The Rolling Stones
Rock and Roll Circus (Abkco)Festival Express
(New Line)According to Pete Townshend in a new bonus interview, the Rolling Stones’ fabled Rock and Roll Circus was originally envisioned as an all-star musical carnival traveling from city to city by train. Mick Jagger had to settle for a 48-hour UK shoot December 1968. The Who’s epic “A Quick One While He’s Away,” long the only RRC footage available via The Kids Are Alright, plus Jethro Tull, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithful, and an impromptu supergroup – John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell backing a “Whole Lotta Yoko” – is the Magical Mystery Tour gone Altamont. Townshend reveals that Brian Jones, playing slide on “No Expectations,” cried the whole time, while Richards was green and yellow with chemicals – a situation to which Jagger responded, fake tattoos and all, by leading the Stones through 30 minutes worth of peak songs, including “Parachute Woman.” Two years later, 1970, Janis Joplin, the Band, Buddy Guy, and the Grateful Dead took Canada by train, encountering belligerent hippies and rock & roll bonhomie. A “traveling circus” remembers Joplin organist Ken Pearson. Beatles Anthology director Bob Smeaton pieced together long-abandoned footage into a Monterey Pop-like doc of Jerry Garcia quelling his flock, the full “Weight” of the Band, and Joplin and Rick Danko turning all shades of pink in the train’s booze car. Fifty bonus minutes are steeled by the Dead’s “Hard to Handle” and Joplin’s red hot “Move Over,” though a second disc of extended interviews and whatnot is useless. Step right up, brothers and sisters.
(Both) 
This article appears in December 24 • 2004.
