Brett Morgen Reveals Secret Stones Archives

Brett Morgen– who directed “The Kid Stays in the Picture”, “The Chicago Ten” and now the new Rolling Stones documentary “Crossfire Hurricane” – (which premiers tonight at 9pm on HBO) was at the SiriusXM studios this week talking with Ron Bennington about making a film about such a legendary band.

During the interview Brett revealed that somewhere outside of London, in a nondescript building, lies a little known– or at least little-talked about archive full of Rolling Stones recordings, costumes, films and other artifacts– even cars that have been owned by the Stones.

“Yeah, well they have an archive, outside of London, man, which– I don’t think anybody has ever described it publicly ..so I’m going to give your listeners a little taste of this place. I can’t tell you exactly where– but it’s outside of London. Nondescript building. It looks like it would be the office or something, right? Totally nondescript building in like an immigrant section of town.”

He used the archive frequently during the making of the film, and described what it was like to be walking around in this private Stones museum.

“You literally go through and you pull something out off the wall, and it’s the “Brown Sugar” recordings signed by…you know, with Jimmy Miller’s writing on it. And you go into another room, and there are all of Mick’s wardrobes from over the years, going back, you know, forty years. You go into another huge room, and there’s all their cars, and all their film. It’s like a museum. It is a museum that nobody’s ever seen. And I was like– this is it? This is where you keep….? Pull something out, and it’s “Can You Hear Me Knocking.”

He talks about the excitment of finding footage that probably hasn’t been seen in forty years.

“one day I walked in– I thought I had seen all the film and I see a can laying around somewhere where it wasn’t supposed to be. And it says Australia ‘73. And I said, ‘can we put this on the flatbed?’ which is 60mm and it was eight minutes of home movies that Mick shot from the ‘73 Australian tour which are in the movie. If you watch the movie on HBO Thursday night at 9:00 – during the section where they do Angie, all the footage has never been seen before. It’s all stuff that Mick shot himself of the guys. And it’s pristine 16mm.”

Read more from the interview at theinterrobang.com.  The doc premiers on HBO TONIGHT at 9pm.