Memo From Turner

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It was made in 1968, but release was delayed until 1970 by movie execs shocked and concerned about how the public would react to this graphic essay in sex, drugs, rock and roll and violence, Complicating matters, throughout the 1969 US tour, the Stones had become a magnet for the tabloid press culminating in the Altamont speedway incident in December 1969.

There's never really a good time to release a film like Performance. It is a film about identity, what we choose to show, what’s behind the masks we wear and what happens when we lose control. Mick as Turner shows the ways in which it can be exploited in both directions.

(the song video music track, as I understand, features Jagger, Ry Cooder on slide guitar, Russ Titelman (guitar), Randy Newman (piano), Jerry Scheff (bass) and Gene Parsons (drums) The best version of it, in my opinion, appears on the Stones' "London Years" retrospective. It may be one of the most amazing things ever recorded)

We are seeing Turner after he has "traded places" with an underworld mobster. In the context of the film, Turner is an aging rockstar, whose lifestyle was consumed by excess and he is attracted to the idea of playing the part of a mobster, who has far more prosaic reasons to need to disappear into another identity; that of an aging rockstar hermit in hiding from the press. Mick's clean cut, suit-wearing Turner now realizes that the underworld of crime, like politics and show business, is populated with people very much like him, except his awareness of their secret backgrounds and his willingness to use it as a means of control gives him incredible power, out of the reach of anybody who has anything to hide.

Remember, this film was shot in 1968, not long after the release of Sgt Pepper's, and it was that world Mick had in mind. Where at a club like "Sammies", while "eating eggs" one might see underworld figures like the Krays, politicians like Lord Boothby or Tom Driberg, A-list actors, Famous musicians and probably Brian Epstein, rubbing shoulders. Venues like these had recently become "respectable" in London because of the 1967 Sexual Offenses Act, which decriminalized homosexuality. Turner knows all these people intimately. Now he is in charge.

Turner surveys his new cohort, and one by one confronts them with his knowledge of their past. The second stanza refers to Rampton, a psychiatric hospital, where Turner is apparently aware the man in front of him was once a patient who killed a doctor. In those days, the field of psychiatry in England was bigotedly referred by the underclass to as a "Jewish" profession and the reference to "sleeveless shirt" carries double meaning as both a straitjacket and the actual sleeveless shirt worn on sabbath by orthodox observers of the Jewish faith.

"Come now, Gentlemen..." He mocks the straight laced and upstanding members of society they have apparently become. He snarls in to the climactic "set your business STRAIGHT", sarcastically suggesting they have covered their own homosexuality and violent deviance into normal and straight looking executive "skins".

He confronts the smaller sticked man from Hemlock Road, a reference to a rest stop location on the road from London to Oxford notorious for casual encounters. Hemlock Road also doubles for a reference to Socrates, whose refusal to deny his sexual identity led to suicide by Hemlock, and also the historical relationship of academia with homosexuality in a general sense.

Another poster here wrote: "The dominant theme is, of course, one of homosexuality. I think it may be the first time in popular culture where gayness is linked not with effeminacy but with an overt masculine sexuality. For examply the same year that Performance was released The Boys in the Band showed us a selection of campy self-hating drama queens. Also the line "the young girls eat their mother's meat from tubes of plasticon" is the kind of queasily sexual/violent image you'd find in William Burroughs. Also, just remembered that there is indeed a Burrough's book called The Soft Machine. I suppose the song, and the film Performance, were informed at some level by the fact of Reggie Kray's sexuality and the fact that an incredibly masculine (in fact psychotic) man could be gay."

The only think I really can add to that is the theme transcends homosexuality in important ways, in addition to those accurate points. Consider this stanza:

Be wary of these my gentle friends Of all the skins you breed They have a tasty habit They eat the hands that bleed

Turner expresses a total ambivalence as to whatever their deviance does: Sex, Drugs, Violence. He doesn't care, won't judge, and will in fact participate if it's "wrong" enough. Turner will make you take your clothes off and have sex with him just to assert his dominance, and create something that can be used to control you. He tells them "Just make a face and an identity where the need to gratify your urges can't also be your undoing if you are exposed." Ironically, being a rock star, where deviance is in fact expected of a public personality, would be a better cover for these "misbred grey executives."

My main point is that Turner's moral ambivalence goes far beyond any simple "it's about gay" interpretation, and extends to all forms of social identities as somehow being crude coverings for the dark primal secrets we try to keep inside, but are ultimately used to control and exploit us.

After reading the fine comment below by @izertizer I propose the character Rosebloom and the "Rosie" line is perhaps a loose reference to Lewis Rosenstiel, a close associate of J Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn.

it's as if queen was singing desolation row on smack. bizarre and great.

best Stones song ever.

There's a different version on the Metamorphosis album with different lyrics.

one of the most mysterious songs by the stones .also one of the best slide guitar songs of all time. Some say it isnt a true rolling stone song because richards didnt play on it but it is very characteristic of the style and tone of the stones at that time.there is about 4 versions of this song all unique and good.I cant deny that there is homoerotic undertones in this song . Nasty ones to . It has a violent and agressive nature to it. the Idea of organized crime and corrupt police . Using sex as a form of agression and control is a common theme of the stones(midnight rambler ,brown sugar) but why are men and not woman subjugated in this song. Maybe this is why its not a radio hit when the stones where spitting out hits every other day at this time.

you guys, this songs good

Perhaps Jagger's finest song, but what does it all mean? Looking round the net it seems that for some prayer rituals orthodox Jews wear a religious garment which can be described as a sleevless shirt. The writer goes on to say that describing the man as 'Spanish speaking' is a reference to the Jews' exile from Spain in, I think, the middle ages. Though why he has a German-sounding name like Kurt isn't explained. The dominant theme is, of course, one of homosexuality. I think it may be the first time in popular culture where gayness is linked not with effeminacy but with an overt masculine sexuality. For examply the same year that Performance was released The Boys in the Band showed us a selection of campy self-hating drama queens. Also the line "the young girls eat their mother's meat from tubes of plasticon" is the kind of queasily sexual/violent image you'd find in William Burroughs. Also, just remembered that there is indeed a Burrough's book called The Soft Machine. I suppose the song, and the film Performance, were informed at some level by the fact of Reggie Kray's sexuality and the fact that an incredibly masculine (in fact psychotic) man could be gay.

nice interp. i had no clue, my fav line was "Your organs working perfectly, but there's a part that's not screwed on." But shit this song is soo damn UNDERrated

Only a true Stones' fan knows and appreciates this song...it's sad that Keith didn't play on this!! "Glam Rock" before that term ever existed.

Huh???? Nothing makes much sense to me anymore. Like this song, I think I've gone stark raving mad, as I wait for the man I love to show me a sign. Am I crazy? Did you make me this way? What in the hell am I supposed to think and/or do? My brain hurts, my heart has been broken and I'd still go to the abyss for you. I've completely crashed. BOOOOOOOOOOOM. Uncle!