Secret Rolling Stones movie comes out of hiding

The Rolling Stones playing in 1972 at the International Amphitheater in Chicago.

From left to right, Bobby Keys, Jim Price, Mick Jagger and Mick Taylor.Laurance Ratner / Getty

In 1972 The Rolling Stones published

Exile On Main Street

,

double disc whose folder had photographs of Robert Frank.

The good work of the Swiss made the group propose another project to him: documenting the presentation tour of the United States, a country in which they had not performed since the Altamont events in 1969. Before accepting, Robert Frank (Zurich, 1924 - Inverness , Canada, 2019) put several conditions.

Among them, working with photographer Danny Seymour and absolute creative freedom.

After the approval of the Stones, the director began to document everything that crossed his camera with a degree of implication that, when in July 1972 the musicians were arrested in Warwick for attacking a journalist and obstructing the police , Frank was also put at the disposal of the authorities.

Despite this good tune, when the English saw the documentary

Cocksucker Blues they

did not feel comfortable.

Too much sex, too much drugs, too much vandalism in the hotels.

Deep down, too much of the Rolling Stones.

“A rock star cannot take too high a dose of reality;

Maybe of other things, yes, but not of reality ”, Robert Frank commented to the journalist Lluìs Amiguet in 2005.

• 'Exile on Main Street': An epic of rock, by Diego A. Manrique

The discrepancies between the band and the director ended up in court.

The Stones' attorneys argued that

Cocksucker Blues

was a commission and, as disgruntled clients, they could decide not to see the light.

For his part, Frank defended his creative freedom and the right to show his work.

Ultimately, the court opted for a compromise: the film was the property of the Stones and, although it could not be shown without their consent, they also had no right to keep it in a drawer.

It could be screened once a year, in an artistic context and as long as the author was present in the room.

So it was, for example, in 1992, when Frank traveled to Madrid to present it at the Filmoteca.

However, little by little, the interpretation of the sentence became more lax.

Look to your left, look to your right.

One of you could be Robert Frank ”, joked art curator Jeff Rosenheim before the screening of

Cocksucker Blues

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2009. That day the director was not in the room and although Rosenheim commented that he found in "some part of the building", no one bothered to check.

Johannes Klein, In-Edit's head of programming, confirms that he was also not in the show that the festival did in 2018, months before Frank passed away.

Consequently, it will not be at the Filmoteca today, Saturday, December 12, within the Documenta Madrid programming, which will not prevent the film from being screened.

"The legal situation of the film has not changed," explain James Lattimer and Cecilia Barrionuevo, invited artistic curators of Documenta Madrid, and Gonzalo de Pedro, artistic director of Cineteca, who have not had too much difficulty negotiating its exhibition.

“From the beginning the proposal was very clear, honest and made from a historiographical perspective: organize a comprehensive retrospective of Robert Frank's cinematographic work, seeking to offer the most complete portrait of his work possible.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, which protects his artistic legacy, understood that the retrospective made sense if that film was included and requested permission.

They also have a copy that the Stones themselves gave to Robert Frank. "

Despite the ban, pirated copies of

Cocksucker Blues have been

around

for decades

on VHS, DVD, and now clips can be viewed on YouTube.

So when Mick Jagger is asked if they have thought about releasing the film officially, his answer is that anyone can see it.

However, as Diego A. Manrique pointed out in an article in EL PAÍS, “one day the image and sound will be cleaned up to launch it with great publicity.

And someone will get lyrical, evoking the suicidal hedonism of a generation, the quiet majesty with which the Stones rode through chaos. "

Until that happens,

Cocksucker Blues will

retain that aura of curse that works like a magnet among the audience.

“The Rolling Stones and the difficulty of seeing the film have given him a certain degree of infamy, but the best way to deal with the controversy is to read it in the context of the time and the other films that surround it.

Cocksucker Blues

is a natural progression of the director's work.

If

Pull My Daisy

and

Me and My Brother

are still taking advantage of the counterculture of the sixties,

Cocksucker Blues

takes the temperature of a different era, where the hope of the previous decade has already begun to curdle in despondency and excess ”, explains Lattimer , Barrionuevo and De Pedro, who acknowledge that “we would also be happy if some people were attracted to The Rolling Stones and ended up exploring other works by Frank”.

The teenage 'chapero'

In 1970 the Rolling Stones decided to found their own record label, but their contractual obligations required them to deliver one last song to Decca.

The theme was 'Cocksucker Blues', a composition the Stones knew the company would never dare to publish.

Although the title was changed to 'Schoolboy Blues', the story of a teenager who worked as a 'hustler' would have been a scandal.

As fate would have it, a couple of years later, the Stones did not give them the body to defend their savage behavior in Robert Frank's 'Cocksucker' Blues before their fans.