The Rolling Stones and ABKCO Music & Records Inc. have released the official music video for “Child of the Moon,” filmed in 1968. Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Let It Be, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, Simon & Garfunkel’s The Concert in Central Park), this surrealist promotional film, which features all five original band members and Emmy Award-winning actress Dame Eileen June Atkins (The Dresser, Gosford Park, The Crown), has been newly restored in both a standard definition color version and a 4K resolution black & white version. Watch “Child of the Moon” original music video directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (black & white 4K version).
Michael Lindsay-Hogg remembers conceptualizing the music video.
I said to Mick Jagger, ‘I think we really need a white horse in the field. Think Fellini,’ because Fellini was the go-to guy in the ‘50s and the ‘60s for the odd ingredient in the shot, whether it was a clown in white face or a white horse. We all arrived at various times in this field looking onto a sort of clump of trees aiming up a little hill. Brian was late, which is sort of the reason Brian isn’t around for a while in the shot.
Mick said, ‘Do you want me to mime?’ I said, ‘No. I think we want to try something even more different here. More radical. We intercut you with things that are happening up in the trees and make a little story.’
He was very savvy and very versed in film. He was willing to try this, and I don’t know if it had been done before, where you have a small scenario where you cut in the principals with something happening and stitch it together. I thought it would be interesting basically to have three ages of women coming out of the trees and Mick looking at them. Then the audience would become a participant in the video and start to make the story themselves.
What’s interesting is we have a little girl, we have an older woman, and the middle woman was an actress friend of my girlfriend, Eileen Atkins and she now is Dame Eileen Atkins, one of the foremost actresses in the British theatre. The little girl runs off to the side, the older woman walks through the slightly wet ground and we see her go off and we see the white horse.
Eileen Atkins is the one who retreats up back the way she came down, and she looks back at Mick with a look which you might describe as longing or anxious. Something in her look relates to Mick in a way we let the audience figure it out.
Cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond first met Michael Lindsay-Hogg while shooting titles for the British comedy crime drama Only When I Larf in 1968. Richmond recalls, “Michael said, ‘What are you doing Saturday? I’m going to do something with the Stones. Will you shoot it for me?’ And that was ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash.’ That was the Saturday, and the Sunday they went up to a farm near where I used to live in North London, and we did ‘Child of the Moon.’ We put Keith Richards in a tree, which I thought was amazing. At the end of the shoot, Brian Jones came with me and had a few beers at a pub. The waitress recognized him. She said, ‘I’d like an autograph for my daughter.’ He said, ‘Well I’m not a very good person. Are you sure?’”
“Child of the Moon” is part of The Rolling Stones and ABKCO’s ongoing effort to restore and officially release original music videos by the group.
Last July, both versions of the aforementioned “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” were rolled out, followed by “We Love You” in August, both versions of “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?” in September, and “2000 Light Years From Home” in November. More Stones music videos restored in 4K are expected to be released later this year.
