At last, the final BEST OF 2012: FILMS

Mick, Keith, and Brian on the road in 1965: "Blimey! Is Tim gonna write about shepherd's pie again?!"

This might be the most difficult list for me to compile. I haven't set foot in a cinema since 2010, when I went to see The Runaways at whatever that theater is a block over from Amoeba Records on Sunset, the one that used to be the Cinerama. The ticket, the "artisan" hot dog, and the soda were all overpriced as fuck, and the film was a TV movie of the week on a big screen, despite the actors playing Joan Jett and Kim Fowley really nailing those characters.

Besides, I've got no interest in most of the crap being pushed outta Hollywood. Increasingly, I'd rather watch something indie or a documentary, if I watch new films at all. 

Which is why the only new films I can recommend from last year have to be a pair of Rolling Stones documentaries: The new edit of Charlie Is My Darling and Crossfire Hurricane.

I had seen a bootleg video of Charlie Is My Darling nearly 20 years ago. I'd picked it up at friend's record shop in New Orleans when I was playing there with The Hormones. It was a legendary, unreleased documentary the Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham commissioned, capturing the band on the road in Ireland as "Satisfaction" made huge stars of the band in 1965. That was all fine and well. But the new version of this unreleased film? Superior in every way: Sharper picture from the digital remastering, for one. And this edit is much better cinema. There's some of the best vintage performance footage of the Stones this side of The TAMI Show, for one. It totally captures the amphetamined sex storm they kicked up with a live audience in their heyday. Then it captures the distinct lack of glamour on the inside of the Rolling Stones: This was work. This is a working band. Ultimately, what really makes Charlie Is My Darling pop is extensive, candid, revealing Brian Jones interview footage used throughout. You truly get a sense of what the Rolling Stones lost when they pushed Brian away.

Crossfire Hurricane, however, is an epic. The band's story gets told for the umpty-umpth time, through current interviews and vintage footage both, most of which has never been seen before. The band do not appear onscreen at all for the interviews; you get these disembodied, elderly voices narrating in their cracked, phlegmy glory, a marvelous contrast to the youth unfolding onscreen. Yes, you really do mostly get The Rolling Stones Legend And Myth here, with the attendant varnish and ego-maintenance you don't get in Charlie Is My Darling (which also provides much of the early footage). And The Ron Wood Years are barely a blip on this radar - you'd be forgiven for thinking the band ended with Some Girls, going by this. But this is the first time the story of the Stones has ever made the cinematic sense it deserved. Which makes this a great movie, even if it's a bit self-serving as a documentary. Ultimately, I dig Crossfire Hurricane, and watch it often. And you're talking to a guy who has watched a lot of Rolling Stones footage in his time. Excellent.

Keith Richards' Memoir, LIFE: Can't Be Satisfied....

Keef in the kitchen, clearly not making his famed bangers and mash recipe from the end of his book (pic: Ken Regan)

I was initially looking forward to reading Keith Richards' Life (hardcover, 576 pages, Little Brown & Co.) and reporting back. Having read it, I wish I still felt the same.

No, dear readers, Life isn't a bad book. I honestly couldn't put it down, once I'd started. But maybe if it hadn't arrived couched in so many expectations....

See, Keith had many years and many bookshelves' worth of competition. For one thing, anyone writing a book about the Rolling Stones would have to compete with Stanley Booth's amazing, definitive The True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones, even if it does leave off with Altamont. But as inextricably tied with Keith's life story as the Stones have to be, this isn't a book about the Stones. Still, it's lacking on that score.

Essentially, Life is an extended version of one of Keef's interviews, which have increasingly gotten less candid since the first Keef interview of note (in Rolling Stone magazine, August 19, 1971). Keith has his verbal riffs down now, all his stories, and they've gotten more polished and less revealing over time. And the tone is understandable, since "editor" (he really should be credited as a ghost writer) James Fox essentially transcribed and organized tapes of Keith talking for this book, adding in material from others when Keith's memory fails. Keith is a witty and wonderful interview always. But as stated: He's got this shit down pat now, and rarely deviates. Fox should have challenged Keith more. Then again, no producer the Rolling Stones have had since roughly 1980 has had the balls to tell them things they need to hear, like, "Mick, you need to work on those words longer than one hour the afternoon you cut vocals. Seriously, you wrote 'Sympathy For The Devil.' You can do better. And Keith? You wrote that riff in 1972. And you wrote it better a couple of times before now."

Precious little detail is added to Keith's recollections. He's at his best here talking about music: Learning how Jimmy Reed resolved his classic chord progression in an ingeniously lazy fashion, the art of 5-string open G playing, how legendary songs came together, life in the studio with Keef. He's great talking about his lifelong love of Jamaica, where he's basically lived for years, or his love of books, even sharing his kitchen tips (including that bangers and mash recipe that bloggers and reviewers alike love to reprint).

But yes, Jagger gets savaged, as has been written about endlessly and tediously in other reviews. What most reviewers fail to note is the undertone of heartbreak in Keith's churlish swipes at his longtime partner: He feels something has been lost between them, and he mourns that. The thing is, Charlie Watts ("the bed that I lie on" on Keith's words) and perennial Stones sideman Bobby Keys aside, he displays little affection for any of his band mates. Not surprising in the case of Brian Jones, whom no one in the Stones seemed to have any sympathy for, once his worst character traits overtook him as the Stones hit the top, eventually destroying him. But even Ron Wood, who was famously profiled as Keith's best pal and ultimate musical foil since the early '70s, seems to be dismissed as a spare tire for the Stones to keep their machine rolling upon. Which just seems downright nasty.

The Stones' early years are recounted in a swift blur. Was that how they seemed to Keith from the inside? Yet he goes on at length about Bridges To Babylon and its making, a fairly minor work, and not the stuff from which the Rolling Stones' legend was built. And boy, does he relish telling endless shaggy dog stories about his drug years - pages of those! But I would have been happier reading more about his admitted introduction to that world (i.e. - black performers on early Stones' tours letting Keith in on the time-honored tradition of smoothing out white crosses with a little weed, to keep sharp and together through the endless work rate). Or about the making of, say, After Math, or the "Brown Sugar"/"Wild Horses" sessions in Muscle Shoals - the sorta music which did build that legend. (Instead, the amazing, much missed Jim Dickinson chimes in from beyond the grave with his recollections of the latter sessions.)

It probably hasn't helped that, as a palate cleanser, I've been re-reading Bob Dylan's amazing Chronicle Volume One from a few years back, a book so well-done, I have to return to it periodically. It can be argued Bob's book suffers from similar faults as Keith's: Emphasizing certain periods in Bob's life that may not have been the work which made Dylan, Dylan; going off on tangents; etc. Yet Bob wrote so well, and was far more revealing and humanizing than he ever has been, that the book was a delightful literary monster and a bigger window into the man's mind and soul than we ever have had. Keith rails a lot about the difference between him as a man and The Keith Richards Myth, yet he doesn't seem to want to open up that much. (He does thankfully dispel some of the most ridiculous rumors about him, including the Swiss blood change one, which he admits he started with a sarcastic remark.) Ultimately, Life is a pretty decent fun read. It's just  that I am still left hungry. This could have been a lot more. Maybe I just need some bangers and mash....