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| Daethgod |
article by Nui, who wrote the 'beat-up' re Keef promoting drug use. Funny thing tho, Nui got his Sydney tix taken away from Stones management..
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au
Stones' wagon rolls into town
By NUI TE KOHA
24feb03
ROLLING Stones Inc - the men, the music, the money-making machine - rumbles into Melbourne today.
"People still ask: 'How can you take all the travelling? How do you cope with this lifestyle?"' Stones guitarist, Keith Richards, told the Herald Sun.
"It really is no big sweat. It is the two hours up on stage that you have to deal with. That is the whole point."
Their 40 Licks tour, comprising classic songs and obscure cuts, plays for three nights at Rod Laver Arena after grossing $149 million during a 20-week run in the US last year.
It took two 747s to cart staging, 50,000kg of ceiling-hung gadgetry, 220,000 sound watts and a giant video wall to Sydney.
Twenty-three semi-trailers hauled the 40 Licks tour into Melbourne late yesterday.
But it's not all business.
The Rolling Stones have a lot of down time in which to recharge. The band all travel with family and friends and usually retreat to their own circles, Richards says.
On show days, Richards, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts are taken to the venue at 4pm to prepare.
Their sound check lasts for up to an hour.
The band's production manager, Jake Berry, says the Stones then retreat to their dressing rooms, "and just hang out with family and friends".
Richards and Wood play snooker, Watts vanishes and Jagger is allowed an hour or two of seclusion.
The Rolling Stones per form at Rod Laver Arena tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday.
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| Daethgod |
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au
Stones shed the moss and rock
By Iain Shedden, Music writer
February 24, 2003
THERE was a time when anxious parents and certain factions of America's bible belt were convinced that Mick Jagger was the devil.
As the shaggy-haired ambassadors of Lucifer's music during the 1960s, the Rolling Stones were the embodiment of the anti-culture that swept everything in its path and Jagger � shrewd, sexy and famous � played up to the dark side.
These days the demonic image is no more than that � an image. When Jagger stepped from the gloom at Sydney's Superdome on Thursday night, lights around his neck creating a ghoul-like visage and long dark coat adding to the mystique, both entertainer and audience knew what was what. This prince of darkness was no threat, just another part of the show, choreographed with the blazing tongues emblazoned on the giant screen behind him.
Not that this knowledge lessened the impact of his entry. With drummer Charlie Watts and some invisible percussion introducing Sympathy For the Devil, Jagger's opening line: "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste" was as potent as the day he wrote it.
What's different is that the Rolling Stones no longer stand for what they did 30 years ago. They are old men, and youth culture has moved through several hoops since Mick 'n' Keef were doing sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll in equal measure at the height of their recording career.
What you get nowadays, in venues such as the Superdome, filled with 15,500 people, is a show without the rebellious undercurrent. It's not Stones lite, just Stones for the sake of what they are � writers and purveyors of some of the best rock 'n' roll ever made. It may be nostalgia for some � indeed many � but it is impressive in its own right because of the wealth of material at their disposal.
On Thursday they tapped into Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed, Exile on Main Street, Some Girls, Tattoo You, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll and more. They weren't always the best songs from each album, but they stood up nonetheless.
Jagger and Keith Richards are an incomparable duo as entertainers, particularly in larger rooms. They have it down pat, working the stage; Jagger doing his hip-shaking, arm-waving thang, Richards the embodiment of cool. He plays guitar just like ringing a bell and could smoke for England if it were a competitive sport. No wonder he appears happiest when pursuing these passions in tandem.
The Enmore Theatre show a few days earlier didn't have a lot of room for cavorting around and for those lucky enough to be there these limitations were the attraction.
When Richards ran out to strike the first chord of that set off Midnight Rambler it was one of those rare moments in music that make you grin uncontrollably from ear to ear. The adrenalin bounced off the walls for two hours after that, but what was most apparent, reassuringly so, was that the protagonists � Jagger, Ron Woods, Watts and Richards � have a passion, commitment and genuine love of the job that seems hardly diminished after 40 years (27 in Woods's case) together.
Yes they are old, but in rock 'n' roll terms old is no longer past it. As Richards says, if blues artists can play till they drop, then surely the Rolling Stones can too. The Rolling Stones play Melbourne tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday and Brisbane on March 4 and 5.
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CHAT ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [
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