Music DVD Review: The Rolling Stones – Rare and Unseen

The Rare and Unseen DVD is a trip through the career of The Rolling Stones. I must add that it is an odd tour as it assembles rare material from many periods of their career which have been lost and unseen for decades.

I have followed rock ‘n’ roll for about as long as The Rolling Stones have been around and have seen a lot of television programs, interviews, and videos along the way, but the material here has escaped me. It has been resurrected from private films of the band, newsreels, photographs from personal collections, interviews, and TV appearances.

There is no footage of the band playing music. Also the interviews jump around a bit and I would have preferred them to be in chronological order but such is life.

The interviews extend back to the mid-sixties. There is previously unseen interview footage from Belfast during 1964. It is amazing how young they all look. Brian Jones looks healthy and is the visual centerpiece of the early group. Even Charlie Watts speaks a little.

There are several sections where various group members talk about their expectations, or lack there of, as to how long the band will last. They had no idea that today The Rolling Stones would be nearing their fiftieth anniversary.

There is an interview with Mick Taylor upon his joining the Stones and with Bill Wyman on his leaving the group after thirty years.

There are a number of other highlights. Mick Jagger appears on the World In Action television show speaking about responsibility, drugs, and the law. There is a section concerning Mick Jagger’s girlfriends including his marriage to Bianca, but it is a young Marianne Faithful who is stunning. There are a number of interviews which present the band touring Russia for the first time during the early eighties.

Rare and Unseen may meander a bit but kept my attention for its 64 minute run time. Given the type of material the DVD contains, it probably will not be one that receives a large number of plays as it imparts information rather than music. Still it fills in a lot of gaps in the career of The Rolling Stones and should appeal to their hard core fan base.