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A tale of two bands
The Rolling Stones and Coldplay on DVD
BY MATT ASHARE

You couldn’t really ask for two more divergent outfits. The Rolling Stones are veteran blues rockers who have weathered four decades not by following trends, though they have done some of that, but by playing the same riffs over and over and becoming something akin to a corporate entity. As Keith Richards jokes in the documentary portion of the new Stones DVD collection Four Flicks (TGA), he doesn’t even see the other guys when the Stones aren’t "working." And Coldplay are the rock band of the moment, Brit-poppers who have just passed the crucial test of their second album and are now in a position to make another CD. Most people wouldn’t know Coldplay’s singer if you gave them both of his names — Chris Martin. But those who do are passionate about his songs, his voice, and his band.

From these two very different bands come two of the best and most insightful DVDs of the season. The Stones set is a massive four-disc box that includes a full-length documentary and three live concerts as well as a bunch of special features. The Coldplay DVD comes in an unassuming case that includes a short documentary, a live concert, and a bonus CD with a few previously unreleased tunes.

Even if you were lucky enough to score tickets to the 2002/2003 "Licks" tour, chances are you got to see only a third of what Mick, Keith, and the, uh, boys had thrown together this time around. Well, nothing is "thrown together" in the world of the Stones: the drug busts and the debauchery of the ’70s have given way to carefully planned corporate events. Aiming to break new ground, the band mounted three tours at once: a stadium tour, an arena tour, and theater tour. Each was its own production, with different sets and set lists; each had its own selling point.

Four Flicks breaks new ground of its own: it’s one of the first generation of DVD box sets. The band added a little controversy to the project by making a deal with Best Buy: the electronics chain has exclusive rights to market the set, and the Stones, no doubt, are getting a bigger cut of the action in return. The only real surprise is how effectively Four Flicks accomplishes its goal, which is to give fans an inside look at what it takes to pull off a Stones tour (now and in years past). The band deals candidly with this on disc one, the documentary, which has plenty of interviews with Mick, Keith, Charlie, and Ron. Then it’s on to the shows, which get one disc each — from London’s Twickenham Stadium to NYC’s Madison Square Garden to the Olympia Theatre in Paris. The sets are reasonably different, special guests like Angus and Malcolm Young, Sheryl Crow, and Solomon Burke turn up to add spice from time to time, and each disc features short segments where Mick and Keith talk about the genesis of some of the songs. Plus, for the real musos, each set has the "Select a Stone" feature — one tune on which you can pick the camera angle that lets you watch your favorite Stone.

The Coldplay DVD is a more straightforward affair — with only two albums to draw on, they can’t play a different set every night. But for a Brit band whose rise to US stardom was a about as sudden as it gets, they’ve held up remarkably well. And that’s the story this DVD’s documentary tells about the shy, small-town guys who broke big and figured out how to manage. Coldplay were the right band at the right time with the right songs: as a guitar-pop outfit fronted by a waifish, introspective singer blessed with a soul-rending falsetto à la Thom Yorke and a debut album that became available just as Radiohead were releasing the first of two experimental, relatively tuneless CDs, they were the group that radio turned to, especially since they had a song called "Yellow" that hung Chris Martin’s yearning Yorkean vocal on an urgent guitar. The rest was as unstoppable as Radiohead’s first ride to the top of the charts.

What’s refreshing about Live 2003 is that Coldplay don’t seem to have reacted to stardom with the same disdain that Radiohead did. Instead, the 17-song live set reveals just how well Martin — who like his mates was little more than a shoegazer when Parachutes (Capitol) hit in 2000 — has adapted to the role of dynamic frontman. He’s no Mick Jagger, but he’s engaging in his own quietly charismatic way, relying on the immense power of his voice, whether he’s strumming a guitar or pounding a piano. Shooting a documentary mostly in black and white and splicing together backstage footage in a frenetic fashion might not have been the best way for Coldplay to distance themselves from Radiohead — that’s what Radiohead did in Meeting People Is Easy. But Coldplay, unlike Radiohead, seem to be having fun with their fame. And that in itself is refreshing.


Issue Date: December 19 - 25, 2003
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