The strange case of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

Fire-eaters, tigers and acro­bats, not to men­tion some of the biggest musi­cal fig­ures of the day — includ­ing the Who, Mar­i­anne Faith­full, John Lennon and Eric Clap­ton — all gath­ered togeth­er in pon­chos under the aegis of the Rolling Stones.

Fifty years ago, a group that would short­ly declare itself the ​‘great­est rock and roll band in the world’ host­ed what should have been deemed the great­est show on Earth for a BBC tele­vi­sion spe­cial. It had all sound­ed per­fect on paper, and every­one seemed to be rev­el­ling in the oth­er­world­ly shindig – but it wasn’t until 1996 that The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Cir­cus saw the light of day.

“You’ve heard of Oxford Cir­cus!” exclaims ring­mas­ter Mick Jag­ger, still look­ing like the androg­y­nous rock­er Turn­er from Nico­las Roeg’s Per­for­mance, ​“You’ve heard of Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus! And this is the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus…”

Con­ceived by Jag­ger and Michael Lind­say-Hogg, who had direct­ed sev­er­al pro­mos for the Stones and the Bea­t­les, as well as the pop­u­lar music TV show Ready, Steady, Go!, the Cir­cus was filmed between 11 – 12 Decem­ber in 1968 at a stu­dio in Wem­b­ley and attend­ed by an invit­ed audi­ence. Although it only took a cou­ple of weeks to plan, film­ing last­ed over 15 hours due to the work involved in set­ting up stages in between performances.

After the scare of the ​’67 Red­lands drug bust, which near­ly saw Jag­ger and gui­tarist Kei­th Richards sent to the slam­mer, and the pre­ten­tious­ly deriv­a­tive psy­che­delia of ​‘Their Satan­ic Majesties’ Request’, the Stones had more than pulled them­selves togeth­er and indeed redeemed them­selves with 1968’s ​‘Beg­gars’ Ban­quet’. With a sem­i­nal album out and no plans to tour, the Cir­cus was ini­tial­ly regard­ed as a nov­el means of pro­mot­ing the band’s new mate­r­i­al, despite it lat­er being seen as hav­ing had the oppo­site effect.

The Stones them­selves have yet to reveal exact­ly why the footage was left to gath­er dust. Numer­ous reports claim that the band weren’t hap­py with the per­for­mances, par­tic­u­lar­ly that of the Who, who sup­pos­ed­ly upstaged their hosts. Oth­ers say it was only Jag­ger who wasn’t hap­py, and that the rest of the Stones didn’t find any­thing the mat­ter with how they’d played. What­ev­er the case, the project was shelved for decades. Under­stand­ably, his­to­ry hasn’t looked too kind­ly on the film, which remains over­looked com­pared to the likes of 1970’s sem­i­nal Gimme Shel­ter and the Bea­t­les’ Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour from 1967.

Filmed under a big-top tent with per­form­ers from Sir Robert Fossett’s Cir­cus pulling mid-act stunts, the film begins with the nascent Jethro Tull being intro­duced by Jag­ger and a jubi­lant dwarf. In the wake of the wild-eyed Ian Anderson’s one-legged act fol­low the Who, Taj Mahal, Mar­i­anne Faith­full, and makeshift super­group the Dirty Mac, with Richards back­ing an infal­li­ble Eric Clap­ton on bass gui­tar, as well as John Lennon, who had only agreed to join in the fun if Yoko Ono could join him onstage.

Along with the per­form­ers – such as pyrophil­i­ac Dan­ny Cama­ra and the ​‘love­ly Luna’ – the musi­cians them­selves enter­tain in lit­tle sketch­es and cameos. Richards appears as a pirat­ic cig­ar-smok­ing rake to intro­duce two acts, and Lennon and Jag­ger engage in non­sen­si­cal ban­ter as ​‘Win­ston Legth­igh’ and ​‘Nigel’ respec­tive­ly before the Dirty Mac take the stage. By the time the Stones them­selves come on, it’s ear­ly in the morn­ing, though they show no vis­i­ble signs of fatigue.

While Mahal’s ani­mat­ed deliv­ery of ​‘Ain’t That a Lot of Love’ and the Dirty Mac’s blis­ter­ing ren­di­tion of the White Album’s ​‘Yer Blues’ (sans Ono, who’d be egged on by Lennon to shriek on their sec­ond and final num­ber) can arguably said to be amongst the Cir­cus’ musi­cal high­lights, dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the film over­whelm­ing­ly focus on the Who and the Stones. It is almost unan­i­mous­ly accept­ed – like­ly by the Stones them­selves, too – that the Who, with their mini-opera ​‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’, were the best act of the show. As an ensem­ble, they undoubt­ed­ly were, hold­ing things togeth­er tight yet loose as they tore into their tale of adul­tery and abso­lu­tion. Pete Town­shend and Kei­th Moon were untouch­able, John Entwistle reli­ably sol­id, with Roger Dal­trey look­ing and act­ing every bit a gold­en god.

That said, the erst­while mods were in the mid­dle of a tour, in top tech­ni­cal form, and also had the advan­tage of per­form­ing ear­li­er in the evening. The Stones, con­verse­ly, hadn’t toured in almost two years, although this was per­haps the least of their wor­ries. Inter­nal­ly, there were things that couldn’t be reme­died by the dis­ci­pline and rou­tine of tour­ing. Thanks to Jagger’s onscreen sex­ca­pade with Ani­ta Pal­len­berg in the Per­sian-flavoured Per­for­mance, a rift had emerged between him and boyfriend Richards, who began look­ing to hero­in as a means of deal­ing with the emo­tion­al pain.

There was also the prob­lem of Bri­an Jones, who had fad­ed into the back­ground of the band he’d found­ed and degen­er­at­ed into a use­less, drug-addled zom­bie. Aside from some sparse slide gui­tar parts on ​‘No Expec­ta­tions’ he mirac­u­lous­ly man­ages to pull off, and a bit of mara­ca shuf­fling on ​‘Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il’, he may as well not have even been there. It was only a mat­ter of months before he was found dead in his swim­ming pool.

Indi­vid­u­al­ly speak­ing, the oth­er Stones were on top of their game – most notably Jag­ger, who, after a gru­elling day man­ag­ing the Cir­cus, still man­aged to whip the weary audi­ence into a fren­zy. When the film reach­es its zenith dur­ing Jagger’s ​‘Sym­pa­thy’ striptease, in which he bares his tat­toos of Lucifer as Richards lets fly elec­tric dag­gers from his gui­tar, Dal­trey and Town­shend seem like wall­flow­ers. The Stones as a whole may not have been entire­ly in their ele­ment, but no one could hold a can­dle to the ​‘Glim­mer Twins’ that evening.

If the Who spoiled the show for the Stones, they at least sal­vaged the film for pos­ter­i­ty. Lind­say-Hogg revis­it­ed the film in 1992, but couldn’t make any­thing of it as sig­nif­i­cant por­tions were miss­ing. Luck­i­ly for him and every­one else, they were found in 1993 lurk­ing in the archives of the Who, who had shown their per­for­mance from the event in the 1979 rock­u­men­tary The Kids are Alright. The kids were alright, the Stones were great, and the Cir­cus, that colour­ful ode-cum-farewell to Swing­ing Lon­don and all that, well, there’ll nev­er be any­thing like it again.