When Beauty Turned Dark: Revisiting Performance (1968)

Commentary on Paul Buck's biography of the film "Performance."

The film by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, Performance, is the best work of art to articulate the late 1960s, as the beautiful turns bitter and dims the lights on psychedelia. I was sixteen when the film was released in the United States, and I was a massive fan of the Rolling Stones’ image. Of course, I loved the music, but more importantly to me were the Satanistic touches in the Stones’ visual style. There was always a hint of decadence, orgies, drugs, and being wasted in their world, which makes one think Performance is a documentary. It isn’t, of course.

Performance is a marker—a time capsule that captures the mood and essence of the counterculture of the time. For me, it is more than a movie; it is like a witness articulating the changes taking place in 1968. This moment will never repeat in my lifetime.

James Fox plays Chas, a British Cockney gangster on the run, who by chance finds himself in the home of Turner, played by Mick Jagger. Turner is a reclusive pop star who seems to straddle the line between sanity and insanity. He’s uncomfortable having Chas in his presence, in his home, but the two women who live with him accept the gangster’s presence. Eventually, the sexual boundaries of each character begin to blur as a different reality unfolds in Turner’s home, away from the world.

As a sixteen-year-old seeing this for the first time — I’ve since watched Performance more than ten times — it was the first work to make me think that there are boundaries that need to be pushed: from being a criminal to a rock star, and into the murkiness of sexual activity that’s hard to define.

Reading Paul Buck’s book Performance: A Biography of the Classic Sixties Film is one of many great books I’ve read about the film, but Buck’s work here may be the best single volume of information and critique. It covers all the references in the movie and explores the times — especially in London — both the gangster world (the Krays) and fellow travelers such as Kenneth Anger, Marianne Faithfull, art dealer Robert Fraser, and interior designer Christopher Gibbs. It draws in figures like Brian Jones and Keith Richards of the Stones and acknowledges the influence of performer and filmmaker Jack Smith, among others.

The key figures in Performance were very much part of the inner circle of the counterculture — Anita Pallenberg and Jagger, of course, and James Fox on the psychedelic side of things. The criminal element is also central to the film. It’s a juxtaposition of low and high life, and everything in between.

Performance, the soundtrack album composed and arranged by the legendary Jack Nitzsche, is just as mysterious as the film. The classic and great song on this album is “Memo From Turner,” which has its own strange history. Initially, the film was going to be scored by Mick and Keith Richards. Still, Keith refused to do anything with the movie because of rumors (never properly confirmed) that Mick and Keith’s girlfriend Anita had sex during filming. According to Buck’s biography, Donald Cammell co-wrote the lyrics with Jagger. “Memo From Turner” contains every taboo-breaking subject matter in one four-minute song. It’s ground zero for Jagger’s image in the ’60s, and where all of that begins to sort itself out.

Jagger embraced the image of Satan, which seemed to fit his rock ’n’ roll sensibilities perfectly. However, while working on Performance, he also created tension with Keith, and it marked a turning point. When Jagger and the Stones performed at Altamont, their free concert, it was like entering hell, and Jagger appeared at the entrance but decided to leave as quickly as possible. For me, that was a critical moment when Mick shifted from being a rock ’n’ roll star to more of a businessman. Somewhere along the way, Mick chose not to walk that road to hell.

As mentioned, I have read a lot of books on Performance, but Paul Buck did an excellent job of getting the stories straight — and admits that we may not, in fact, know everything. It’s a film that is easy to become obsessed with. Although the film takes place in 1968, it feels perpetually present to me — a mirror that still reflects the moment when beauty gave way to something darker.