In 2012, during the filming of Crossfire Hurricane, the documentary directed by Brett Morgen, the traces of arthritis were not seen (too much) on the septuagenarians who were the Rolling Stones. We saw it at the Stade de France, in June 2014, during the only French stopover of their “14 on Fire” tour. The rock grandpas had not spared themselves to deliver a stage performance honed for several weeks around the world where, at each stage, the cash machine worked at full steam.

“The Stones, this group that we hated which became the group that today we love”, explained, without excess of modesty, Mick Jagger commenting on images (sometimes unpublished) of this documentary which, in nearly two hours , retraces their long career. The “old” like Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor had also been asked by the American director to contribute to the legend of the group. Rock’n’roll inspires Brett Morgen, who directed Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck in 2015 and Moonage Daydream on David Bowie in 2022.

Crossfire Hurricane, between improbable road trips, chaotic concerts that have become mythical and delirious crowds, is a great leap in the different eras that have shaped the “greatest rock band in the world” and the very particular sound of its music, between the voice by Mick Jagger and the riffs of Keith Richards.

sulphurous period

The film begins with the rise of the group and ends after the arrival of Ron Wood, former guitarist of The Faces, who came in 1975 to succeed Mick Taylor (who had himself replaced Brian Jones in 1969), marking the end from the sulphurous period and therefore the most interesting, historically and musically speaking.

He thus recounts their beginnings; the sudden death in 1969 of band co-founder Brian Jones, a drug addict; the clashes at the Altamont concert that same year, where the Oakland Hells Angels stabbed a spectator to death; exile, in 1972, on the Côte d’Azur, which gave birth to the fabulous album Exile on Main Street, recorded in the cellar of the villa rented by Keith Richards in Villefranche-sur-Mer (Alpes-Maritimes).

So many stories already told in several films, such as Gimme Shelter (1970), by David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin and Albert Maysles; One One (1968), by Jean-Luc Godard, devoted to the recording of Sympathy for the Devil; or Stones in Exile (2010), by Stephen Kijak. “This is not an academic history lesson,” warns Brett Morgen, who closes his story at the dawn of the 1980s. with these gigantic tours where the music sometimes goes after the huge royalties it brings in.