I was one of the people initially involved in the film's theatrical distribution. It's important to know that Dragonaire Ltd, the film's distributor should be recognized for their innovative plan and execution. The film premiered at New York's prestigious Zeigfield Theater and it was accompanied by a large Quadrophonic Concert Sound System mixed live for each viewing and often reaching 100 decibels in the theater. This provided an extraordinary experience for the theater goers who often times had to restrain themselves from jumping up and down in their seats and yelling for encores when the film ended. The Quad system accompanied the film to Boston, Miami, Pittsburg and a few other cities but soon became economically prohibitive and was replaced by a Stereo mix.Sensurround and other sound enhancers in theaters owe a lot to this movie.Bob Tulipan (1974) Former Director of Touring Operations/Distribution Dragonaire Ltd.

i am from Houston Texas and in 1972 my husband then boyfriend spent the night at the pavilion on the university of Houston campus to get tickets to the stones...there were rumors they were going to break up and this might be their final tour...anyway we got 6 front row tickets and went to the concert with friends...the movie was filmed partically at the Houston venue because don branch rented a tux with tails and a top hat for this concert and during the set he thru his hat on stage and Mick put it on and after a while thru it back to don...at the end of the concert a massive amount of rose petals fell from the ceiling on the first few rows...i still have some of those petals and my ticket stub...but ya know what i saw this movie in san Diego in 1974...saw it about 7 times just to see Keith Richards...back then he was a very handsome fella...i have not been able to find the film from rentals or anywhere and no one i have come in contact with even knew it exist...thank you

Like so many other Stones projects which involved onetime financial mastermind Allen Klien, 'Ladies & Gentlemen...' remains commercially unavailable due to the heaps of legal red tape tying it up, which is too bad because the film documents the immortal Rolling Stones at or near the very height of their powers.With the violent Altamont debacle still fresh in everyone's memory, the band had fled England for the Cote' d'Azur in southern France as rock & roll's first tax exiles. It was there, in Keith Richard's £2,400-a-week seaside rental property, that the band created 'Exile on Main Street', their first and only double album, recorded in a sweaty, humid basement amid a hazy, narcotic swirl of Bacchanalian excess.Dubbed the 'STP Tour', the band barnstormed across North America during June and July of 1972 selling out arenas everywhere, partly on the strength of their then-newest release and partly due to rising speculation that this would be the band's last road trip ever. The STP Tour was one of the first to usher in now-commonplace practices such as using dozens of semi-trailers to haul around a custom-made stage, a massive construct of rented lights, speakers and cables, not to mention a small army of technicians, security goons and bean counters getting it from place to place. The band themselves were attended to by a crew of hairdressers, luggage handlers, and other personal assistants, including Richards' own cadre of substance procurers, as he was in the throes of heroin addiction.None of this seems to affect the band, however, who consistently deliver a powerful evening of spectacle; feeding off the fanaticism of the fans in the crowd and sending the energy back again, the concert builds to a fever pitch and ends so abruptly no one in the audience is aware than their wild cheers for an encore will never be answered, the band already en route to their hotel.The hit singles are all here, as well as a slew of classics-to-be from the new album. The band, at all times following the eye contact and body gestures of Keith Richard, are on top form, masters of their craft, while Jagger, as the visual focal point, draws upon his decade-plus of experience in manipulating large crowds, teasing, jiving, grinning and gyrating, his skinny, hairless body contorting into one gigantic pout.Unlike Stones tours of late, here it's just the band, along with two horns and a piano, much more authentic than the generic sweeteners heard in the last few years. The songs feel authentic, rather than watered down imitations of themselves, something the band has had trouble avoiding since bringing on their team of professional studio mercenaries. Even as mega-stars, once the music starts, it's not hard to tell they aren't necessarily there "for the money."The other great thing is that the film's sound was, thoughtfully, recorded in true stereo, and attention was paid to quality of signal resulting in a really decent hi-fi live sound. Turn it up!The STP Tour was marked by a new level of offstage debauchery, chronicled by Robert Frank in "C*cksucker Blues", the controversial cinema-verite film which was shot largely with hand-held cameras in various dressing rooms and hotel suites along the way. This film is yet another unreleased document of the summer of 1972, extremely hard to locate, but not impossible. Add to this the planned-but-never-released Decca live album from the same tour and there's enough bootleg material from the STP Tour to satisfy a Stones fan until, say, 1978 when 'Some Girls',their next great album and tour, came to be.The only weak link is new boy Mick Taylor, thought by others to be a kind of guitar hero, but careful examination of what he actually plays reveals that it hardly matters what song the rest of the band are playing, at any given time Taylor invariably noodles over top of it, soloing whenever he can, which is almost every time Jagger isn't singing.For my money, Ronnie Wood might not be half the pure musician that Taylor is, but he's got much more personality, and though the Stones are as strong musically as any other group might care to put up against them, at the end of the day it's the Stones themselves that attract the attention they've received all these years (To this day, many of their live versions of songs grind to an end in musical train wrecks). If it were different, guys like Yngwie Malmsteen would be cultural icons, too, and the satin jumpsuit would finally get more respect.T.C. Shaw, May '06

I saw this movie about 15 years ago and thought it was great. The screening was presented by someone who had worked on the movie. An assistant director or something, and I can recall him saying that the only surviving copies of this film were damaged in some way. The picture on the print I saw was screwed up for about the first 5 minutes of the movie. After that it was OK. Maybe that is why this has never been released to DVD.Anyway, this is The Stones at their best. I wish they would release this to DVD, even if the picture is flawed. For that matter, why has Let It Be not been released on DVD?