Time on their sides

Charlie Is My Darling

(1966)

Man, I'd have kicked Brian out of the band, too, the supercilious git.

A bonus from DirecTV, which sent me a message that it would be on Saturday at 9, inspiring me to set up to record it even though the programming guide said I'd be getting in in the middle of Something to Talk About. A documentary with a complicated history, this makes me wish there were something analogous for the Beatles. Don't get me wrong: I love A Hard Day's Night, but even its concert footage is essentially staged, and if the behind-the-scenes here are certainly not candid--it's safe to say that Mick Jagger has never been unaffected by the camera's gaze--it's a lot closer, with Keith and Mick working on new songs between takes on Beatles and Elvis songs, than the calculated cleverness of AHDN (and again: that calculated cleverness is wonderful). As for concert footage, not only is it wonderful, but it includes a genuinely scary example of the police being completely unprepared for what happens when teenage hormones--male no less than female--rage.

Maybe the best moment, though, is when Mick expresses surprise that the whole thing has gone on longer than the year or year and a half he'd expected. At the time of that interview, it had gone on for 3 years; now the group is about to start a tour in celebration of its 50th anniversary, and if the past 3 decades have been essentially as the world's best Stones cover band, that's not the worst gig around, or the least valuable.