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Fever in the funk house
Noel Mengel
22feb03
OUTSIDE, the queue stretches both ways down Enmore Rd, one of those gritty Sydney inner-urban shopping strips that could pass for any London high street, unsullied by anything resembling a new building or a lick of paint.
There is the familiar array of cheap restaurants and picture framers, and the traffic crawls at not quite walking pace.
A very clear image is in my mind. Sitting on a bus somewhere near here 20 years before, with a new vinyl copy of the first Rolling Stones album on my lap, gazing out at the shops, wondering what it must have been like to have been a young Stones nut in London 20 years before that.
Those were the days when you could see them inside a crowded club on a street just like this, squeeze up close to the stage, see the sweat. And the chances of that ever happening again . . . well, it seemed impossible.
And yet here they were, about to play a show to 2000 people in the comfy, faded glory � imagine a 1920s picture palace, with the brown leather seats still up in the balcony � of the Enmore Theatre.
A police car is stopped outside, lights flashing, and the crowd spills out on to the road. The lucky few sport the hottest commodity in town: the green Forty Licks tour wristband.
Tickets to this opening night of the band's fifth Australian tour, and their first indoors Australian show since the '60s, are just $60. If you were fast. The asking price for the first one that went up on online auction site eBay was $5000, although the market found its true level in the days before the show at $1000.
You soon found that possession of a ticket wasn't something you could discuss. When less fortunate Stones believers heard the news, they looked as pale as Keith, circa '72. They were gutted.
The mood of the queue is relaxed. Maybe everyone is just relieved to have the wristband. But the devotion to the band is unquestioned. In front of me is someone who has seen 17 shows of this world tour. The story, it seems, is not all that unusual. It's an exiles on Enmore coalition, with people from Japan, England, the US and, presumably, all over.
This was Tuesday. On the Monday, the Rolling Stones are talking. I meet several and sit in on the press call with all four.
When they walk into the room, Mick Jagger recognises one of the writers from his arrival in Australia: "I saw you! What did you say, 'I'm going to hassle you and hassle you until you give me a quote!' And you chased me down the gangway. You could have waited until today."
Except his editor might have killed him. Still, it breaks the ice. What's a press call without some Jagger cheek?
Nothing of great import can be revealed when the four members of the World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band (trademark registered) gather in a room with a dozen scribblers for 15 minutes.
No, playing these theatre shows isn't nostalgia for them, because they have never played most of these places before. Yes, they've always had a great relationship with Australia.
But they are here and talking, which is more than you can say for Pearl Jam. They do it not because they need the publicity to flog tickets � those sell anyway � but because they are entertainers of the old school. They are proud of who they are. What's wrong with giving a few quotes?
Up on the 25th floor, in a suite overlooking the Opera House, Ronnie Wood, the friend and fan who joined the band in the mid-'70s, looks as healthy as he's ever been, holding a glass with a red liquid in it. It's not Campari but a sports drink.
Wood is on the wagon, thoroughly enjoying playing his first world tour in such prime condition. The haircut, familiar to all who can tell the difference between a great rock record and a bunch of record company bullshit, is unchanged from the day I bought one of my first albums, The Faces' A Nod's As Good as a Wink To a Blind Horse. To these ears, it's still Wood's finest hour on record.
But growing up in the '60s in London, he was the one in the queue at Stones shows.
"I'd see them all fall out of the wagon with all the equipment at Windsor or Richmond," he recalls. "I was in a band that happened to be playing similar music and I felt an affinity with them. When they started to get popular from the time of Come On, I was always a supporter. I'd race home from school and watch them on Thank Your Lucky Stars and Ready Steady Go."
After the exit of Brian Jones's replacement, Mick Taylor, and with The Faces on the wane as their singer Rod Stewart's solo career rose, Wood walked into the gig he was born for. After the little matter of learning 120 songs in a month, he was on his way.
The symbiotic relationship between Wood and Keith Richards is like the right and left arm of the Rolling Stones.
"Our rapport isn't something we analyse very closely," Wood says. "As one plays rhythm, the other plays lead and we just swap, without signalling. We call it . . ." � he gives a little grin � "the ancient form of weaving."
Thank you, Ronald. A Keith'n'Ronnie anecdote that should serve me well for the next . . . well, however long.
The set list on this tour varies quite a lot from night to night, depending on the size of venues they are playing, he says. At the smaller shows � they play at least one theatre-size event in each territory � they can play the left-field stuff that they know the aficionados will dig.
They are playing songs Wood has seldom if ever played with them in three decades of touring, like Stray Cat Blues and, at his insistence, Can't You Hear Me Knocking.
'It's like fireworks going off and he's only lifting the sticks like this . . . '
And what of Charlie, the man who Wood and everyone else who cares about this band knows is the mighty heart that pumps at their centre?
"It's like fireworks going off and he's only lifting the sticks like this . . . " Wood laughs in wonder. He demonstrates, one hand only 10cm above the other.
Earlier, Charlie Watts, the stable force in the band � musically and personally � for 40 years, sits in the same room, watching a replay of a World Cup cricket match. Like Jagger and Wood, he loves his cricket.
Like the others, he is smaller than you imagine and you wonder where his strength comes from, sitting in behind the beat in this inexorable groove and pushing them, up and up. Then I think of Bradman, and know that it's not strength that matters, but timing.
Among rock 'n' roll drummers, and by his band, that's how he is considered, although this sweet, reserved man would consider such praise ridiculous.
Without joining the Rolling Stones, he might have pursued his career in graphic art.
"I never would have thought of myself as a professional musician," says the man who many consider the finest rock drummer who ever breathed. "Those were people who could read sheets of music."
Famously happily married through all these years when the rest of the band were, umm, not, he concedes he has almost become used to the touring life.
"I used to get depressed when I was touring, because it can be quite lonely. But of course the benefits far outweigh the negatives."
At the press call, downstairs, Charlie says not a word in 15 minutes. The final question comes my way, and it will always be a matter of regret that I did not ignore the others and do something useful, such as tell him the story that leg-spin legend Bill O'Reilly told me about the day his dad introduced him to Henry Lawson, on the cadge for a quid on a street not far from here, 90 years before.
I think he might have liked that story. Still, I've shaken O'Reilly's hand, and now that of Charlie Watts.
Mick drags out the blues harp; Wood and Richards, swinging their guitars low, are like twins.
Inside the Enmore, people are happy but still not quite believing they are living this dream. One friend I didn't call in case he missed a ticket is perched beside the mixing desk. He called the venue for a month before on-sale, begging. The day tickets went on sale he spent 2� hours on the phone from Perth. He says he got the last ticket.
From the first notes of the show, of course, the excitement can no longer be contained. They open with Midnight Rambler, Mick drags out the blues harp, Wood and Richards, swinging their guitars low, are like twins. Watts is straight on the money. They push the song, prod it, drag it and double-speed it, and explore more nuances than seems possible from one chord. Then we know just what we are in for.
Richards' tell-tale opening licks for Tumbling Dice ignite the place, legendary sax man Bobby Keyes, one of four in the brass section, takes the solo. Across the stage, keys man Chuck Leavell rips it up just as Ian Stewart and Nicky Hopkins once did.
Those aren't just any backing singers, either. One-time Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin is one, funk legend Bernard Fowler another.
True to their word, the set is one for aficionados: Dead Flowers, No Expectations, a four-song soul set with tunes from Otis Redding and Solomon Burke. Richards steps up to the microphone for Happy.
Just when it can't seem to go any higher, they cut loose with Start Me Up, then Malcolm and Angus Young � in civvies, no shorts or satchel � join them for blues standard Rock Me Baby.
The place goes berserk. "It's very unexpected," Mick grins. "I had no idea."
By this time, we're just about fainting with the heat, but Jagger, 60 in July, prowls and pouts and dances with the vigour of someone one-third his age.
Encore? (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.
Top that.
The Rolling Stones, the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band? Well, music is not a race. But take it from one of the 2000 who were there. There's a reason that trademark is registered, you know.
Postscript. Up the road in the Town Hall pub, about 2.30am: No one wants to let go of the night, no one wants to go home, take off the wristband, wake up from the dream. A friend of the hours-on-the-phone friend is raving.
"I met Charlie and Ronnie yesterday," I offer.
The colour drains from his face for a moment.
"Oh. And I boiled an egg!"
� The Rolling Stones play the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on March 4 and 5. Limited tickets available for March 5 through Ticketek. |
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| Monkey Woman |
Cool article! Hmmm... 'Charlie, the man who Wood and everyone else who cares about this band knows is the mighty heart that pumps at their centre' Yeah! Well said, Noel!  |
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