SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

Perhaps, you too, read Keith Richards unending and bestselling autobiography and grew to hate him? I think it’s the only logical response. I hate him now for being a) a terrible parent b) thinking we want the boring stories about why his favorite drug dealing bro from way back and only one page about motherfucking Altamont, one of the major death-of-American-innocence events of that era. Despite revealing his long, wild life in a six-hundred pages of dull, drug addled shennanigans–I found myself curious about the artifacts of that Stones highlife. In part because anytime another person added an anecdote it was counter to his version and/or a trazillion times more revealing about what was going on. I bought some Stones records (they’re ok, I prefer to stick with Hot Rocks, their best of hits collection.) and then went right into the movies. Sympathy For The Devil, Keef mostly retells as thinking it’s bullshit and Godard’s lights catching the ceiling of the studio on fire. This is one of the only Godard films I hadn’t seen, and I find as I get older my tolerance for his frenchiness is way down, as I know I no longer have all the time in the world, so I fastforwarded the in between parts with the Revolutionaries in the junkyard pawing the white girls boobs. I am sure it was scandalizing then, but in 2011, it’s patriarchal ham. The only stuff I cared about was the long, languid takes of the Stones recording “Sympathy For The Devil” as it mutated and shifted from a jaunty, if typical blues, into something subtle and dark.

It’s a fine window into the process of a song, but how much can you care? The real fascination here is Bill Wyman. Poor Bill Wyman. Totally along for the ride. No one cared about him, he had no genius talent, he was just a perfectly fine bassist. But here, we get under close detail and intense lights, his full visage and HIS HEAD TO TOE PINK MATCHY MATCHY OUTFIT. He has such a hangdog face! He looks like a grandma even though he is in his mid-twenties at this point. His face looks like a melty-dog. His hair, as was the standard for that time, is brushed into a shell shape around his grandma-lady-dog face, with heavy bangs, like a tortoise shell. But the lights reveal this frizzed out wave, like he has naturally curls somewhere in there, but it looks like a weave someone ripped a brush through. Like doll hair. Sure, Keith is two feet away HIGH AS FUCCCGGGK with an open romantic blouse hanging off his junkie frame, smoking an entire cigarette without touching it, really typical cool… and there is Mick, the vision of beauty, in a Tunisian nightshirt, so effortless and perfect it kind of makes you sick and jealous of him and whomever loves him, and Brian Jones, who looks like he’s doing cheap drugs and spending his money on poncy velvet outfits (he was) who is mostly obscured from view… And Wyman—With his pink outfit and scuzzhair, looking like a Barbie someone used as a torch. There he is with his maracas and no smile and pink shirt and pink sweater and boogie slacks and cuban heel pink snake boots. Just making a go of it. DOING IT UP WYMAN AND WILD! Probably not caring that he gets laid simply out of proxy to Mick. Just brushing his hair out and laying out his nice clothes on the bed before bed like some 12 year old girl. Bill Wyman was all I wanted to watch of this movie. Sure, Mick and Keith are “compelling”, they are the archetypes of rock n’ roll as we understand it–We know their dumb story! Who cares? Show me the guy with no charisma and bad hair–NOW, THERE’S A STORY.

I stopped the movie about halfway through. Other things might happen in it, but I don’t think so.