LET US NOW PRAISE ROBERT FRANK:
Revisiting the Director of Two of Rock's Best (and Unseen) Films

by Peter Gorman

In 1955 and 1956 Robert Frank took his camera around America, a time advertised as one of prosperity and contentment, a comfortable conformity. Frank photographed a different America, though as Jack Kerouac wrote of the eventual book, "the faces don't editorialize or criticize or say anything but `this is the way we are in real life...' " Frank was from Switzerland, fascinated by America and all its contradictions and possibilities. He defiantly titled his book of photos "The Americans" and made it hold up. There was a place for everyone in his hall of pictures, the whole melting pot, across the racial divide, the commingling of the races when not keeping to their separate though not always equal surroundings, into the city dance halls and out to the desolate back country roads. And as melancholy as the photos can be, each one is full of life even when depicting a funeral or a car accident corpse lying by the roadside.

Frank continued working in photography, but he also made a few films, including two of the best movies about rock and roll: one a documentary of debauchery on a rock tour, the other a comic road movie involving a failed rock musician pursuing an elusive guitar maker. Yet as good as these films are, most rock fans have never seen either one.

In 1972 Frank assembled a collage of photographs for the artwork on the Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street, an album title could also have been the title of Frank's "The Americans." Frank even used some of his photos from that book for the album's sleeve, adding in shots of sideshow performers, outcasts and movie stills among the band members. Like Frank, the Stones were Europeans enamored of American culture, particularly its music. The band decided to let Frank make a documentary of their 1972 tour of America. Who better than Frank to convey the music and the story of their tour through the land of milk and honey? Who else, indeed.

The Stones gave Frank complete access on the tour, and he opened all the locks. The resulting film was titled Cocksucker Blues, its provocative title coming from an unreleased Stones song performed in the movie. It's a remarkable song, about a destitute and lonely boy looking for sex in all the wrong places, sung in one of Jagger's finest blue(s) vocals. The song is heard early in the movie, and sets the tone for the shape of scenes to come.

Frank was extraordinarily fortunate to be making a documentary of a band that at the time - perhaps only at that time - had a right to claim itself as the world's greatest rock and roll band. The concert footage is riveting: Jagger's stage performance is energetic, passionate, theatrical; he would never seem so uninhibited on stage again. The concerts are only a small part of the documentary, however, as Frank sets out to document the scenes offstage, the hangers-on and everyone else who become part of the traveling show. Celebrities appear backstage: Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, Dick Cavett, the Princess of Somewhere... but it is the road crew, the side musicians and the groupies who are the subject of the movie, along with Jagger-Richards (though the other Stones -- Watts-Wyman-Taylor -- are almost never seen). Jagger kindly meets the press, puts on make-up, dresses his wife. Richards can hardly be bothered with doing much of anything except throwing a TV out a hotel window, and he appears to be in a heroin stupor throughout most of the film. His voice is heard speaking about how bands can get soft and need to get out of Switzerland to find their creativity, while on-screen he is collapsing in the arms of a groupie/lover/fan backstage, an addict who is still creating great music but is on the verge of giving up the gift for another hit of smack.

Frank took full advantage of his back room pass, not without controversy. The Stones later accused him of staging a scene in an airplane where a roadie rips the clothes off a groupie while the band stands in the aisle shaking maracas. The scene does seem somewhat contrived, and some of the scenes are guilty of gratuitous debauchery, such as a close-up of a man with his hand down the front of his pants, and Jagger walking around a pool with his hand down the front of his pants, and... well you get the picture. Yet most of the decadence is obviously real, regardless of what -- for legal reasons -- the disclaimer at the beginning of the film claims ("all scenes except the musical performances are fictitious"). Frank intercuts a fascinating live performance of "Midnight Rambler" -- a song that has at best questionable intentions, as it swirls within the mind of the Boston Strangler -- with backstage scenes of roadies snorting coke and a disturbing shot of a woman hiding her battered face from the camera. Jagger is on stage getting very close to the role of the Boston Strangler, and the cuts from backstage are chilling. Frank confronts the song with its own message, raising questions without providing any comfortable answers.

Yet is hardly Frank's intention to create a public service announcement, saying something like Heroin is Bad for You, or Practice Monogamy. If this is cinema verite, then by definition this is the way things are. No one in Cocksucker Blues seems to be having a good time, except for the band while on stage, and sometimes not even then. The drudgery of touring is here, the dissipation that surrounds the band. A man in a hotel room mentions that he is applying for a grant from the Ford Foundation for his heroin promotion campaign while a junkie shoots up on the bed. George Wallace is on TV at the Democratic convention, claiming that he wants to take his country back. Outside, driving from Nashville to Memphis, Jagger in a station wagon saying how good it is to be in a car driving through the back roads, "away from those 39 people," getting a peace sign from a hand through the bars of a prison. Lots of talk about drugs by people on drugs.

The Maysleys Brothers made a fine documentary about the Stones 1969 tour of America, easily finding their film's ending with the disaster at Altamont. Frank has no drama with which to end his documentary, but it's just as well; the dissipation leads to nothing but the end of the tour. Before the final live performance, a fan outside the arena mentions that she has had her child taken away from her because of her acid intake, and says that she's only living for the Rolling Stones. It won't be enough. The band performs "Street Fighting Man" par excellence then walks off stage.

Frank's film was so uninhibited that the Stones prevented the film's release, which is both understandable and unfortunate. It is only available on bootleg, so visual and sound quality will vary greatly from copy to copy, but it seems that obtaining a bootleg will be the only way to ever see this film. Jagger and Co. should have paid Frank more respect and allowed the film's distribution in some form. Instead they released their own sanitized tour film, then went out on the road again in 1975 with an enormous inflatable penis as a prop, which pretty much summed up the tour and the decline of a once-great band.

Fiftenn years later Frank returned to the movies with a fictional film called Candy Mountain, the title of which comes from the place that is celebrated in American folklore as a utopia, a cop-free, whiskey-flowing paradise. The film concerns Julius, a young guitarist without any talent who quits his construction job, loses his guitars at gun point, and then screws up an audition for a non-paying gig. Backstage after the audition he happens to overhear a conversation about Elmo Silk, a reclusive guitar maker of great renown, whose guitars are worth a lot of money if only someone can find him and make him a deal. Julius pretends that he knows Silk and convinces a couple businessmen to fund his trip to find him. From this point on Candy Mountain is a road movie, with a naïf at the wheel and disaster awaiting him everywhere. He meets up with various rogues, including Silk's rich brother (played by Tom Waits) who sells him a junk car, and a self-appointed judge and his self-appointed sheriff son (played by Leon Redbone), who lock him up in their cabin. Julius soon finds he is out of money.

The movie features acting roles for a wide range of musicians: Tom Waits, Arto Lindsay, David Johannsen, Joe Strummer, Leon Redbone, Dr. John, Peter Stampfel, a varied lot, but all of them roots rockers at heart, no matter where their whims have taken them. All of the musicians are excellent in their acting roles, particularly Waits and Redbone. Sometimes they play music; Redbone plucking his guitar, Waits mumbling a ballad, Strummer playing bum guitar while Stampfel uses a coat rack as a percussion instrument. The movie is not a musical, however, and it never descends to parody or tries to hype its stars. Much of the credit has to go to the script by Rudy Wurlitzer, who wrote believable dialogue for his oddball characters. Julius (played by Kevin O'Connor) ends up wandering America and Canada in search of a guitar maker, still believing that he will some day be a rock star. He talks about finding his edge and getting back in the game, but it is apparent that he has no edge to find and will never get anywhere.

Near the end of the film Julius is in a small house somewhere in or near Alaska, where a woman and her dying mother are living quietly. The woman has an acoustic guitar and asks Julius if he will play something for her mother, who has few pleasures left in life. Julius quietly plays an original song, an insipid ballad, his simple guitar strum accompanying his quavering voice, but the song obviously matters to him, and it is apparent to the viewer that this performance for an old woman -- barely awake and dying in her bed -- will be the only one significant one that Julius will ever do. Julius finally finds the guitar maker Elmo Silk, who has made a mess of his life and scarcely cares. Julius talks about freedom and the road, and Silk replies, "Freedom doesn't have much to do with the road, one way or the other." At the end young Julius has nothing to show for his troubles except for being older and wiser, and he knows it.

This beautiful film captures the best of rock and roll -- the exhilaration, the desperation, the seemingly limitless possibilities and the failure. At least Candy Mountain is available on video, although I wouldn't count on finding it at your local Blockbuster. It makes a companion of contrast to Frank's gritty Stones documentary, the light to its darkness, the fiction to its fact, both superb, both rarely seen.

There is a song on Yo La Tengo's 1995 album Electr-O-Pura called "Pablo and Andrea," a plaintive song of gentle longing. Georgia Hubley's vocals evoke a feeling that evening has come and gone, but it is too early to sleep. She sings, "Show me where you keep your secrets upstairs," and about a lonely stare and stolen roses. It is very late; a slide guitar solo slips in, little more than a note sliding up, hanging there, and sliding down, four times through, a lovely thing. The tension builds but only modestly, then a guitar erupts out of the speakers, it breaks out and celebrates, melodic ecstasy over a noisy rumble down below. It is the sound of being set free and running down the street, or driving down the road on a flight to freedom, however temporary. I know of few guitar solos that better sum up a song, or that for a single shining minute capture the sound of euphoria.

Robert Frank's children were named Pablo and Andrea; they were the subject and title of many of his photographs. I don't know if Yo La Tengo named their song after Frank's photographs, or if they meant the song to have any connection to him or his children, or if they were simply being ironic. But I do know that Frank is deserving of a song as beautifully written and performed as Yo La Tengo's, and so I'll leave it at that.

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