IN 2006, MARTIN SCORSESE and the Stones collaborated on the film Shine a Light. It was filmed at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.
KEITH RICHARDS: The Beacon Theatre is special for some reason anyway. Especially if you can play there for more than one night. The room sort of wraps its arms around you and every night gets warmer. It’s a great-feeling room. And also, this band, it didn’t start off in stadiums.
MICK JAGGER: Keith was saying how it’s good to play there more than one night and I agree with him. Because the first night we played was more like a rehearsal for us in a way and by the time the second night came round we got more adjusted to playing in the small theater. We’d played a lot of small theaters in the past but we hadn’t done it on this tour, so this was like quite different. By the second night, we knew this was going to be the night with all these people there, so I felt really good about that.
Why was Scorsese chosen to be the director?
MICK JAGGER: He’s the best one around. And he’s very painstaking on the editing to produce the movie that you see. It’s not all in the shooting, it’s obviously in the editing too.
MARTIN SCORSESE: For me, each song was like a narrative, a dramatic story. The whole sound of the band is like a character, one character for each song. And so, with the grace of these wonderful cinematographers, they were able to know exactly when to move that camera, like poets at times, to pick up when someone else was going down. We shot this in thirty-five millimeter, not video, so we were working with ten-minute loads, and cameras were going down all the time, running out of film. That’s why there were so many cameras, to pick up the slack when one ran out of film. The key was to find the moments between the members of the band as they played together, how they work together; they work it like a machine, in a way, an engine in each song.
Promotional picture of the Stones with Martin Scorsese for Shine a Light
One of the special musical guests was Buddy Guy.
MICK JAGGER: We’ve done quite a few shows with Buddy Guy in the past. He’s one of those continually wonderful blues performers that you admire. I think the thing that Marty captured in the duet thing we did was really one of the high points of the movie for me. The other guests [ Jack White, Christina Aguilera] all in their own slightly different ways, all add to the movie and I like all the duets because they all really work. And they don’t always work those duets.
BUDDY GUY: They called and invited me to mostly play. And I think Mick wanted me to not sing a whole verse. And we rehearsed it and come into record tonight and he looks at me and says, “I lost my voice. You got to do a whole verse.”
I asked Keith for a guitar to go on the wall of my club. Every time I see him he said, “You don’t have it?” I said, “Man, you know you haven’t given me no guitar.” He handed me a guitar right there. I didn’t even know they was filming that.
There was a special guest on the other side of the camera as well.
ALBERT MAYSLES: I got a call from Martin the day before they started shooting and he said, “I’ve got eighteen thirty-five-millimeter cameras and I’d love to have you come with your video camera. Besides, both Mick and Keith have asked you to come.”
“TRENDY, SEXY, AND HIP”
If there was ever a scintilla of doubt about whether or not the Stones will continue to attract newer and newer generations of rock ’n’ roll fans, check out this piece written by my current twenty-something WFUV Mixed Bag engineer Jeremy Rainer. He cajoled his way into the filming of Shine a Light and offered up this once-in-a-lifetime eyewitness account.
My brother and I were hired as extras for the second Beacon concert. At five thirty P.M. on November 1, 2006, Alex and I reported to a school on West Seventieth Street, dressed “trendy, sexy, and hip” as we were instructed. We’d received an e-mail with instructions on how to dress, what to bring, and how to act. A special note at the bottom of the page said this:
You guys will be in the very front of the stage and will be the only people on camera for the documentary. We really need high energy. Dance, sing along, cheer on the band. They need your energy to play a really amazing show.
We checked in at the school, received wristbands and a debriefing, and waited. Everybody was really pumped, and was reminiscing about past shows they’d been to. I was extremely excited; the last four times I’d seen the Stones, I’d been sitting in the nosebleed seats at stadiums and arenas—nothing had prepared me for seeing them up close.
We were initially placed near the exit door on the side of the stage. Scorsese and his entourage walked past us; he was dressed in a long wool coat and scarf down to the floor. Keith’s model daughters were standing a few feet in front of us. This definitely had the air of a movie shoot. There were film cameras on balconies, film cameras on dollies, film cameras on cranes: Scorsese and his team were ready to catch all angles of this performance. After a terrific opening set from Buddy Guy, my brother and I weighed the merits of sneaking down into the pit, which is where they’d said we’d be. Finally, Alex said, “C’mon. Let’s take a walk.” We walked through the crowd, past Alec Baldwin and Bruce Willis, flashed our wristbands, and entered the pit. Right away, a production guy yelled, “Hey YOU!” . . . I was certain we’d get kicked out . . . “I want you to stand right there,” he said. “Right there” was ten feet away from the stage.
The houselights finally went down after what seemed like an hour, and the crowd erupted as Keith hit the opening chords of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Even though this show was technically part of the Bigger Bang tour, the band didn’t perform any songs from that album. Instead we were treated to a fantastic blend of big hits and rarely performed songs, like “She Was Hot,” “All Down the Line,” “Some Girls,” and “I’m Free.” There were special guests too: Jack White sang on “Loving Cup,” and Christina Aguilera sang on “Live With Me.” Buddy Guy joined the band for a blistering version of Muddy Waters’s “Champagne and Reefer” . . . I remember Keith being so impressed that he gave Buddy his guitar after the song!
But the most exciting moment for me came during “Sympathy for the Devil.” Thirty seconds or so after the drum loop started, Mick entered from the back of the hall through a backlit doorway, which made for a spectacular visual display. During the song, he was working the runways as only Mick can, and he was moving and dancing like a man possessed.
When you’re that close to a band that great, it’s impossible to take it all in. From the nosebleeds, you can clearly see the sum of all the parts; when you’re ten feet away, the energy level is so high that you have to focus on a single musician at a time. But you can also watch what goes on between the musicians: the synergy, the interactions, the finger-pointing, the glances; the push and pull that keeps the show together. That is a thrill in itself.
Two hours after they hit the stage, after red-hot renditions of “Start Me Up,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Satisfaction,” it was all over. The concert was finished, and the cameras were off. Alex and I slowly made our way home, neither one of us quite believing what had just happened. The next morning, there was no sleeping in. My brother had to catch a bus back to Binghamton to take a test—in rock ’n’ roll history.
I told my dad that I never have to see the Stones again; the Beacon concert was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and it was worth all the pre-show anxiety and post-show exhaustion. It took me a week to get back into a normal state, both mentally and physically.
The big payoff is that I’m in the film! I distinctly remember where I was standing and what I was wearing, and can be clearly seen during “Brown Sugar.” Not only that, but the album that was released, and actually all of the concert footage in the film, was recorded during the second night. What you have on the album is 99 percent of the concert I went to, with no overdubs and minimal editing. Both the film and the album are treasured keepsakes of an extraordinary, unforgettable experience.
