Charlie Is My Darling: Ireland 1965
In September 1965, weeks after “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” hit the charts, the Rolling Stones landed in Dublin to play four manic gigs in two days. The band’s manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, commissioned filmmaker Peter Whitehead to capture every moment. “Everybody had done a movie, even Gerry and the Pacemakers,” says Oldham. “I wanted to get the Stones in the mood for dealing with the film business.”
Now that remarkable footage – which rivals the intimate portrait of Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back – is finally being released as a movie. Charlie Is My Darling: Ireland 1965 (out November 6th) is packed with unseen footage of early Stones mayhem: boozy hotel-room jams, rabid stage-rushing fans and electric live performances of “Time Is on My Side,” “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” and “Satisfaction.” “They sound like the Pistols in 77,” says director Mick Gochanour. “It’s raw. You don’t get that sense from Hullabaloo and Shindig!”
Gochanour visited the Stones vault in London, where he found hours of the 1965 footage (right) – including one mesmerizing scene of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards composing the folky Flowers cut “Sittin’ on a Fence.” “I almost had a heart attack when I saw it,” says Gochanour. “The collaboration they used to have, which Keith talks about in his book, is right there.”
Jagger comes off as remarkably astute and forward-thinking for a 22-year-old. “Young people have started a big thing where they’re anti-war, they love everybody and their sexual lives have become freer,” he says in the film. “A whole sort of basis for society . . . but it’s up to them to carry on those ideals instead of falling into the same old routine their parents have fallen into.”