I could give TRIGGER WARNINGS but if you read, listen to, or watch anything with this title and you're surprised that things start getting rough, you're kind of an idiot.
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I can connect
Nothing with nothing
--T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Where can I get my cock sucked?
Where can I get my ass fucked?
--Mick Jagger, "Cocksucker Blues."
The Song
In 1970, The Rolling Stones left Decca Records with the intention of setting up their own label. Decca reminded them they were still contractually obliged to record one more single.
Jagger and Richards cooked up this track in order to fulfil their obligation. It tells the story of a schoolboy of uncertain age going into Leicester Square in the hopes of hooking up. The lyrics are quite explicit, but, possibly concerned that wouldn't be enough to offend Decca's execs, our protagonist then refers to sex with pigs back at his rural home before being assaulted and sodomized by a "pig" of another sort, a police officer.
It's surprisingly effective, Jagger's voice accompanied only by blues guitar. It also stuck Decca with a song they couldn't possibly release.
The charming ballad briefly appeared on a 1984 German box set, before being removed from future pressings. In the twenty-first century, bootlegs may be found easily.
Most famously, it became the theme song for the most infamous and least-watched of Rolling Stones rockumentaries.
The Doc
The Stones 1972 tour in support of the legendary Exile on Main St. album would be their first return to North America since the disastrous Altamont concert. That event and accompanying documentary, which was supposed to see the band presiding over a second Woodstock, ended with violence, the beating of Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin, and the killing of a spectator. Many factors contributed to the debacle, but hiring the Hells Angels for security and paying them in beer must be counted among them, and among history's less prudent business decisions.
The Stones were hoping for a different documentary this time around. Since one of Robert Frank's photographs had served as the Exile cover and he had at this point made a handful of experimental films, they hired him to direct.
Cameras were left about so that anyone could film whatever caught their minds. Frank's job mostly occurred in the editing of the diverse footage. The results presage our era of YouTube video and citizen reporters. They also frequently make The Blair Witch Project look like a study in thoughtful, steady-handed cinematography.
That wasn't the main problem.
When the Stones watched the results, they immediately took action to prevent the film's release.1 Their reaction becomes all the more remarkable when one considers that their last film included an onscreen killing. It's one thing to position yourselves as pop's Bad Boys as a marketing gimmick; it's perhaps another to show your audience that you've grown into the role. The director disagreed. The film ended in a weird legal limbo with a decision allowing a few, small archival screenings, provided Robert Frank was present. The scarcity of showings made Cocksucker Blues a sought-after bootleg commodity.
It has a few bright moments-- the Stones playing, music onstage with Stevie Wonder and road house pool with some small town locals. The rest is probably an accurate peek behind the curtain of their lives at the time. It plays like someone's home movies, sporadically interrupted by something interesting and by a few things that should never have happened, much less been filmed. These include a sexual encounter between a roadie and a groupie where the degree of consent cannot be clearly determined. We also get instances of hard drug use by the Stones and everyone around them. At one point, a woman appears to ingest an entire handful of cocaine. Two people inject heroin in a scene that focuses so much on one woman's private parts that the credits identify her as "Snatch Girl."
The likes of Truman Capote, Terry Southern, Tina Turner, and Dick Cavett make brief appearances, creating a cinematic game of Where's Waldo?. Few of them contribute anything of real value. Despite the celebrity guests and lurid elements, what mostly gets captured is the isolation and boredom of the tour.
Real direction, to be frank, feels non-existent. One might compare the film to a Beat cut-and-paste experiment. What any sequence has to do with any other is left to the viewer.
If you're a completist of pop-music-related films, interested in the early 1970s, or you just have to see what the Stones wanted kept from the public, you might choose to watch this film. In the present era, it's nearly impossible to keep any film from being viewed.
Whether this product of a past era will leave you feeling anything but empty is another matter.
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1. This wasn't the first time the image-conscious Stones prevented the release of a film. Their 1968 TV special, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, was kept (mostly) from release for thirty years because the band didn't like their performance.