Brett Morgen - Rolling Stones Documentary Maker Glad He Didn't Have To Revisit Jagger/richards Feud

Documentary maker Brett Morgen is glad his new Rolling Stones movie Crossfire Hurricane did not follow the band past 1981, because he didn't have to revisit the drama of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' fabled feud while the bandmates were still at war over remarks the guitarist had made about his frontman in his memoirs.

The bandmates were still not on speaking terms when Morgen started recording audio for his film because Jagger was still upset about items Richards had chosen to make public in his bestseller, Life - poking fun at the size of the singer's manhood and his womanising ways - and the director didn't fancy raking over old feuds with the two superstars.

He tells Wenn, "I knew there would be sensitivities with Mick and Keith dealing with World War Three, as Keith called it - the 1980s. Ending the film in 1981 was a nice way of getting out before we get to that.
"There was definitely tension when we started. When I first spoke to Mick, he hadn't spoken to Keith in some time and during the time I was making the film they got together for the first jam session and things started to thaw.
"But their ongoing rift was something that was discussed outside the context of the interviews I did for the film. I would talk to Mick or Keith about it before we'd start recording. That was quite interesting. I felt like a kind of a go-between... It was a strange position to be in."
But Morgen admits he and Jagger clashed over his decision to end the arc of film in 1981: "The biggest clash came over where the film resolved itself. Mick was extremely concerned that I would be dismissing the past 25 years of what he's been doing, but I wasn't.
"I felt if I was to go beyond that, it would be like, 'And then, and then we did this, and then we did that...' It would be much more disjointed. I had concluded my story."