Jefferson Airplane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Captures It (1968)

Just when you think you’ve seen every­thing Jean-Luc Godard has ever shot, some­thing like this sur­faces. If you’re only now con­sid­er­ing tuck­ing into the feast that is Godard­’s fil­mog­ra­phy, don’t let his abun­dance of uncol­lect­ed odds, ends, clips, and shorts intim­i­date you. Not only do they promise a lit­tle thrill down the road when you’ve already digest­ed his major works, but they offer quick bursts at any time of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cin­e­mat­ic zest with which the film­mak­er took on the world. With the man alive and work­ing, I should per­haps say “the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cin­e­mat­ic zest with which the film­mak­er takes on the world,” but that gets into one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tions that swirls around him: has Godard still got it?

Some say yes, that his lat­est pic­ture Film Social­isme presents the log­i­cal con­tin­u­a­tion of all Godard has ever rep­re­sent­ed; some say no, that the Godard to watch remains the scrap­py star of the 1960s’ French New Wave. In his study Every­thing is Cin­e­ma: The Work­ing Life of Jean-Luc Godard, New York­er film blog­ger Richard Brody some­how makes both claims.

In the chap­ter “Rev­o­lu­tion (1968–1972)” he describes Godard­’s impro­vised method of shoot­ing a 1968 Jef­fer­son Air­plane con­cert:

He took over from the spe­cial­ists and oper­at­ed the cam­era from the win­dow of Lea­cock-Pen­nebak­er’s office on West Forty-fifth street, shoot­ing the band on the roof of the Schuyler Hotel across the street. (Pen­nebak­er recalled him to be an ama­teur­ish cam­era­man who could not avoid the begin­ner’s pit­fall of fre­quent zoom­ing in and out.) The per­for­mance took place with­out a per­mit, at stan­dard rock vol­ume: as singer Grace Slick lat­er wrote, “We did it, decid­ing that the cost of get­ting out of jail would be less than hir­ing a pub­li­cist…”

Ama­teur­ish or not, a piece of the footage has sur­faced on YouTube. Lis­ten to the Air­plane per­form “The House at Pooneil Cor­ners,” watch Godard­’s dra­mat­ic swings of focus and zoom as he attempts to con­vey the spec­ta­cle of the band and the spec­ta­cle of count­less sur­prised Man­hat­tan­ites at once, and think for your­self about this pecu­liar inter­sec­tion of two bold lines in the era’s alter­na­tive zeit­geist. As Jef­fer­son Air­plane co-founder Paul Kant­ner said in a 1986 inter­view, “Just for a while there, maybe for about 25 min­utes in 1967, every­thing was per­fect.” But these sev­en min­utes in Novem­ber 1968, from open­ing shouts to inevitable arrest, don’t seem so dull them­selves.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 BestAmer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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Comments (33)
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  • Tim says:

    The whole film ( One PM) that the clip is from is also on Youtube.

    Part 1: http://youtu.be/Mtsep1p9inA

    Part 2: http://youtu.be/z_WQaVaKv‑U

    Part 3: http://youtu.be/iiPrnziwcQI

  • Iguanaseeyou says:

    And where are today’s youth? Did they just curl up inside their cages and escape from free­dom?

  • j.c robinson says:

    I was there! On the roof! Lived in the Chelsea! What a morn­ing!!!!!!!!!!

  • Old news says:

    This has been avail­able on DVD for a long time:

    http://www.jeffersonstarshipsf.com/fly/index.htm

  • joan says:

    j.c., i am so envi­ous!
    i was only 6 at the time. watch­ing it now, would have loved to be 18, there, on the roof , with you!
    if only for a moment…

  • Sergio N. says:

    Price­less.
    The casu­al audi­ence is of course the focus here, with the band just pro­vid­ing the sound­track

  • Clara says:

    Igua­naseey­ou, i agree, unfor­tu­nate­ly

  • John Browning says:

    The sound is bad, not the Air­plane. In fact it was­n’t the Air­plane, it was beau­ty that killed the beast!

  • Martin Sne says:

    The world is full of sur­pris­es! So that is where The Bea­t­les got the idea from! Wow.

  • Moss Zu00e1rate says:

    Ohh­hh!!!! Amaz­ing!!!

  • Jay Winston says:

    This “has sur­faced on youtube”? It “sur­faced” in the doc­u­men­tary “Fly Jef­fer­son Air­plane” (avail­able through Net­flix) ten years ago…

  • Magda says:

    Is that Jim Mor­ri­son and Pam in 1:46? :)

  • Jon says:

    The Air­plane were all about try­ing to evolve us to a bet­ter place, maybe naive­ly so. House at Pooneil is an angry piece of music from a thor­ough­ly unset­tled time, the idea was to wake every­one up — in this case lit­er­al­ly AND fig­u­ra­tive­ly. I would have killed to be there and I wish this kind of pas­sion still exist­ed.

  • Sergio Mann says:

    Lucky you, do you think this was before Bea­t­les at roof with Let it be, Dont let me down?

  • sludgehound says:

    Fan­tas­tic. FEEDS YOUR HEAD now more than ever when a big deal is to keep ATM fees at just $2 max… Real­ly now that’s all we got to match up with the Air­plane??
    Caught them up at SUNY New Paltz and unfor­getable.
    Loved that pair look­ing up from their win­dow right below (famous or not). They looked like could star in a Godard.

  • St.SteveG says:

    You just got­ta love NYC. Grace is so gor­geous. Jack over the top as ever. And as to Godard? Where would the world of art be with­out the occa­sion­al loose can­non on the deck?

  • Ricky Lea­cock and D A Pen­nebak­er (my father) made that per­for­mance hap­pen. Godard had pret­ty much signed off on the film by then. He want­ed to go home. See our web­site for more info on it at phfilms.com

  • At 16 in NYC a west vil­lage ten­ni­bop­per as they
    Called us we were at almost every show, the free ones in the park, the Fill­more gigs, Wood­stock, Atlantic
    City. Often pared with the Dead, jag­ger in Alt­mont, referred to them as the Grate­ful Air­plane.. We laughed at thi­er jeal­ous­ly. The west Coast gave us a play­ful funk and the pranksters, while Mill­brook med­i­tat­ed, Frisco Fro­l­iced !

  • Christopher Potter says:

    With the RCA Build­ing in the back­ground.…
    Fas­ci­nat­ing clip, over­rat­ed direc­tor, under­rat­ed band. Can Grace Slick REALLY be 75?

  • Pat Loudoun says:

    Man, that is one fan­tas­tic reminder. That band real­ly sucked.

  • gbear says:

    Home on leave after basic, shined on.

  • Charlie says:

    Gawd. They suck. And I used to like those guys!

  • kishke says:

    Do you appear in the video?

  • kishke says:

    My ques­tion is addressed to JC Robin­son.

  • Larry says:

    Just, let it be.

  • Christian Mrosko says:

    That ver­sion has a messed up left audio chan­nel—
    This ver­sion is mixed bet­ter; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJJE5Wo_OY&list=RDXYr5D4lqC0w

  • Elliott C says:

    Nope, just some ran­dom hip­sters :-)

  • Elliott C says:

    (response to Mag­da regard­ing Pam & Jim)

  • Jon says:

    Im shocked that no one has men­tioned it yet -
    was this before the “Let it be” Bea­t­les film or after ?
    the roof con­cert scene is prac­ti­cal­ly the same… who stole from who????

    great band

  • Danae Torn says:

    No Mag­da! I don’t know who the woman is but the man is my late father, actor Rip Torn, who is seen get­ting arrest­ed at the end of the clip. Inter­est­ing­ly, Jim Mor­ri­son was a friend of my father’s and want­ed to direct him in a film, but alas it nev­er hap­pened.

  • Magda van Tilburg says:

    Could this roof con­cert has been the inspi­ra­tion for the Beat­les’GET BACK roof con­cert in 1969??

  • Mark Welsh says:

    That is actor Rip Torn and Pamela. OK, it’s not Pamela, not sure who the chick­yschnoo­dle is. Torn was arrest­ed lat­er for push­ing a police­man while insist­ing they let the band play. He was a friend of the band and was involved in what was being filmed, which was a project from direc­tor Jean-Luc Godard and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er D.A. Pen­nebak­er (Don’t Look Back, Mon­terey Pop) that aired in 1971 as “1 P.M.”, which was when the short hap­pen­ing on the rooftop occurred.

  • Robert Small says:

    Does any­body who guy in the win­dow right at the begin­ning is? He waves his arms in irri­ta­tion and the cam­era moves onto hap­pi­er folks.

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