Martin Scorsese has said of Shine a Light, his new film about the Rolling Stones: “There’s no more answering of the questions. The questions are always going to be the same, so what’s the answer? The answer is perform, and we’re going to show you the performance.”
As I came out of a screening of the film, a couple of young film hacks were whining that it didn’t “tell us what they’re doing now”. And one review of the Berlin film festival screening moaned that it was “simply another in a long line of concert films”, describing its documentary content as “peripheral and sporadic”.
Film hangers-on being slightly more stupid than the rest of us, you will probably be hearing a lot of this kind of stuff. Don’t listen. Shine a Light will blow you away, as it did me.
It consists primarily of the Stones performing over two nights at the Beacon theatre, New York. They have guests – Buddy Guy, Christina Aguilera, Jack White – but really, this is all about the four surviving (le mot juste) members of the band.
The show material is set up by black-and-white footage of a nerve-racked Scorsese and an aristocratically remote Mick Jagger discussing the set, and lots of vague hanging around. Weirdly, the Clinton clan appear at one point. “The Rolling Stones are waiting for YOU!” Hillary says disbelievingly to Bill. Then the performance footage is interrupted by clips of old interviews with the band. These circle round the theme of passing time. They enhance the sense of celebration and wonder. Against all the odds, against all the ephemerality of youth, against the self-inflicted punishment of the rock life, against Altamont and the death of Brian Jones, the Stones are still rolling. The questions have all been asked; the only answer left is to perform. This is what the Stones do, and this is what Scorsese, supremely, does. “The music stays. And the performance stays. This is something that I found inspiring. So I decided not to interview anybody.”
Scorsese has said he looked for a story for the film, but didn’t find one. In fact, he did. The performances themselves become a story, with extraordinarily vivid characters and songs as chapters. Never has Ron Wood been so Ron, Charlie Watts so Charlie, Mick Jagger so Mick and Keith Richards so, well, Keef. Buddy Guy produces the most moving moment in the film when, after an exquisite solo, Richards simply hands him his guitar. And I just didn’t know Aguilera could be this good. Scorsese hired the best cameramen in the business to shoot the performance, and it shows.
Yet, although the film says so much about the Stones, it says even more about Scorsese. This is, in some very fundamental sense, an autobiography. “When I was growing up,” he has said, “in my neighbourhood, there was music everywhere. In the summer, especially, you could hear the record-players and jukeboxes. They were always outside on the street. One was playing swing and another had ballads. Then somewhere else, say, on the second floor, there was opera. It was like a series of mini-concerts.”
He says the Stones in particular “fuelled” films such as Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. The music made him imagine scenes in movies. We all know about this. People now routinely talk about the “soundtrack of their life”. The car stereo and the iPod give us music everywhere, enhancing, layering and dramatising reality. Scorsese showed us how this works.
He is an operatic director. The Coen brothers, in No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson, in There Will Be Blood, and many other contemporary directors have aspired to a pure, stripped-down form of storytelling. Scenes stand alone without any strong sense of directorial manipulation. But Scorsese cannot let anything stand alone. He loads every shot with expressive devices: who can forget Robert De Niro tumbling through flames to the sound of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in the opening sequence of Casino? Or he produces virtuoso, look-at-me camera effects, such as the interminable shot in Goodfellas when Ray Liotta takes Lorraine Bracco into a nightclub, and our own amazement at the shot matches her amazement at the street power of her new boyfriend.
The soundtrack has always been an essential aspect of this manic desire to wring the maximum effect out of every scene. As Scorsese has made clear, the record-players and jukeboxes of his childhood accustomed him, as they did all of us, to the idea that life itself had a soundtrack. Whereas in prerock films music was a self-conscious add-on, in postrock films, thanks largely to Scorsese, it became the natural accompaniment to the action. Mean Streets (1973), the movie that first established Scorsese as a modern master, is simply awash with pop and rock. No fewer than 23 songs – two by the Stones – are listed in the credits. Raging Bull (1980) has 29, Goodfellas (1990) 43, including the Stones’ Gimme Shelter, a track Scorsese can’t seem to live without. It appears most recently in The Departed (2006). These figures aren’t so amazing these days, but that’s because of Scorsese. He is also responsible, I believe, for the pervasive use of pop and rock tracks in advertising.
The point is not just that he used music, but that he did it so well. In the 1930s, in films such as Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein and Prokofiev laid down the rules for music and movies. For example, they showed – and Eisenstein wrote about – how a single chord could echo the composition of a shot. Scorsese is not that cerebral – he’s too much of a performer – but he is just as great an artist. He doesn’t just chuck in any old tracks: he matches music to scene with impeccable taste. There is no more Scorsesean effect than the hard-rock track, one to which we might imagine ourselves bopping happily, laid over sequences of appalling violence. And, at such moments, there is no more dazzling expression of the discontinuities of modern life.
Meanwhile, Scorsese has punctuated his career with filming, not just using, the music. This part began when he was second unit director on Woodstock (1970), the rock-doc that, for baby-boomers, defined the genre. In The Last Waltz (1978), he filmed the Band’s farewell concert. He was blessed with an unparalleled lineup of stars, from Dylan to Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris. But he didn’t just point and shoot. Through colour, editing and camerawork, he captured the epic sadness of the occasion. It was a farewell to rock innocence. But he also made Michael Jackson’s Bad video, a brilliant gangster/horror short, and, in 2005, No Direction Home, a documentary about Bob Dylan that Scorsese managed to turn into a masterpiece without actually meeting the singer. He is now planning films on the lives of George Harrison and Bob Marley.
There is an obvious theme here: Wordsworthian emotion recollected in tranquillity. A filmed concert is not the thing itself, it is a record of emotional intensity. By rejecting interviews and an excess of documentary content, Scorsese has made the act of recording the whole point of Shine a Light. But, though both films seem to look back, he makes an important distinction between The Last Waltz and this movie. “It’s a very different thing. The Last Waltz was a kind of elegy, looking back... It was more to do with a kind of a... not resignation, but an acceptance of time passing. In Shine a Light, in my mind, the Stones are still immediate. They still are as young [as they were in] the 1960s. They still are as young as the way they appeared in the 1970s. In my mind, Shine a Light is something that’s still of the present time, and is defiant.”
This is the thought of an older man – Scorsese is now 65. (There’s a very funny old-guy moment in the film when some lights come on with a blinding flash and a crashing sound, and he remarks that it has cleared his sinuses.) Where once he might have been content to live with rock and pop as ephemera, he now wants to assert their timelessness and significance. “In my mind,” he says, “I did this film 40 years ago.” But he had actually to make it – to get it out of his mind – to preserve those 40 years.
This is, perhaps, an obvious baby-boomer impulse, the desire to preserve the lives of the postwar generation. “This might,” he says, “give some sense of what it’s like as a working band on stage, for generations to come, for them to see this and appreciate who the band are.” As in the late 1960s, there is a need to insist, through film, that this is not just cheap music. Jean-Luc Godard’s Stones film, Sympathy for the Devil (1968) – which Scorsese regards as a masterpiece – is, in its way, a precursor to Shine a Light. That film also sees the sweaty practice of rock as of lasting significance.
The superior rock doc is a widespread phenomenon at the moment. At Berlin this year, audiences saw Neil Young’s rock doc CSNY Deja Vu, about the 2006 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Freedom of Speech tour, protesting against the Iraq war. But the desire to preserve the rock experience on film goes further than that. On the straight performance front, Damon Albarn has brought his cartoon band to life with Gorillaz: Live in Manchester. And there’s Alvi and Moretti’s straight documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad, about Iraq’s only heavy-metal band, Acrassicauda.
As so often with Scorsese, Shine a Light is a technical tour de force, a visceral hit and a film that expands in the imagination. Precisely because of the sheer quality of the filming, one sees Wood, Watts, Jagger and, preeminently, Richards for what they are: extraordinary, exotic, extravagant creatures, adepts of a strange ritual in which we have all, at one time or another, been participants. But it is also an artist’s autobiography, a tale told through feeling rather than event. In the midst of Scorsese’s mean streets, boxing rings, casinos and shoot-outs, there has always been music, there has always been the Stones. That’s the way it was. There’s no more answering of the questions.
Shine a Light opens on April 11. The Rolling Stones will be in London’s Leicester Square on April 2, as Shine a Light premieres simultaneously there and at 100 cinemas across the country via live satellite. Cinemagoers nationwide will experience a Rolling Stones concert as never before – as the fifth member of the band, from the front row and from behind the scenes.

Alan Jenkins is the Deputy Editor of the TLS. His translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Le Bateau ivre, Drunken Boats, was published last year.

Martin Scorsese appears only fleetingly in his most recent rock-documentary, Shine a Light, but for the 65-year-old New Yorker, the film must feel in some way autobiographical. Tracks by the Rolling Stones have rolled through his films, their raucous tone and exuberant energy rattling through Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. The great director cites the band as a formative influence - “Ive been filming the Stones for 40 years,” he says - and the culmination of that experience has now been rendered as a two-hour document - Shine a Light.
The latest entry in Scorseses burgeoning rack of rock documentaries - he worked as an editor on Woodstock before directing The Last Waltz (on the Band) and No Way Home (on Bob Dylan) and producing the PBS series The Blues - Shine a Light is a simple concert film. Incorporating almost a full live set, recorded in the autumn of 2006, it is inter-cut with snippets of archive footage. The film had its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival to almost universal acclaim.
As Scorsese and his glittering cast sit down to discuss the movie, they present an unlikely troupe. When they talk, they banter back and forth, Scorseses rat-a-tat delivery spilling words in torrents. On one side sit Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, the former spitting pithy one-liners, the latter offering quiet, measured replies. On the other side sit Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood, both of whom fidget incessantly and argue like restless schoolboys.
Scorsese and Watts are dressed in expensive suits; Richards and Wood, on the other hand, are wrapped in full rocknroll attire. Richardss hair, streaked with blue, hangs festooned with feathers and bits of metal, like a miniature art installation. Jagger, clad in a white shirt and tight black trousers, is something of a middleman, sartorially, and, perhaps, professionally. For Shine a Light owes as much to Jaggers vision as to Scorseses, the two men discussing various projects before electing to shoot a performance film. The result is a beautifully forged document. It is Scorseses tribute to the music that has shaped his movies. As a consequence, we see the Stones for what they are to him - immediate, defiant, exotic and, above all, extraordinary.
Scorsese: The Stones music has inspired me greatly and became a basis for most of the work Ive done in my movies, going from Mean Streets right the way up to Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. Their music for me is timeless; it helped me form scenes, the energy and the atmosphere of the music, it created images in my mind.
Jagger: Actually, I think Shine a Light is the only Martin Scorsese film that doesnt have Gimme Shelter in it! Seriously, though, Marty and I had been discussing various film ideas and one of the beginnings of this project was us doing a show in Rio de Janeiro, on the beach. I thought it would be wonderful if we could be filmed and I asked Martin if he would come down and shoot it in Imax, of course, 3-D as well. But he said that hed like to film something more intimate. Thats how we got to the Beacon Theatre in New York. Scorsese: We tried to get the film as close as possible to the energy of a live concert. For me the Stones are all about energy, thats why they are still so relevant today.
Initially, we did think about a narrative structure for the film. We talked about doing something with the Stones and New York City - we could have had many different scenarios - but quite honestly, after 40-45 years, so many great filmmakers have worked with the Stones, what could I possibly add? “The Rolling Stones in New York”, some clever interstitial moments?
Watts: What I like about the film is that, simply put, its not boring, which often those things are. Its all in the edits and the cuts. Thats a moviemaker rather than a guy just shooting a band on stage. So it is a movie. And I thought Mick was the real star. Ive never seen him live, obviously. Ive seen him do things with bands, but apart from in videos and things Ive never really seen him do us.
And he was on fire. You can tell in the third song when Lisa Fisher, the singer, does a shimmy with him and the look on her face. He dances like Fred Astaire, gliding backwards across the stage.
Richards: Charlie, Ronnie and I, all we do is go around being a safety net for Mick, really. Sometimes hes way out on the edge of a stage and hes got the beat totally wrong, hes singing like some Chinese scale and then theres Charlie and me looking at each other. ‘Oh, lets pick it up and switch the beat and then Micks in. Mick can screw up any f***ing song (laughs). Seriously, though, after this many years I wonder what Id do without him! Anyway, we all played great on Shine a Light.
Jagger: Making a concert movie is really no different from making an art movie. Youve got these teams of people, youve got a massive amount of committees ... And we were well prepared for a film because Keith sat us all down before we went on stage and told us how to act, now hes a Pirates of the Caribbean star! (laughs)
Richards: Yeah, now Im always waiting for a good part to come up (laughs). See if Johnny Depps got a bit part for me in the next one or whatever. No, seriously, I dont pursue these things.
Watts: And when you work with Marty you dont need acting lessons.
Wood: Thats true. Hes a marvel, Marty. I learnt a lot, seeing through Martys eyes.
Jagger: What exactly did you learn? Wood: I learnt that its not just the concert footage; its seeing through the eyes of all these cinematographers under the direction of Marty and how they put it all together.
Scorsese: The editing is fantastic. With our editor, David Tedeschi, the show feels more like choreography, dance, a sculpture that moves, a kinetic sculpture. Although what I love most about the medium of documentary is the timing. Its priceless. I love the moment when we see the producer explaining to Charlie that hes going to have another “meet and greet” with about 30 people.
Charlie says, “I just did” and the producer goes, “No. You just met the President. You are now going to meet some other people.” Its hilarious.
Watts: I dont know why the Clinton bits in the movie. That was a bit dull for me, because they werent really rocknroll people.
Jagger: Well Clintons a rocknroll sax player (laughs). All these politicians play something. That Huckabee guy, the [former] governor of Arizona, is a guitar player. He doesnt believe in evolution but he plays the guitar! He always makes this big thing of how he pardoned Keith for a driving offence in Arkansas.
Wood: It must have been when we drove from Memphis to Dallas and were arrested for loitering. Keith was driving far too slow. He was stoned. And we got locked up for a day!
Jagger: Its funny looking back at that old footage, like when you see me being asked whether we could carry on touring and playing when were in our sixties, and youd expect me to have said the opposite, being so young. But the reality is I immediately say “Yes”!
Watts: Its funny though, after all this time, theres never really any friction in the band. Although, actually, you never want to get in the middle of Mick and Keith! Theyre like brothers, so they get seriously stroppy with each other! But they will turn around and be in love again. Ronnie always puts his foot in it, and gets his head chopped off, but thats Ronnie! The secret of staying together is keeping out of each others way most of the time. Even when I was a young idiot, really, Ive always seen my own life as separate from the Stones.
Wood: Yeah, we definitely try to stay away from each other when were not on stage (laughs).
Jagger: Yes. Its the best way, isnt it? Although Ronnies got a new swimming pool, so Im going there more often as I dont have such a thing.
Richards: We did almost split up, of course. But then Mick got wise and did as he was told (laughs)!
Scorsese: Its great that the Stones are still together and still touring. For Shine a Light, we shot two concerts, over two nights, and all the concert footage was taken from the second night. Its pretty much in real time between songs, particularly after Buddy Guy finishes and they suddenly go in to Tumbling Dice. Buddy Guy was sensational, as were all the guest stars that night.
Richards: Buddy was amazing. I gave him my guitar at the end and that was no set-up. He was so good that after hed finished I just went, “This ones yours, pal.” And I very rarely give anything away (laughs).
Jagger: We thought Buddy Guy was a great person to have. Wed played with him before. With the other guests, Jack White had already opened the show for us on many occasions so we knew him. Its best to have people you know so only Christina Aguilera may have been a gamble, but shes got a fantastic voice.
Watts: I thought Christina Aguilera was amazing, because often those girls freeze when they dance with Mick. Weve had some great people - including our dear Amy Winehouse, although I dont think she was quite well - who were never as good as Christina.
Richards: Im glad Amy seems to have sorted herself out a bit recently.
Wood: I think with people like Amy and Britney, you just have to keep your fingers crossed for them and hope they get through it.
Jagger: That doesnt sound very hands on, does it, Ronnie? (laughs) People go through all this stuff but now, compared to when we were going through all our similar sorts of times, people didnt really know so much about drugs or they didnt have rehab centres. Well, they did but Id never heard of one.
Wood: You were considered mad if you went to one.
Jagger: There werent the sort of support systems that people can have now, so you had to be your own support system.
Wood: Its funny. I was talking to Neil Young about how Id survived it all, last night. Why are we still here? Its great!
Jagger: But then most people do survive. Its how you come out at the other side and what shape youre in.
Wood: I dont know how were going to help Britney, though, poor cow!
Jagger: She is really nice. I remembered seeing her all over the place when we were doing promotion. Im really surprised. But I wouldnt be worried about letting my kids listen to Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty. Although, actually, if they were listening to Pete Doherty I would!
Richards: I cant say I listen to that many newer performers. I dont like digital much. I dont like the sound. Im very happy that there are plenty of bands around, guys playing together. There are so many now. It was easier when it was just the Beatles and us! But I think we might make another album. Once we get over doing promotion on this film.
Watts: I think we should carry on. It seems that whenever we stop I get ill. The last time we had a break I got throat cancer. I do all my exercises, I dont smoke, and I dont drink, yet Im the one in the band that got it. I was lying there thinking, “This is it.” I went into hospital and eight months later Mick said, “Were going to do a record. But well only start when you are ready.” They were buggering about, writing songs, and when I was ready I went down and that was it, we made A Bigger Bang. Then we did a two-year tour.
Richards: We love what we do, simple as that. We were the whipping hounds, you know, but thats calmed down. Now were the wrinkled rockers, right? But I still have the energy. I put that down to not eating a lot. And drinking a lot. Not eating a lot, and good weed. Honestly Id do this job even if I were in a wheelchair.
Shine a Light is released on April 11

In the Rolling Stones new concert movie, Shine a Light, there is a vintage interview with guitarist Keith Richards. A reporter asks Richards what he thinks about when hes onstage playing with the Stones. Richards coolly replies, "I dont think onstage. I feel."
Directed by Martin Scorsese, Shine a Light captures the Stones in their current feral prime, in breathtaking close-up. Scorsese shot the band in 2006, during two intimate shows at New Yorks Beacon Theatre, with guest appearances by Buddy Guy, Christina Aguilera and Jack White of the White Stripes, who duets with Mick Jagger in a heated country-soul version of "Loving Cup," from 1972s Exile on Main Street. But Shine a Light — named after another Exile song and the latest in a long line of Stones documentaries, including Gimme Shelter (1970), Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones (1974) and Cocksucker Blues, Robert Franks notorious, unreleased chronicle of the backstage excess on the Stones 72 U.S. tour — is a testament to the power of feeling, the blues-band empathy and brotherly defiance that continue to drive and define Richards, Jagger, guitarist Ron Wood and drummer Charlie Watts in concert.
Shine a Light has also inspired a first: the following interview with Richards and White, in front of a roaring fire in a New York townhouse on a recent wet, cold afternoon. Born half a lifetime and a few rock revolutions apart, Richards, 64, and White, 32, had never talked at length before. In fact, White did not see the Stones live until the White Stripes opened two shows for them in 2002. But the two guitarists quickly bonded over their mutual love of the blues and the spontaneous joys of live performance. "Its like describing the Pyramids to someone who has never been there," White says, when asked what he feels in the middle of a hot guitar solo. "A man after my own heart," Richards agrees, smiling.
Richards, who, after a fall from a tree, underwent brain surgery a few months before the Beacon shows, brushes off doubts about his health. "I must be fine, because Im not seeing any doctors," he growls cheerfully. As for a future Stones tour, "Ive never heard anything about not going out again," Richards says. "Im basically giving the guys a year off. Im not pushing. But I might withdraw their wages," he adds with a cackle, "and see how they feel then."
Keith, what do you think of "Shine a Light"?
Richards: Im just seeing what Marty Scorsese sees in the Stones. I was never aware of the cameras. I knew they were there. But once you go to work, your job is to give the audience what they want and, at the same time, get yourself off. Ive no doubt that Mick was far more aware that he was making a movie. But once I get going, I just look at Charlie.
Ive always been amazed by how much fuss goes on around us — the big screens, the technology. And it has to be coordinated. Mick loves to coordinate. But Im selfish. I gotta feel good. I cant go up there worrying about things. I go onstage to get some fucking peace and quiet.
Jack, what did you learn about the Stones when you opened for them?
White: How good they were. You could see the comfort level between them, in Keiths guitar playing and Rons slide playing. Its impressive, man, when that confidence is exuded. Someone once told me when I first started playing — you get a lot more respect if you act like you own the joint. If you fumble around, you dont gain respect.
Richards: You could have asked me that question back when we went from clubs to opening for Bo Diddley, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers on one tour [in 1963]. I learned more in those six weeks than I would have learned from listening to a million records.
What was the primary lesson?
Richards: Stagecraft — what works and how to feel comfortable onstage. The Everly Brothers were superb every night — those beautiful harmonies. Wed open, then climb the rafters and hang there, watching them. Watching Bo Diddley was university for me. Every set was twenty minutes long in those days. When he came off, if he had two strings left on the guitar, it was a fucking miracle. The Duchess was there [on guitar], and Jerome Green, with the maracas in each hand. It was my job to be Jeromes minder. I used to fetch him from the pub — "Youre on, mate."
Jack, how did you and Mick choose "Loving Cup" as your duet?
White: Mick called me. I offered up six or seven songs, which were all shot down [laughs]. "Factory Girl" [on Beggars Banquet] was talked about. Another one was "Shake Your Hips" [the Slim Harpo cover on Exile on Main Street]. Then he said "Loving Cup." That was great — for years at White Stripes shows, we played "Loving Cup" [over the PA] as the crowd was leaving. I just wanted to harmonize with Mick. I didnt necessarily want my own verse. But he said, "Take one."
Was "Exile on Main Street" an important album for you?
White: I didnt know much about Exile until Meg and I did the first White Stripes album [The White Stripes, 1999]. We covered "Stop Breaking Down," but we did it from Robert Johnson. I didnt know it was on Exile. Aftermath and Beggars Banquet were the Stones albums I listened to. Then someone told me, "The Stones do Stop Breaking Down, too." My roommate at the time — Exile was his favorite album. He played it for me.
Keith, the Stones played Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley songs from the start but didnt cover the older bluesmen — Robert Johnson and Fred McDowell — until "Beggars Banquet" and "Sticky Fingers."
Richards: We were slowly going back. When I was into Chuck and Bo, I wanted to know what they were listening to. Who turned him on? When Chuck Berry started out, he wanted to be Nat "King" Cole. And he did a damn good imitation.
White: The more you look into it, its all the same family, and youre lucky to be part of it. The difference is, Charley Patton didnt get his photo taken very often. Son House didnt get to make that many records. But you pull certain things from those guys. From Kokomo Arnold, I get the vocal phrasing. From Blind Willie Johnson, its the slide [guitar].
One amazing sequence in "Shine a Light" is when Buddy Guy comes out for the Muddy Waters song "Champagne and Reefer." He looks ready to kill, like this is not going to be just a friendly jam.
Richards: That was the high point of the film for me. He came in steaming. I looked at him and knew — the night is on. When he took the stage, everybody else wanted to move back.
Then, at the end of the song, you give him your guitar.
Richards: Its one of my favorites, too. That was straight off the top of my head: "Its yours, baby." With everything going on that night, with this movie, I thought, "This is my respect to Buddy — and to Muddy and all the other guys who turned me on."
Do you feel cheated, Jack, that you wont meet and play with your favorite bluesmen because so many are gone?
White: The problem now is if you want to work with somebody — if that somebody is still alive — you do it on one of those compilations or tribute records. Last year I got asked, "Do you want to play with Jerry Lee Lewis?" It was for one of those records. Yeah, I do want to play with Jerry Lee Lewis. But I dont want to do it like that. I want it to be where we can both get something out of it.
The Stones have made concert movies since the Sixties. Did you see any great music films as a young man, Keith?
Richards: Jazz on a Summers Day [Bert Sterns 1960 film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival]. I think it was in 1962. We were on the way to a gig, and we stopped off at the Hammersmith Odeon [in London], Brian [Jones] and me. We were carrying our axes.
There was some incredible jazz in that movie. But it was the shots of Chuck Berry — his moves and the disdain of the jazz band playing with him. It was amazing. Chuck had this big coat on. Lit from beneath, he looked like a devil.
Jack, did you see Stones films like "Gimme Shelter" and "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones" when you were young?
White: I saw Gimme Shelter. And at a house I lived in, we had a grainy copy of Cocksucker Blues, so we watched that a few times [laughs]. Is there a nice copy of that movie? Thats what I want to know.
Richards: Once we started getting into Shine a Light, I got all the Stones movies from our office. I didnt want to look at them. The only one I did watch was Cocksucker Blues.
That movie is famous mostly for the sex and drug scenes and the fact that it never came out. When I saw it, I found parts of it boring. Maybe debauchery is only interesting if youre doing it.
Richards: There are highlights, but the highlights are the shows. The rest is a grind. You get a perverse delight out of the grind. My memory of that time is a little hazy. Thats why I watch it so much [smiles], so I can remember what happened. The monument to the unknown junkie is one of the best bits of cinema. But some of the cats died, like [cameraman] Danny Seymour. There wasnt anything involved in making that movie. We got used to the cats hanging around, in everybodys rooms. You carried on, doing what you did.
Did you actually like the film, Jack?
Richards: It almost put him off the idea of being in a band [laughs].
White: I had more questions than opinions. I wanted to know where it came from, why it never got released. But I loved the mystery of the backstage, of the transportation to the gig. Its a lot worse now. Its more boring than ever.
Richards: People have timetables. Showtime in the Seventies was whenever I got up. It had nothing to do with what the ticket said.
Jack, do you feel you were born too late — that you missed out on a time when joining a rock band was like running away to the circus?
White: I didnt have those kinds of rock-star dreams. I wanted to play in smaller clubs, even when we could fill bigger ones, because I knew it would be better there. I was always aiming low. Thats the problem. To get mood and vibe, you have to aim low. The Stones have been playing a lot of club shows in the last few years. Im sure the vibe is better.
Richards: When you get into this, you want to communicate. You just have to figure out how. My lot, its a caravan. Thats why I enjoyed working with the X-Pensive Winos [in the Eighties]. I could take it down a notch. We called it EMG: Everything Must Go. We traveled on a bus. I hadnt done that for a long time.
White: I saw the Winos when I was a teenager. I worked at the Fox Theater in Detroit. I had an hour break and got to watch the show.
Richards: It was as free as what Jack does with the Stripes now. How did we open the show? Wed sit down in front of the drum kit and smoke a joint. All the audience could see was this light passed around. You felt the mood of the audience, and you could feel when it was the right time — "OK, lets break" — and you could open with a different song every night. It was far more interesting than fireworks going off.
Jack, is there a Stones song that you particularly like — one thats not a greatest hit?
White: I dont know why we didnt do it, but in the Stripes, we were going to cover "Undercover of the Night." I love the guitar riff. I wanted to break the song down to just the riff and that shaky-maracas beat. But we worked on it for a second and got distracted, I guess.
Richards: You wouldnt have loved the song so much if youd had to do the goddamned video for it.
There is a scene in "Shine a Light" of Dick Cavett interviewing Mick backstage in 1972. Cavett asks, "Can you possibly see yourself doing this at sixty?" And Mick replies, "Easily, yeah."
White: Its because of the blues. If youre in love with the blues, rooted in it, it gets better the more you do it.
Richards: The medias perception of longevity is youre supposed to be able to do this from eighteen to twenty-five, if youre lucky. In 1956, rock & roll was like calypso — a novelty. They said, "None of it will last" — without realizing that all of the music behind it was not a novelty.
Jack, did you always take it for granted that you could do this forever?
Richards: Thanks to me, yes!
White: In the White Stripes, we thought, "If we can find a hundred people in each town to keep this thing going, we wont need day jobs." If you love it for what it is, the other stuff is extra.
Richards: He shouldnt quit [gestures at White]. Hes a good man.
Despite your generation gap, the blues shaped your lives in similar ways.
White: When you see someone play, you immediately know whether you can connect with them or not. You know youre in the same family. And [gestures at Richards] I think we are.
You ask me, did I miss something? Was I born in the wrong generation because I didnt get to play with Muddy? I play with the sons of those guys. And there will be more grandkids after that.
Richards: I loved listening to music — the pure beauty of listening — before I ever learned an instrument. I realize, in a way, that I tainted that beauty, because now I know how certain things are done. But brother, youve made your deal now. The only thing you can do is pass it on.
White: Thats what you should have named the movie — Pass It On.
Richards: No, thats for the tombstone, baby. "He passed it on."

In your mind, whats the difference between the Stones we see in this movie versus the Stones in, say, 1972?
Much older [laughs]! Im still singing the same old songs, you know. Its just a more matured style of playing, with maybe some of the more extravagant edges taken out. You know, the band — they were very inconsistent back then. They would do a fantastic show one night, fucking raise the roof and be amazing, and the next night they would do a terrible show, where the tempos are wildly wrong — too fast, too slow, terrible train wrecks and awful mistakes. Now its a much more consistent-playing group.
Looking at old footage, you appear to be even more physically frenetic onstage now than in the old days. How can that be?
The problem for me is that you need a certain amount of physicality and oxygen and fitness just to sing. So if you use too much up dancing, you got nothing to sing with. Ill err on the side of the physicality, and I let the singing down. So I cant make the notes some nights. Ive overdone the physicality.
How did you feel looking at the long, intense close-ups on you in the movie?
It was a little bit too much, I felt. But directors always like to use slow numbers to have these lingering shots. Yeah, I didnt care for it too much. Boring. It didnt look very good.
Your performance of "Far Away Eyes" is really campy and funny in the movie — its a reminder of how much acting there can be in your singing.
All of these songs have characters. Theyre all different. Thats the thing about the Stones, they have lots of other kind of facets which make them kind of interesting. Theyre not really stuck in classic-rock mode.
If you were forced to define that particular character . . .
Oh, God, dont force me [laughs]! Dont force me to intellectualize it. I just do the characters. Ive done a couple of songs — even very early, on those songs like "Dear Doctor" and all that — theyre that sort of character. I have an affinity with that country thing, I think.
Is it always a character in your songs?
Oh, no. Sometimes its closer to your own persona. See, I dont know how this works for other singers. The thing about rock & roll is people expect it to be real, sincere and heartfelt, or something — its not supposed to be manufactured. Pop music is allowed to be silly and saccharine, and nobody minds as long as they like the tune. Rock musics got its own set of conventions, but then you got to sort of break out of that because otherwise youre stuck in this thing, this one character.
Buddy Guy was really up in your face as youre playing blues harp, but you dont seem intimidated.
Im not intimidated. I might have been when I was twenty. Well, not even then.
Is there anyone who could intimidate you onstage at this point?
No [laughs].
What are the first movies that you remember responding to as a kid?
My mum used to love musicals, so shed take me to all these musicals, which is a form I never liked. She loved Doris Day. Judy Garland. So I had to be dragged to these movies.
I remember reading that you and Keith both liked "Jazz on a Summers Day," which was filmed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958.
That was a big movie. That was the seminal movie for a lot of people, including filmmakers. We had a little chat about Jazz on a Summers Day with Marty [Scorsese].
The thing about Jazz on a Summers Day, its very much one night. And its got this very mellow feel, and you get these shots of the audience dancing, romantic and slightly tipsy. I think its the first time I ever saw Chuck Berry perform. So I saw it several times just for that. Its so weird because hes kind of put down by the other musicians in the movie. Because hes not jazz, which is something we experienced a lot when we were starting out, being put down by jazz musicians.
What struck you about his actual performance?
I remember talking with Keith — I was amazed how big his hands were. You know, I was looking at my hands on the guitar, and, Jesus, its so easy for him. Im stretching, and he doesnt even bother. I was amazed at his fluidity.
Ill read another quote from you. . . .
God, youve been digging around. Get off of fucking Google [laughs].
You said at some point in the Sixties, "Were not comedians, were not going to make Beatles movies." What did you think about the Beatles movies — "A Hard Days Night," "Help!"?
I just couldnt see the Rolling Stones doing anything like that. It did seem a bit too zany for my taste in movies. John was such a kind of serious person in a lot of ways. It was a little bit over the top, all the cuts and plots in the thing.
The Stones have made so many movies. Are you able to watch "Gimme Shelter," for instance?
I dont listen to anything, I never listen to any of [the Rolling Stones] records, and I never watch any of their movies. Lets get it out of the way. You know, I dont go home at night and put on Gimme Shelter, believe it.
Any chance youll finally release "Cocksucker Blues"?
Yeah, I wouldnt mind releasing it. Its fine.
How do you see the film now?
Thats a good movie. It didnt come out — but thats a classic. I wanted to make one kind of movie, but the director fucks you over because he doesnt want to do the movie hes agreed to make. I said, "You could make this dark movie, but you got to have these other up moments because being on tour is all about going onstage, you know?"
What you have for breakfast is fascinating, and what drugs youre taking and what birds youre shagging, thats all very lovely. But then for you, the going out onstage is the important part, and you have to include that. And [Robert Frank] wouldnt include it. So I got really mad at him, as we fired him. Thats the problem you can get into with hiring directors.