Shine A Light, Rolling Stones & Martin ScorseseYou’re the Rolling Stones. You want to film one of your concerts. Who do you ask to do that? Martin Scorsese! Just let that image percolate in your mind for a minute. A Rolling Stones concert shot as a Scorsese film. Don’t worry. The concert doesn’t end with a pile of dead bodies across the front of the stage. Jagger, Richards, Watts and Wood are very much alive. And they rock! The result is Shine a Light.

Scorsese intercuts the concert footage with behind the scenes looks at the pre-production concerns. Jagger’s fixation on the danger of the big boom cameras. Scorsese’s neurotic obsession about the absence of a fixed playlist. Historical news clips and archival interviews with band members round out the rest of the film and provide a more three-dimensional look at where the Stones fit into the history of rock and roll. Add Jack White, Buddy Guy, Christina Aguilera and Bill Clinton to the lineup and you have a fantastic, star-studded evening in a beautiful venue: the historic Beacon Theater in New York City.

Scorsese has often used Stones music in his films. In an interview about the documentary Jagger joked that Shine a Light may be the only Scorsese film that does not include “Gimme Shelter”. Brilliant entertainment.