Sleeve notes from Nic Roeg and Donald Cammell’s… | Little White Lies

Sleeve notes from Nic Roeg and Don­ald Cammell’s Performance

21 Nov 2018

Words by Jay Glennie

Three women in brightly coloured clothing, one with a yellow garment, reclining on a patterned sofa.
Three women in brightly coloured clothing, one with a yellow garment, reclining on a patterned sofa.
Read an exclu­sive extract from a new book cel­e­brat­ing 50 years of this ground­break­ing British film.

When pro­duc­er Sandy Lieber­son began prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy with co-direc­tors Don­ald Cam­mell and Nico­las Roeg on Per­for­mance in 1968, he nev­er envis­aged 50 years lat­er the cul­tur­al impor­tance of the film. Cel­e­brat­ing the 50th anniver­sary of the shoot, Per­for­mance: The Mak­ing of a Clas­sic’ by Jay Glen­nie fea­tures over 500 images from the Sandy Lieber­son archives – many of them nev­er before seen – and new inter­views with Mick Jag­ger, James Fox, Nico­las Roeg, Lieber­son and many more.

Today the film and sound­track have a roll call of high-pro­file fans: writ­ers Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh, film­mak­er Paul Schrad­er, actor Bill Nighy, pro­duc­er Stephen Wool­ley, musi­cians Jarvis Cock­er, Don Letts, Dan Dono­van and William Orbit have all spo­ken of what an impact it made upon them.

I wasn’t aware that I want­ed to make the move from being an agent into pro­duc­ing films, and meet­ing Don­ald Cam­mell, and sub­se­quent­ly Nic Roeg, meant I could make the move a real­i­ty,” recalls Lieber­son on the deci­sion to become a film pro­duc­er and leave behind a suc­cess­ful career as an agent.

Lieberson’s first film as a pro­duc­er is either The most com­plete­ly worth­less film I have seen since I began review­ing’ (Richard Schick­el, Time Mag­a­zine 1970) or, as cham­pi­oned in 2011 by Mark Cousins in his 15-part TV series The Sto­ry of Film: An Odyssey, “…not only the great­est sev­en­ties film about iden­ti­ty, if any movie in the whole Sto­ry of Film should be com­pul­so­ry view­ing for film­mak­ers, maybe this is it.”

These appraisals, over 40 years apart, show­case the crit­i­cal about turn Per­for­mance has under­tak­en. Almost uni­ver­sal­ly vil­i­fied upon its ini­tial release – one notable excep­tion was crit­ic Derek Mal­colm who cham­pi­oned the film, pro­claim­ing it to be, Rich­ly orig­i­nal, resource­ful and imag­i­na­tive, a real live movie.”

Film his­to­ri­an and author Col­in McCabe hails Per­for­mance as the best British film ever made. But even before its release the film stu­dio fund­ing it were repulsed by its vio­lence, drug tak­ing and sex­u­al moral­i­ty. Per­for­mance is the film that arguably defines the late 60s in bohemi­an Lon­don. The blurred lines of real­i­ty and fic­tion came togeth­er to tell the sto­ry of Chas Devlin, a gang­ster and dili­gent enforcer of the will of his boss, Har­ry Flow­ers. Killing a rival puts the frag­ile sta­tus quo of the Lon­don under­world at risk and forces Chas to run and look for refuge until he can slip out of Eng­land. A Not­ting Hill town­house owned by Turn­er, a burnt-out rock star would appear to be the ide­al short-term hide­away. That is until Chas allows Turner’s ménage à trois to mess with his iden­ti­ty even further.

Amer­i­can stu­dio Warn­er Bros, wish­ing to tap into the bur­geon­ing youth mar­ket, financed the pro­duc­tion in their mis­guid­ed belief that they were buy­ing into a film depict­ing the opti­mism and ener­gy of swing­ing Lon­don; a new A Hard’s Day’s Night, com­plete with an accom­pa­ny­ing album from the film’s star, the biggest rock star on the plan­et, Mick Jagger.

Instead what they were hand­ed was a heady cock­tail of hal­lu­cino­genic mush­rooms, sex – homo­sex­u­al and three-way, vio­lence, amal­ga­mat­ed iden­ti­ties and artis­tic ref­er­ences to Jorge Luis Borges, Magritte and Fran­cis Bacon. Jag­ger failed to appear until near­ly an hour into the film and only sung one song on the sub­se­quent ground­break­ing sound­track by Jack Nitzsche.

After a string of num­ber one sin­gles – ‘(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion’, Get Off My Cloud’, Paint It Black’, Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ – the Stones had released their sev­enth long play­er, Beg­gars Ban­quet’, which long­time Stones engi­neer, Glyn Johns, called their com­ing of age record”, to uni­ver­sal acclaim but not a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy, with the back­drop of the civ­il unrest pro­vid­ing the impe­tus for Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il’ and Street Fight­ing Man’. Their suc­cess saw reli­gious groups and the right wing media label the Stones a cor­rup­tive influ­ence on the God fear­ing youth, the accu­sa­tion being that they were in league with the dev­il. This furore did lit­tle to dent their suc­cess, indeed the group’s pop­u­lar­i­ty only soared to even greater heights. And yet it was not sus­tain­ing their front man, Mick Jag­ger. The singer was look­ing to break into movies, as Jag­ger him­self said, To take on a role because it’s more than just a pop star role.”

Lieber­son was enthu­si­as­tic about this move: It was always going to be Mick as Turn­er, as an agent I knew Mick pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as well as being part of a group of friends that include Robert Fras­er, Mar­i­anne, Kei­th and Ani­ta, Ken­neth Anger, Span­ish Tony etc… I had no doubts that Mick could do it. Don­ald, Nic and I were con­vinced he was com­plete­ly right to play the rock star Turn­er in Per­for­mance. I knew that all the fame and noto­ri­ety sur­round­ing him at that time of his life would be perfect.”

What was imper­a­tive to Lieber­son was that any film that he pur­sue with Cam­mell and Roeg, Would be influ­enced by the times we were liv­ing in. Into that mix went the polit­i­cal, social and psy­cho­log­i­cal mood sweep­ing across the world, and in par­tic­u­lar for us in London.”

Close-up of a woman's face reflected in a mirror, with her hand on her chin. Monochrome image depicting pensive expression.

The 60s saw class bar­ri­ers come crash­ing down as gang­sters, pop per­form­ers and film stars, mixed with aris­toc­ra­cy. London’s Kings Road was full of androg­y­nous look­ing males, eager to express their fem­i­nin­i­ty. Per­for­mance co-direc­tors Cam­mell and Roeg brought all this togeth­er in a melt­ing pot, which would go on to rev­o­lu­tionise the film world. Their ground­break­ing lan­guage of imagery was brought to life with non-lin­ear sto­ry­telling and Roeg’s majes­ti­cal­ly lit cin­e­matog­ra­phy asked audi­ences to assem­ble a cel­lu­loid jig­saw puz­zle in order to ful­ly com­pre­hend and unlock the film’s mysteries.

View­ing the result­ing film, Warn­er Bros were hor­ri­fied with their invest­ment. Decry­ing the film’s graph­ic and deca­dent drug use, vio­lence and sex­u­al con­tent – Jag­ger and co-star James Fox were seen on screen enjoy­ing drug-fuelled sex with Ani­ta and Michèle Bre­ton – they refused to release the film. They thought it was dirty,” said Lieber­son five decades lat­er. Roeg laugh­ing­ly recalls fear­ing Warn­er Bros were going to sue him. Two years of finan­cial wran­gling, threats from from both the Stu­dio, and Vice. And Ver­sa’ from Cam­mell and Jag­ger, ensued before the even­tu­al release.

Set dec­o­ra­tor Peter Young describes the loca­tion shoot as a divi­sion of two dis­tinct camps: the straights”, the old­er, expe­ri­enced film per­son­nel and tech­ni­cians; and the oppos­ing camp made up of those who wished to par­take in drugs, aka the cool set”. This high­ly charged atmos­phere ensnared vic­tims into its cor­rup­tive vor­tex. Despite pro­claim­ing that Per­for­mance was the best per­for­mance he ever gave, after­wards James Fox would leave the indus­try for ten years. When I had my Chris­t­ian con­ver­sion in 69,” he recalls, My friend John­ny Shan­non asked me, Do you want me to sort them out, Jim?’ I thought that it was so super of him. He thought I had got involved with a real heavy cult who were going to take my mon­ey and screw my mind.”

Cam­mell would see Roeg become laud­ed as one of the great film­mak­ers, where­as his own career floun­dered in Hol­ly­wood. And it was in the Hol­ly­wood Hills in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty aged 62 that he would place a revolver to his head and pull the trig­ger, after com­plet­ing only three more films, Demon Seed, White of the Eye and Wild Side. Ani­ta Pal­len­berg, the ulti­mate rock chick, would begin her descent into drug addic­tion dur­ing film­ing, naive­ly believ­ing that she, Had kept it from everyone”.

Lieber­son once told me that a Roeg film is only appre­ci­at­ed by a wider audi­ence many years lat­er, and that chimes with Roeg’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cam­mell: Per­for­mance lives on and con­tin­ues giv­ing per­for­mances 50 years after its incep­tion. The film’s influ­ence can be seen in the work of direc­tors such as Mar­tin Scors­ese, Guy Ritchie, Jonathan Glaz­er and Quentin Taran­ti­no. Musi­cians includ­ing William Orbit, The Hap­py Mon­days and Big Audio Dyna­mite have all used the score and film as ref­er­ence points and sam­ples in their songs. All it took was a lit­tle time and patience for Per­for­mance to catch on.

Per­for­mance the 50th anniver­sary book is avail­able via per​for​mance​-book​.com

Portrait of a person with dark hair and facial features, against a red background with the word "performance" written in white text.

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