“It was not a great experience”: why Ian Anderson regretted ‘The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus’
Despite their cemented position in the pantheon of rock and roll greats, The Rolling Stones have only ever done it one way—together. While that is, of course, the case for most bands—pursuing your career with the sole focus to elevate the work of your band to a higher level than any individuality—they seem to have done it with a bit more flexibility than The Stones.
Very rarely has their greatness been transferred to other projects. While their cultural rivals, The Beatles, were largely the same for the decade-long period of chart dominance, the respective members of the band showed their commitment to music’s collaborative opportunities by working with their contemporaries at any given opportunity.
This is ultimately something that has happened a lot less with The Rolling Stones. The greatness achieved by their in-house collaboration was rarely messed with, and the band steadfastly committed to the alchemy of their own music.
Perhaps that was informed by the one experience that proved that the world of musical collaboration wasn’t suited to their free-thinking and, at times, unruly spirit. In 1968, they recorded the film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, a show that promised to satiate every desire of classic rock fans.
It was a gig filmed on a makeshift circus stage with Jethro Tull, The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and The Rolling Stones. It also included John Lennon and his fiancée, Yoko Ono, who performed as part of a one-shot supergroup called The Dirty Mac. In what was rumoured to be a 15-hour-long filming day, the messy roots of forging a bunch of hedonistic rockstars together became quite apparent.
Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson remembered the day, saying, “They had just finished recording Beggars Banquet, which I’ve always thought was one of their…well, possibly one of their best records to me in terms of having lots of really great songs on it. But I remember lots about it. It was not a great experience for anybody, including The Stones. But it was shelved as a project for many years ’til the rights to it were actually owned by Allen Klein, who’d been The Stones’ manager and secured rights to things they didn’t know about.”
Amidst the sort of mutual backslapping that was rife during the late 1960s and 1970s, Anderson always existed somewhat on the periphery. Not one to get too enveloped in the delusions of grandeur of being part of a musical elite worshipped by every corner of society, he was quite the observationalist.
Sharing the room with Lennon and Jagger gave him some lasting perceptions of the pair. While both fearlessly led two of the world’s most influential bands, the media and fans alike made a sport out of pitting them against each other on the charts. While they never had to resolve the rivalry with any blows, Anderson had a pretty clear idea as to who would come out on top if they did.
“Lennon was probably the only one who’d be handy in a fight,” Anderson said before offering his verdict on Jagger. Concluding, “Mick Jagger always looked too self-conscious to be considered a tough guy; he looked like he’d fall over if you blew on him.“
