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| Jaxx |
if you can get ahold of this newspaper the photospread, (not included on this online version) is spectacular
The Grand Tour
By Mark Brown, News Popular Music Critic
January 31, 2003
LAS VEGAS - The waiter at the MGM Grand shook his head.
"Man, those guys are old. I saw them in the basement," he said. "Keith Richards looks like a zombie. And girls are still throwing their panties at him! He's old enough to be your grandfather."
And the best tickets for the Nov. 30 show at the MGM ran $350 each, he said. "Give me Garth Brooks at $25 any day."
Not many people in the crowd at the Vegas show would have taken that deal. You might not be able to call the Stones the world's greatest band anymore, but there's no denying that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote an arsenal of songs that are beyond classic - Street Fighting Man, Brown Sugar, dozens more - and they still know how to use them.
It's tempting if cheesy to compare the Stones to Las Vegas, where they ended the first leg of the tour in November and where they're going to end this second leg a week after Saturday's sold-out Pepsi Center show.
Both the band and the city are riding on seedy pasts, but both have had their reputations polished up for the present.
The worst thing you can say about the Rolling Stones is that their excuses for touring are getting thinner and thinner, even as the ticket prices get higher and higher.
Sure, people have joked for years about the band's continually going out on the road, raking in the dough and going home. Until recently, these tours were always behind new albums - Steel Wheels in '89, Voodoo Lounge in '94, Bridges to Babylon in '98.
But those new albums are hard to come by. Five of their seven U.S. releases since 1991 have been either live albums or greatest-hits packages, not counting the SACD reissues of 22 early albums.
In 1999, the Stones released a live album, No Security, recorded just months before on the Bridges to Babylon tour. Then they toured on it - a live tour to promote a live album. And this time out, they're touring on a greatest-hits album, Forty Licks.
Yes, the excuses are thinner, but the music stays strong.
The Stones' stadium tours of the '80s and '90s were spectacle mixed with occasional good music. The return to smaller indoor arenas brought an intensity that stadiums can't match. Fans who saw the band's return to smaller venues on 1999's No Security tour saw a band returning to some real contact with the fans (even if it's hockey arena-size "intimate").
Apparently, the boys think so, too; this time around, they've taken to mixing up venue sizes and set lists, using a second stage to do mini-sets.
There's a reason, guitarist Ronnie Wood told the News last week. The varying set lists force them to tour like the Stones of old. They're not dropped in at the last minute to play and then walk away. They're back to being a working band, with daily rehearsals, sound checks and just general hanging out as a band. Every night features a mini-set spotlighting a classic album, be it Some Girls, Sticky Fingers or whatever. As a result, the Stones often play with as much fire as they have in decades; Wood's guitar work particularly shone in the Las Vegas show, a fringe benefit of his sobriety - or "my new concentration," as he puts it.
Indeed, most of the chemicals used by the Stones these days are in their hair rather than their bloodstreams. The band has even gone for a "Woody cam" - a small wireless camera mounted on the neck of Wood's guitar for swirling close-ups of his fingers.
"It's pretty much a full schedule with all the traveling and rehearsing," Wood said in an interview from Houston. "We do a sound check before every show. That gets us to the show early. Then there's a lot of hanging around before we actually do go onstage."
And it shows onstage. Many shows of the '80s featured legendary bickering and bad blood among the band members. This time around they're laughing at and with one another and revving the guitars to fever pitch. Then again, 16,000 tickets at $125 to $350 apiece, resulting in a million-dollar payoff every night, can soothe a lot of creative tension.
Despite rumors of war, Wood confirms that the Forty Licks tour will go further than the band ever has, including much-rumored but still unconfirmed dates in places the band has never been.
"Apart from Australia and Japan, where we've been before, we're going to China and India, where we've never been," he says.
The "madness of New York" came to a head with the Stones' HBO special (repeating tonight) broadcast live from Madison Square Garden earlier this month.
"I hardly had any time to myself, but I think the show came off very well in the end," Wood says. A Let It Bleed mini-set in the middle of the show was a highlight.
Back in Las Vegas in November, it was a Sticky Fingers mini-set, featuring Bitch, Wild Horses, and a sterling rendition of the rarely played Dead Flowers.
In fact, rarely played is the key. The only parts that dragged in the two-hour-plus show were the songs the band has overplayed through the years. Jagger appeared particularly relieved when a seemingly endless Honky Tonk Women finally lurched to a close.
But on rarer material such as Can't You Hear Me Knocking, Dead Flowers and even the new Don't Stop, the Stones locked into grooves. Jagger swirled and snarled, Richards and Wood slashed through fluid, jagged chords, and a fit Charlie Watts good-naturedly drummed along.
Even with one of the greatest frontmen in rock, it's Richards and Wood who tend to draw the eye. Their roadies have become virtual pit crews for guitars, swarming over the pair as each song ends. Richards is more than willing to give Wood a good body slam during Happy, neither of them missing a note. The arena shows aren't nearly as scripted as the stadium ones were. Richards, with his skull rings, chain bracelets and reptilian bare chest, kicked into Tumbling Dice quickly, forcing a startled Jagger to run to the microphone and still miss the first line.
They still need to learn some restraint. The overpowering backing vocalists on Wild Horses marred the song. The horns on Bitch overpowered Richards' trademark guitar licks. Jumpin' Jack Flash doesn't need a four-piece horn section. Chuck Leavell's keyboards only served to bloat It's Only Rock 'n' Roll.
No matter. At the end of the evening, many fans left delirious, having seen rock legends pull it off one more time.
But there's a sense of loss for longtime fans as well.
You marvel at Jagger's unbelievable athletic stamina and Richards' guitar chops, but it's also a band held together by the shared past, copious amounts of hair dye and unparalleled business opportunities.
Much as some fans would like it, the Stones can't go back to being a band that really doesn't exist anymore. But it does make for an amazing simulation
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| jb |
I don't like the article..very typical age bullshit, touring for the $, etc.... |
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