Cocksucker Blues

Robert Frank – 1972 – USA

It’s the notorious unreleased backstage documentary about the Rolling Stones’ 1972 American tour, directed by the great still photographer Robert Frank, who died this past fall at the age of 94. Frank’s cinematic output is mixed. Though he continued to make underground shorts and documentaries throughout his life, his best-known films remain his earliest, Pull My Daisy (1959) and The Sin of Jesus (1962). Cocksucker Blues is not a lost masterpiece. Aside from brief moments of artistry – such as a closing sequence showing the exhausted bandmembers walking offstage in slow motion, it does nothing that was not being done infinitely better at the time by virtuoso cinema verité filmmakers like D.A. Pennebaker, the Maysles brothers, and Frederick Wiseman. As the man in charge, Frank was entitled to do whatever he wanted, I don’t deny, but in artistic terms, frankly, he had no business making such a film as long as Pennebaker was alive. Horrendously photographed, disorganized and deceptively edited, it has no point-of-view, not even a loose agenda to observe with neutrality. It’s apparent that Frank and credited “co-director” Daniel Seymour found their subjects essentially uninteresting, and didn’t know how to make them interesting, so they augmented the affair with staged moments of sensationalism involving drugs and nudity on the part of... roadies(?) groupies(?); it’s not quite clear. None of it works except for a few moments on stage when the Stones are performing. The band was understandably keen to suppress the film from ‘72 onwards because they don’t come off well in it at all. Though pushing thirty, Mick, Keith and the gang giggle, sneer and condescend to everyone like teenagers, which reads as much more pathetic than cool. You know a film has a serious problem when the headliners are the most boring participants, and it’s more interesting to note the fleeting celebrity cameos, such as Tina Turner, Andy Warhol, Stevie Wonder and Truman Capote. The contrast between the regal, dignified Turner next to the juvenile Stones, who are the same age as her, is remarkable. Maybe there was a film there, but Robert Frank completely failed to find it. And where’s poor Mick Taylor, the 20-year old guitarist who replaced the late Brian Jones? He has barely more screen time than the aforementioned visitors, and when he does appear, he looks despondent and even embarrassed. A generation younger that the rest of the Stones, possibly he wasn’t in tune with their frat-house antics and arrogant pontificating. Maybe there was a story there too, but again, Frank didn’t trouble himself trying to find it. The film is mainly of value as a time capsule of 1972, thanks to TVs being on in almost every scene, showing contemporary commercials, news updates and programming about the presidential election.