"The future as a Rolling Stone is very uncertain. My ultimate aim in life was never to be a pop star. I enjoy it with reservations, but I'm not really, sort of, satisfied either artistically or personally with it."

Brian Jones' candid words in the first Rolling Stones documentary, 1965's "Charlie is My Darling," are all the more poignant because the guitarist did, in fact, part ways with the band in 1969. He drowned later that year.

The Rolling Stones played four gigs over two days in Ireland in September of '65. On the heels of the success of The Beatles' "A Hard Days Night," the Stones' then-manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, asked director Peter Whitehead to film the band. The result was "Charlie is my Darling," a film that was never officially released -- until now.

Rumors of the film's existence was the stuff of Stones' fan folklore as the film reels sat untouched, gathering moss for four decades.

At a pivotal point in their careers

The Stones are celebrating their 50th anniversary, and "Charlie is My Darling" captures the band at that pivotal point in their careers where they were right on the cusp of superstardom. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" had just reached No. 1 on the charts. Lead singer Mick Jagger, guitarist and vocalist Keith Richards, drummer Charlie Watts, Jones and bass guitarist Bill Wyman were famous, but had yet to become rock superstars.

The original film was only shown in a few theaters in 1966 before being shelved, but ABKCO Music & Records uncovered unused footage and teamed up with filmmakers Mick Gochanour and Robin Klein to restore and re-edit "Charlie is My Darling" as a new film. The DVD/Blu-ray was released earlier this month.

Gochanour and Klein had been aware of the project since 1965. They had tried to bring it to life in the 1990s, but the technology wasn't quite there yet. With miles of material to sift through and footage in tatters, the project was put on an indefinite hiatus until last year, when Gochanour and Klein stumbled upon footage of The Rolling Stones on stage that they didn't even know existed.

A meticulous process unfolds

The painstaking restoration process was both time- and labor-intensive. It wasn't uncommon to have to stop everything to mend the film by hand because of a splice or torn sprocket breaking in the film scanner. It took two days to scan one reel of film, which contained 30,000 to 40,000 frames per reel. With 35 cans to be scanned, they spent several months matching sources and repairing tears, scratches and chemical blotches by hand.