Rarely seen since a brief Australiaonly VHS release in the 80s, this may not be the most technically proficient Stones concert film, but it may just be one of the most thrilling. Following on from the success of the expanded Exile On Main Street earlier this year, Ladies & Gentlemen… finds the band promoting the album with all the strut of peacocks in their prime.
In fact, only four Exile tracks feature in these shows, filmed in Texas in 1972, but the sleazy grind and cocksure attitude which defined that record is more than evident on taut performances of Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rambler and Street Fighting Man. This is the Stones at their leanest and hungriest, the country drugs fatalism of Dead Flowers cranked up to the max and You Can’t Always Get What You Want strangely reinvigorated without the massed gospel voices of the recorded version.
It’s all filmed with a steady but unspectacular hand, seemingly limited to just two or three cameras on stage, but the eyeball-to-eyeball proximity of filmmaker and musician boosts the atmosphere to a level matching Martin Scorsese’s more professionally-made Shine A Light. The perfect visual companion to the album reissue of the year.
