Rolling Stones - Crossfire Hurricane

Crossfire Hurricane
Director:  Brett Morgen
Cert 15

Crossfire Hurricane, the new documentary about the Rolling Stones, premiered at 300 cinemas worldwide including The Odeon, Preston.

It is difficult to find something new to say about a band which has probably featured in more books, magazine articles and TV programmes than any other.  But director Brett Morgen has managed it in this fasicinating trawl through the vaults of TV stations across the world.

Culled from TV and cinema footage, much of which is previously unseen or unshown since it was first broadcast, the film is both a treasure trove for hardened Stones followers and an education in the band’s history for the uninitiated.

The heavy bias towards the 1960s reveals the chaos of the early days of the Stones, when the band strummed Popeye The Sailor Man because the girls at their concerts screamed so loudly that the audience could not hear a note that was being played.  So too are the darker days of the group, including their descent into serious drug abuse in the late 1960s, with the death of guitarist and founder member Brian Jones touchingly remembered.

The horror of the Altamont concert, when an audience member was stabbed to death by the Hells Angels hired by the band to provide security at the gig, and guitarist Keith Richards' arrest for heroin possession by the Canadian police in 1976, are also examined in detail, giving a warts'n'all picture of the self styled greatest rock'n'roll band in the world.

The current day opinions of the band are voiced over the soundtrack, interspersed with the more youthful images of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards et al, and only at the very end - with an outtake from Martin Scorcese’s Shine A Light which featured the band in concert in 2008 - do we get to see the wrinkled old rockers in anything like their present state.

What carries the film along is the music, from Route 66 by way of I Can't Get No Satisfaction and Honky Tonk Women through to Miss You, with contemporary footage of the band performing numbers on TV shows that in some cases has not seen the light of day in more than 40 years.

Crossfire Hurricane will be available on DVD before Christmas.  Stones fans unable to make it to view the film on the big screen should start writing that letter to Santa now.