place to build the Kelly homestead. It was perfect. When I arrived there I thought ‘how did they get this slab hut intact like this – this is amazing!’ When I went inside I was still fooled. I thought Good Lord – it’s still got newspapers on the walls! I glanced at the newspapers and noticed there was an evening Ballina Standard and a Murray Advertiser – she’d had newspapers specially printed and then aged them. The calico ceiling looked like it had been there forever. It was astonishing. We were just a couple of hundred feet from the snow line, it was the middle of winter and it was freezing, so we had a blazing fire going the whole time”.

The Kelly homestead by Robert Whitaker, 1969

The silky landscape was conjured masterfully by Australian cinematographer Gerry Fisher.  “It had a wonderful feel of the past about it,” says Jones. “It was an absolutely revelationary vision of Australian landscape. It was shot in winter, and that helped to capture the Irish mood of the story. Fisher used antique Ross lenses on the film, all of which added up to a terrific physical impact.”

The old Melbourne jail where Kelly was actually hanged was also given a make-over, with gallows rehinged and a prop beam put in. “A lot of the props are still there actually” says Jones. “The door, the trap and the beam are still there from the film. It was also the first time I saw Mick. It was his first day of filming. I said g’day to Tony, and then on cue, out of a cell half way down the gallery, came the execution procession – including Mick with a beard but no moustache. I said to Tony ‘Why hasn’t Ned got a moustache?’ Tony said ‘We tried several moustaches – but they all looked too weak!’ So that was it. We had Mick with those amazing lips blazing from his face and this trim beard, which, if anything, accentuated his trademark lips”.

 

The Wild Colonial Stone

Jones admired Jagger, but knew the weight of celebrity couldn’t hold the film’s centre. “I think Mick unbalanced the thing, and that’s the pity of it. For all the value of casting someone his age and playing him with an Irish accent it is inescapable. It revolves around Mick Jagger and everything that he was. It was almost impossible not to be conscious of the fact that you were looking at Mick Jagger.”

Promotional shot of Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly, 1969

“Though fire and energy snake out of Mick like electricity in concert, he can’t produce them cold as an actor” admitted Richardson later. “It’s a problem with many rock performers. Another problem is that great artists – singers, dancers, sportsmen – don’t carry their public with them when they cross over into a different, often alien, situation. The face was great, but the body seemed frail – at times spastic. But the mistake was mine.”

While staying in a small grazing property thirty kilometres out of Canberra in Queanbeyan, Jagger worked hard at the role but was finding it demanding. “Mick did try for a while” said Richardson. “He rode, he shot guns, he learned how to improvise. But, for all his exceptional intelligence (I often thought he was far too intelligent to be an actor) and imagination, he couldn’t understand the dues he would have to pay to look at ease in the saddle – or maybe he just got bored. He couldn’t suspend himself and become a character. And probably if I’d tried to tailor the character more to him he’d have resisted it.”

“Tony had a remarkable intellect” says Jones. “He knew we were dealing with a young rebel of the 1870s. And Mick was a youth rebel of the 1960s – one hundred years later. But Mick is a very different sort of rebel from Ned. And the fact that Tony didn’t understand the central physicality of Ned’s nature in the destiny of Ned Kelly – that was a fatal flaw. I blame myself for not hammering it home more strongly. But Tony and Mick make a good fist of it, like that seminal twenty round bare-knuckle fight with Wild Wright – however incipiently ridiculous Mick looked in the outfit as a boxer. And the gunfight at Stringy Bark Creek. Tony could get very gritty. He captured the important aspects of Kelly – but in other ways Mick could never be Ned Kelly.”

Jagger and Richardson on set, by Robert Whitaker via

While Jagger was losing interest, the story itself also beelined it for the hills. “The story was starting to go all over the place” says Jones. “I had major problems with what was going on; Tony was doing the most bizarre things with the script! When I arrived in Braidwood for a few days and discovered some of the things Tony had done I threw a wobbly. I was actually meant to be in the film, but I said ‘I don’t want to know anything about it’ and marched off. Tony was absolutely incorrigible. He’d get an idea and suddenly improvise something. The scene where the gang accidentally burn their dinner and then jump and flap about in the water… it’s not the way bushman behave! That was all down to improvisation. Tony would rehearse a scene and then suddenly have an entirely different idea and do another take and print it. He would completely wing the whole thing.”

Jagger’s Irish dialogue coach had also started providing some of the dialogue while Richardson’s friend Jim Sharman (who went on to direct The Rocky Horror Picture Show) also began dabbling with the script. Eventually Australian playwright and author Alex Buzo also joined the party, eventually claiming the screenplay as his. “I thought it was very brave of him. I have always stressed that I wrote the first draft of the script, and this was all I’d admit to – even though Tony and I got the credit for the whole thing”.

In one rare turn though, the film admirably imitated myth when Jagger was actually shot.  “They were using authentic firearms” begins Jones. “I can’t remember if it was a revolver or a rifle – but one of the firearms had a lead adaptor inside it to take the blank. This adaptor was blown out and hit Mick in the hand while they were doing the last stand. He was literally shot. They wanted him to stay away and knock off for a few days, but he wouldn’t. In the end they got someone to pinch his clothes so he couldn’t come onto location. And that is why he wears gloves in several scenes. Because of the wound on his hand. He was a very gutsy fellow”. Mark McManus, who played young Kelly Gang member Joe Byrne, also narrowly escaped death when his horse-drawn cart overturned.

Let it Bleed. Mick in the helmet, image by Robert Whitaker via

It’s a shame Richardson couldn’t harness some of the mayhem and corral it into the film. The wrap party, for instance, rivalled the Last Stand. “Drunkenness was endemic in Australia,” commented Richardson. “One or two beers were enough to send anyone off in a violent and destructive way.” Richardson pre-emptively prepared for the party behind a ten-foot-tall barbed wire fence designed to protect the property. “During the shoot we rented a very beautiful 1820s sheep ranch near Bungendore, outside Canberra. With its cool wood-panelled rooms, it was too lovely to risk beer bottles flying at mouldings or into mirrors.”

The next morning people lay passed out and bleeding across shards of broken glass. “Not a single cup or glass or receptacle survived. Even so, we considered ourselves lucky, as a local gunning club whom we’d used in the film brought their 19th century cannon and tried to lob shells at the house – one of the few authentic period houses remaining and a famous landmark. This time the alcohol was on our side – their aim was off.”

 

Such is Life

“Ned Kelly was like having a still born child” said Richardson on the final film. “The shape and features were all there, but without a breath of life”.

“I was thrilled by some things and appalled by others” recounts Jones. “It wasn’t Ned as I knew him and it wasn’t the story as I had tried to tell it. Visually I thought it was superb and some moments which were unhistorical but worked quite well. Stringy Bark Creek was very well done. The Last Stand was beautifully handled. The railway cutting and the misty dawn theme – it was just terrific. A hell of a lot of work went into that. But it was very hard for me to be objective. There was enormous disappointment. It didn’t work as a piece of cinema as a whole. Even if I divorced all my conceptions of Ned the story was simply not well told.”

Reviewers were less circumspect. “When Jagger puts on his home-made armour he looks like a cut rate sardine” commented one. “About as lethal as last week’s lettuce”. Jagger himself boycotted the Premier. “I didn’t know the film was going to be shit” was his parting shot.

“I liked Mick” says Jones. “I found him a very honest sort of character. He was a very straightforward in his way. But he behaved very badly when he realised the film obviously wasn’t going to be a success. He just walked right away from it – ditched it. He ditched Tony, and Tony was quite hurt by that. Because Mick had become and absolute obsession with him”.

The film received praise from some surprising quarters however. “I was at the premier in the Glenrowan Hall and I sat next to Gwen Griffiths – who was related by marriage to the Kelly family and who had actually lived in the Kelly homestead. When the film was over I said ‘What did you think?’. And she said ‘I thought it was marvellous!’. So I said ‘What did you think of Mick?’ and she said ‘I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role!’. She had grown up with people talking about ‘the boys’, the old timers always talked about ‘the boys’, and that was the gang. And they were boys. Ned was dead before he was 26. Dan and Steve were still teenagers. All the problems of the film were unimportant to her.”

Robert Whitaker's still of the final shoot out.

Jones maintains Ned Kelly has its place in the Kelly canon. “With historical drama you are walking a tightrope between authenticity and drama. The interface is very delicate. English writer Vera Brittain said the idea of historical fiction is to invent nothing but imagine everything. The same applies to film. That is the problem of having a historical vision of any character – it’s going to be subjective”.

History may show that Mick Jagger is more comfortable making it rather than retreading it. But he did leave his mark on the Kelly armour.  The initials MJ are still visible in the body-suit displayed at the Queanbeyan City Library. In the meantime, Richardson made a break from the colony by fleeing for the charms of India – where he subsequently spent time in a locked room after having his tea spiked with acid. It had been a hell of a journey from the silver swizzle stick. Jagger’s Kelly headpiece, meanwhile, has since been stolen.

Published in Filmink Magazine 2010



STUCK INSIDE OF SYDNEY WITH THE COCKSUCKER BLUES AGAIN

Posted: March 3, 2011 in Uncategorized
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While working on a recent article about Mick Jagger’s ’69 scrape around Australia, I swiftly rekindled a violent lust for Exile on Mainstreet. For me the Stones will always sum up the gritty simplicity of rock n roll. Swimming in glory; damage and filth never far away. While the legacy of the contemporary Beatles pop juggernaut was Shakespearean in triumph, the Stones pushed beyond their final trial to build a myth on sheer bloody endurance. They became Gods, they were pulled apart piecemeal; they kept playing.

They have nearly five decades of music history running through their veins. Count em on Keith’s face. Along with Gimme Shelter, Cocksucker Blues is an ultimate Stones documentary. Murky at worst, it is a fascinating siddle into the locker rooms of rock n roll excess. It was 1972, cracks in the edifice only just beginning to form. Perhaps you can see them – but I think it is still too early. For many around them things crumbled badly. But, Brian Jones aside, the group was untouchable.

Best known for the scene where Keith fades away in a slippery haze of heroin while the hangers on bustle around him, the film remains a curio, largely because the Stones banned it. “It’s a fucking good film Robert,” said Jagger at the time,”but if it shows in America we’ll never be allowed in the country again”.

Ethan Russell's photo of Mr Richards hitting the ground in the 70s.

Through a legal quirk, it can only be shown eight times a year and in the presence of its director – also shown zealously shooting up – Robert Frank. He had placed a camera in a number of rooms and encouraged anyone to film. The result is a kaleidoscopic, but ultimately honest, look at the machinations of rock nirvana. I don’t care what anyone says – Keith is drop-dead cool. If you don’t believe me read Nick Kent’s short account of spending some time with him in The Dark Stuff.

I didn’t get to watch this on Frank’s super 16, but managed to unearth a DVD. And you can, naturally, glimpse portions of the film on youtube. But where’s the intrigue in that?