Peter Whitehead
Charlie is my darling

I know well that, for my return to Debaser, choosing to review an old documentary film about the Rolling Stones might seem like proposing to visit an old boring relative you think you know everything about. Then, with a cooler head, you realize that's not quite the case because some unpublished detail from their past might surface and pleasantly surprise you.

Take, for example, this "Charlie is my darling" directed by Peter Whitehead and briefly released in October 1966. The work, after being buried in some drawer due to various legal issues, then reemerged in DVD format in 2012. And, strangely enough (considering it’s the old Rolling Stones), it did not arouse much interest. Perhaps the topic is now so dusty that it is recommended only for rock genre enthusiasts? Perhaps today the Rolling Stones are just suitable for embalming, as if they were as ancient as any Frank Sinatra (the latter still "The voice")?

Leaving aside the current arthritic woes of the surviving Stones, I would say that seeing the aforementioned film made in a vivid black and white is still a valuable historical document, just to remember and review the five young lads (at the time just over their twenties) in dazzling form in the process of rising to rock glory. Precisely, the band is filmed on the occasion of a short series of concerts held in September 1965 in Dublin and Belfast, Ireland. And this must be duly highlighted because, although they were already the authors of a fundamental track like "Satisfaction," going to perform in Ireland could not have been a walk in the park for five British Londoner lads when you just think of the historic rivalries between England and Ireland (the reasons are so well-known that there's no need to recall them here). Yet, and this is one of the most significant aspects of the intense 64-minute documentary, the music and the message conveyed by the Stones were clearly universal and able to overcome any historical distrust, so much so that they were received by Irish youth (also dissatisfied like their English peers and not just those of that era).

Here too, one witnesses an incredible and almost magical phenomenon of symbiosis between the band and the audience (already recorded during Beatles concerts), as if a current of electric energy involved musicians and spectators. It's otherwise difficult to explain those scenes of hysteria, especially by the girls present, which seem akin to sexual excitations (it even happened that the seats of the chairs were later found wet..). And, as well filmed in "Charlie is my darling," the Rolling concerts could not end because of the stage invasion by spectators agitated by a kind of erotic rapture that drove them to try to touch and feel the musicians. All this might be partially amusing but surely a source of serious public order problems for the Irish police in this case (and also for any law enforcement officer in any other nation where the Stones played).

Obviously, the Rolling Stones achieved such success due to their undeniable talent, demonstrated both by a solid stage presence (Jagger is already a brilliant showman in his wild cavorting on stage) and by the musical expertise of the other four who knew how to handle rock blues. Priceless, then, when behind the scenes they practice performing standard pieces by Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, and the Beatles themselves, thus demonstrating a high level of preparation. Already rockers in full compliance with everything, not without further artistic aspirations as stated in brief interviews (Charlie Watts a skilled designer and Brian Jones with cinematic ambitions that he unfortunately will not be able to express due to his subsequent death in mysterious circumstances).

The above confirms how, in the splendor of success and youth, the Rolling Stones (and with them other contemporary young musicians) were in the position to fully seize all the opportunities that life (comparable to a treasure chest of precious substances) was offering them at that magical historical moment. Needless to say, decades later, how they have fully succeeded in that endeavor. And if today attending a Stones concert might seem like a ritual in itself, a bit sad to see the physical condition of the surviving Stones, then it is advisable to retrieve a film like "Charlie is my darling." Because only then does one understand what the bestial energy unleashed by rock means.