Charlie Is My Darling

An illuminating and entertaining music documentary.

Covers the Rolling Stones' 1965 tour of Ireland. Features concert footage, backstage and hotel scenes and interviews with the band. At the time the Stones were still more a blues/R&B band, rather than the rock superstars they would later become. All other Stones films I have seen were in the rock days, and there's a difference.

Here the Stones, though obviously big in the music world - just see the fans adoration, especially from the young girls - seem to still have a degree of innocence and are almost shocked at how popular they are. They still don't really think their fame and popularity are permanent. There's almost a lack of self-confidence on their part, especially from Charlie Watts.

Also interesting to see that some of the standout Stones features are already there. Most particularly, Jagger's stage performance is all movement, swagger and bravado - that came early. Plus you see the natural musical ability of Keith Richard(s) and the shyness of Charlie Watts.

The interviews, particularly with Jagger, are quite illuminating. You can see they are not addle-brained louts, but young men who think about their art, what has come before and where it is going.

A relatively unique Stones experience.

As an unreconstructed Stones fan this film is a favourite slice of pop history. Andrew Loog Oldham as the Stones manager at the time was desperate to get the band on film after seeing the impact of the Beatles Movies. He was introduced to Pete Whitehead who had made a film called Wholly Communion which recorded Alan Ginsberg, Alexander Trochi and other giants of the poetry world performing to a packed Royal Albert Hall and in the process giving birth to what became the underground art movement of the 60's.

The original cut featured more of Brian Jones and in a move that may have started his marginalisation within the group Oldham had his footage trimmed and some footage from a London gig that showed the band being mobbed on stage inserted. This footage also featured in Whiteheads "Tonight lets make love in London". Oldham also inserted some music from the "Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra" doing some Stones tracks.

The rights to the film and its soundtrack became confused when the band became managed by Alan Klein and was completely unavailable for some years. A version released on video in the UK had all of the original music replaced by soundalikes.

My favourite scene is a drunken Mick Jagger doing an Elvis impersonation and a surreal moment when he poses for some snaps with an unidentified family. Also funny but sad is the moment Brian Jones is lost for words when Whitehead asks him to define the word "surealism".

I viewed a bootleg copy of "Charlie Is My Darling" forty five years after it was originally filmed. As much as Brian Epstein was the fifth Beatle, Andrew Loog Oldham was the sixth Stone. Andrew Loog, in 1965 liner notes heralded this music as "New groovies...abound to the sound of the Rolling Stones." Whereas fifth Beatle Brian Epstein was, brilliant/erudite/invisible, sixth Stone Andrew was a pure jabberwocky genius. "Charlie Is My Darling" is the anti-Christing of "Hard Day's Night." Pardon my excessive numeralizing, but, in 1966, Andrew Loog prominently featured First Stone Brian Jones when he/Charlie/Bill/Keith/Mick –collectively the Rolling Stones–were mere Rolling Pebbles. For any Stone fan who was their from that infancy...This rockumentary is a must see!

Stands alongside Pennebaker's 'Don't Look Back' as pioneering 60's verite rockumentary. By turns funny, touching, exciting & revealing. Whitehead manages to create an astonishing level of intimacy with the world's premier rock band which would be unthinkable these days. Even the taciturn Charlie Watts is coaxed out of his shell and shares his feelings and philosophy (for perhaps the only time on film). Brian Jones's narcissism is palpable; A topless Keef displays his early mastery of the guitar jamming on 'Salty Dog'. The scenes of fan craziness in the pressure cooker fame game of the early 60's are viewed ironically from a distance like 'A Hard Day's Night' directed by Godard. The film also works now as a sort of social history of Ireland in the evocative detail of a vanished era. The occasional melancholy tone is one of the idiosyncratic touches that sets the film apart from any other pop doc. before or since.

A personal highlight is the hilarious scene where Watts tries to take a cigarette from Wyman but is repeatedly outwitted by some painfully simple sleight of hand.

The 1 hour show was put together in January 1966 by the Stones' manager Andrew Oldham from a combination of concert footage taken during the tour of Ireland in autumn 1965 and backstage interviews, during which Brian Jones discusses his fear of marriage, Charlie Watts his limitations as a musician and Mick Jagger impersonates Elvis!