The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
| The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus | |
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| Directed by | Michael Lindsay-Hogg |
| Produced by | Sandy Leiberson |
| Starring | The Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, the Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, the Dirty Mac, Yoko Ono, Sir Robert Fossett's Circus and the Nurses. |
| Cinematography | Anthony B. Richmond |
| Edited by | Ruth Foster, Robin Klein |
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Release date
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1996-10-12th at (New York Film Festival), 1996-12-06th at (TV premiere) |
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Running time
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66 min |
| Language | English |
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is a film released in 1996 of an 11 December 1968 event organized by the Rolling Stones. The event comprised two concerts on a circus stage and included such acts as the Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and Jethro Tull. John Lennon and his fiancee Yoko Ono performed as part of a supergroup called the Dirty Mac, along with Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Richards. The original line up was going to be the Small Faces, the Rolling Stones and the Who and the concept of a circus was first thought up between Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane and was originally meant to be aired on the BBC, but the Rolling Stones withheld it. The Stones contended they did so due to their substandard performance, because they had taken the stage early in the morning and were clearly exhausted. Many others believe that the true reason for not releasing the video was that the Who, who were fresh off a concert tour, upstaged the Stones on their own production. Led Zeppelin were also originally considered but the idea was also dropped.
The project was originally conceived by Mick Jagger as a way of branching out from conventional records and concert performances. Jagger approached Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had directed two promos for Stones songs (and would go on to direct the Beatles' Let It Be documentary), to make a full-length TV show for them. According to Lindsay-Hogg, the idea of combining rock music and a circus setting came to him when he was trying to come up with ideas; he drew a circle on a piece of paper and free-associated.
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