The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1996) on Netflix
The Rolling Stones stage a rock and roll circus for television, a big-top show on a British sound stage before an audience. The Who, Jethro Tull and the Dirty Mac perform.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.6/102,540 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Plot summary
Mick Jagger wants a television special to promote the Rolling Stones' album Beggars Banquet, and what he settles on is a rock and roll circus. A seedy big-top set is built on a sound stage in Britain, and an invited audience watches the performances. Jethro Tull open, the Who follow, and Taj Mahal and Marianne Faithfull also take the stage. John Lennon and his fiancee Yoko Ono appear with a band assembled for a single song, the Dirty Mac, joined by Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell and Keith Richards on bass. With the Stones, Brian Jones had phoned the night before to say he would not take part, and was persuaded to come.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Brian Jones phoned director Lindsay-Hogg the night before filming to say he would not take part, telling him "I hate the Rolling Stones"; Lindsay-Hogg talked him round over twenty minutes, and the shoot became Jones's final public performance with the band.
- Footage from the abandoned concert was thought lost until 1993, when the director/producer team Michael Gochanour and Robin Klein found it in a bin in the Who's private film vault and then completed the unfinished film in autumn 1996.
- Filming began at 2pm on 11 December 1968 and the overrun meant the last performances wrapped at almost 5am; Jagger was reportedly so disappointed with the exhausted band that he canceled the airing of the film and kept it from public view.
- The concert is the only footage of Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi playing as a member of Jethro Tull during his brief two-week stint, and it is also the first live footage of Jethro Tull ever made.
- The recently formed Led Zeppelin were considered for inclusion in the show's line-up of performers, but the idea was rejected.
- Jethro Tull mimed to the album versions of their songs, so the guitar heard on "A Song for Jeffrey" and "Fat Man" is Mick Abrahams, not Tony Iommi, who had only a few days to learn his part.
- The film's footage shows Ian Anderson's first clumsy attempts at the flute-playing position that became his trademark, standing on one leg.
