Me and the Rolling Stones

OK ..first, in a weird way, the film GIMME SHELTER, came about due to the 1970 European tour. In those days when you toured Europe, you were lucky to break even and one of the ways to promote the tour dates was via film of the songs. The filmed songs were shown on TV (prior to MTV). The Stones wanted to film two of their songs from the Madison Square Garden date. I believe they wanted Wild Horses and Brown Sugar the list expanded to 4 songs that we hired the Maysles to film..from this filming for the European Tour, GIMME SHELTER evolved.
Now for Europe at this time.. there was violent unrest in many of the cities. Driving to the Paris show, we had to swerve in and out between overturned burning cars–coming out of an underground parking lot in Rome, a large stone was dropped on our limo from above. There were a lot of dangerous situations, even in our motel in Copenhagen..nearly had a sledgehammer fight with construction crews that were working when we tried to sleep..
At the Paris show while I was roaming around back stage, I opened a door behind the stage and walked into a giant room that was filled with black clothed riot gear armed French police. As I have stated earlier, another interesting note from the Paris concert: word got to Chipmonck that the Hell’s Angel’s were there and one of them had a gun. We were told that we could spot the Angel’s because they were shirtless with badges stuck into their chests. Chip got to them and asked if they had a gun…the guy said yes but it was a starter’s pistol and he just wanted to shoot it in the air.. he reconsidered..
and then there was the audience in Paris. All the royalty had come out and they were in the front rows of the concert..the show started and the audience charged to the front of the stage in an unruly show…the Dukes, Duchesses, Counts, Countesses, Prince’s and Princesses got up and left…
Speaking of Chip…when the show’s were on, I was always checking to make sure our exit was clear amongst other things. Many is the time that we had to escape quickly. As I was making sure the exit route from the stage was secure, I noticed that one of the French police was blocking the stairs chatting up the girls around the stage.. I asked for the stairs to be clear and he just ignored me so I pushed him off the stairs…(PS.I’m a little guy)–he grabbed my arm and a couple of other gendarmes grab me as well…our stage guys grabbed my other arm and I was in the middle of a tug of war… cops trying to pull me into the back to beat me and my crew trying to save my ass…Chip climbed over and jumped into the middle and in his soothing voice of Woodstock voice..calmed the situation…