The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is the name of both the album and the film released in 1996, consisted of the performances at the 11 December 1968 event organized by the Rolling Stones. The event comprised two concerts on a circus stage and included such acts as The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and Jethro Tull. John Lennon and his fiancee Yoko Ono performed as part of a supergroup called The Dirty Mac, along with Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Richards. The original lineup was going to be the Small Faces, the Rolling Stones, and the Who and the concept of a circus was first thought up between Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, and Ronnie Lane and was originally meant to be aired on the BBC, but the Rolling Stones withheld it. The Stones contended they did so due to their substandard performance because they had taken the stage early in the morning and were clearly exhausted. Many others believe that the true reason for not releasing the video was that the Who, who were fresh off a concert tour, upstaged the Stones on their own production. Led Zeppelin were also originally considered but the idea was also dropped.
The project was originally conceived by Mick Jagger who approached the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg and asked him to make a full-length TV show for them. The musicians performed in a replica of a seedy big top on a British sound stage in front of an invited audience. The performances began at around 2 pm on 11 December 1968, but setting up between acts and reloading cameras took longer than planned, which meant that the final performances took place at almost 5 o'clock the next morning. By that time the audience and most of the Rolling Stones, who were performing last, were exhausted. Pete Townshend recalled: “When they really get moving, there is a kind of white magic that starts to replace the black magic, and everything starts to really fly. That didn't happen on this occasion; there's no question about that.” Mick Jagger canceled the airing of the film, and kept it from public view, up until 1996 when they finally decided to show it to the world.
The recorded show was the last public performance of Brian Jones with the Rolling Stones, as well as the only footage of Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi performing as a member of Jethro Tull, during his brief tenure as replacement for Mick Abrahams and at the same time the first footage of the band ever made (no live footage of the original Tull lineup exists).
After years of delays, ABKCO finally issued The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus and a tie-in home video of the event in October 1996 and it reached number 92 in the US. In 2004, a DVD edition was released, as well as the live album mentioned earlier.
