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My Life as a Rolling Stone is a new 4-part BBC series, taking each member of the epic band in turn, and looking at their life within it.
Beginning with Mick Jagger in the opener, there’s footage from when he first started his pop career, including now, when he comments how all pop star documentaries are the same, but he wants to do something different…
The Rolling Stones have reached their 60th year in the business, with gigs playing at Hyde Park at the time of this series’ release. That means they were starting out before I was alive, and when I was a kid, and back then, I’d think that anyone over 50 was ‘old’…
However, Mick Jagger is 78 and is still swivelling his hips all over the stage like someone in their 20s. Meanwhile, even though their voices aren’t what they once were, Glastonbury 2022’s stages were graced by the presence of icons Diana Ross, at 78, and Paul McCartney who, at 80, is the oldest artist ever to headline there, so times, they are a-changing.
This first episode also takes in comments from the other surviving members, including Keith Richards telling us how he thinks Mick is “more of a controller or organiser than he knows“, but “he wants to see this ship sail“, but it’s clearly said with love, and as Mick replies, he doesn’t want to be seen of as a control freak.
Additional chat also comes from the likes of Lulu, Andy Summers (The Police), Brian Johnson (AC/DC), Lars Ulrich (Metallica), Chrissie Hynde (The Presenters) and Stones backing singer Bernard Fowler – all of whom are presented in audio only, so it doesn’t take away, visually, from any of the band’s performances.
Extra content includes a demo of their very first song, Honey What’s Wrong, when founding membe Brian Jones was still with us, video of an early recording of a slowed-down version of Sympathy for the Devil, the 1968 London riots with Mick right in the middle of it, the creation of their brand image of the ‘mouth tongue and lips’, plus they also take in the rivalry with the Beatles, who Keith says were cleaned up by their manager, while the Stones continues to have a ‘bad boy’ image.
Along the way, Mick Jagger tells us how he used to go to the Ready Steady Go studio, even when they weren’t on that week, so he could get an idea of where the cameras were, so he knew the angles, and then could go home and practice his moves for when they were never on.
One annoying thing about this documentary, however – while there’s obviously a camera direct on each participant, there’s also at least two other cameras filming at an angle, as if to try and be flashy… Ugh, just point the damn camera and shoot!
So far, I’ve only seen the first episode, but all four are online after the first episode has been broadcast, so I’ll check the rest out then. They are all available for preview prior to broadcast, but they don’t have subtitles, so I can hang on for that.
My Life as a Rolling Stone begins on BBC2 on Saturday July 2nd at 9.30pm. It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Once the first episode is broadcast, the whole series will be on the BBC iPlayer.
Director: Sam Anthony
Producer: Mirela O’Prey
Narrator: Sienna Miller
The band:
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
Ronnie Wood
Charlie Watts
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.