| September 14th, 2005 11:15 AM |
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1460497.htm
Broadcast: 14/09/2005
Stones keep rolling on
Reporter: Robin Denselow
KERRY O'BRIEN: For more than four decades, they've been touted as the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world. Now the Rolling Stones are boldly going where no '60s popstars have ever gone before. They've just embarked on yet another gruelling world tour, featuring more than 100 concerts and lasting well over a year. Not bad for a group with three members in their 60s. They've also released their first new album in almost a decade, hailed as their best since the glory days of the '70s. What keeps the grandfathers of rock going and could this really be the last time? Robin Denselow of the BBC's 'Newsnight' program caught up with the Stones in Boston for this exclusive report.
ROBIN DENSELOW: It's just after 8 o'clock in Fenway Park, Boston, the oldest baseball stadium in America. Four cars with darkened windows arrive, carrying the oldest and most celebrated survivors in rock music history. As Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards puts it, he's on his way to the office. ROLLING STONES PLAY 'START ME UP' Keith's current office is a high-tech stage that weighs 500 tonnes and looks like a permanent housing structure. It's the first night of a brave remarkable tour in which a British band who started out playing blues in the early '60s set out to show they could overcome age and illness to prove they're still among the most successful live entertainers on the planet. ROLLING STONES: (Sings) * Start me up I'll never stop * They kept going, Keith Richards says, because there's no alternative.
KEITH RICHARDS, GUITARIST, ROLLING STONES: The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It's almost like harikari. I intend to live to be 100 and go down in history.
ROBIN DENSELOW: The Stones tour is also very big business. Tickets average $100 and far, far more for those standing on the balconies built on the stage and the band grossed an estimated $750 million on their last four world tours. This time round there's an extra reason for all of the seats to be sold. With three of the band in their 60s it's possible this could be the last extensive tour, especially as Charlie Watts, the Stones' 65-year-old drummer, has had treatment for throat cancer.
CHARLIE WATTS, ROLLING STONES DRUMMER: You get cleared for X amount of time. So that's what I've been told. The horrible thing about having anything like that is you can never be - I thought I was going to die because I thought that's what happened when you got cancer and it does if you don't get cured.
ROBIN DENSELOW: Does the tour worry you, the idea of --
CHARLIE WATTS: No. No. There's always worries with doing something. You're not allowed to be ill. I'm not talking about that sort of ill. You're not allowed to have a cold for the next year because you can't.
ROBIN DENSELOW: Ronnie Wood is the new boy. He's only been in the band for 30 years and in a unique position to watch the relationship between Jagger and Richards.
RONNIE WOOD, ROLLING STONES GUITARIST: There used to be atmospheres you could cut with a knife. "Oh, no. Oh, no, not you again." But those days are over. I think everybody is a lot more jocular and more professional and the music is getting better.
ROBIN DENSELOW: So Mick and Keith are getting on better than they used to?
RONNIE WOOD: Yeah, they are. They are getting on best ever.
ROBIN DENSELOW: What do you put that down to?
RONNIE WOOD: Maybe Mick is a bit happier now he's been knighted.
ROBIN DENSELOW: When Mick Jagger was knighted nearly two years ago, Keith Richards voiced his displeasure, clearly unhappy that a Rolling Stone should embrace the establishment. Keith has sometimes been fairly critical of you. He wasn't too happy when you accepted the knighthood, was he?
MICK JAGGER, SINGER, ROLLING STONES: No, I mean, he's not a happy person. (Laughs)
ROBIN DENSELOW: What do you mean?
MICK JAGGER: What I said. If you can't understand that, you can't understand anything.
ROBIN DENSELOW: So he's often critical of you then?
MICK JAGGER: He's not happy.
KEITH RICHARDS: I was surprised, actually, more than like whether I was happy or unhappy. Here is a guy that went to the London School of Economics for Christ sakes. He's not one for the hierarchy and I thought he should hang out for a peerage. (Laughs)
ROBIN DENSELOW: You thought he was getting a bit too --
KEITH RICHARDS: I thought that was a cheap shot. A damn knighthood, come on. You should be Lord.... you know what I mean. (Laughs) It was a shoddy award. Anyway, I wouldn't let that family near me with a sharp stick, let alone a sword.
(Sings) * You call yourself a Christian I think you're a hypocrite *
ROBIN DENSELOW: Yet it is Sir Mick Jagger who has written the most unexpected and controversial song on the new album. 'Sweet Neo-Con' is a real rarity for the Stones, a political song that's a head-on attack on the American right.
MICK JAGGER: My feeling for these last two or three years of this kind of politics from a very small, but very vociferous, powerful group of people.
ROBIN DENSELOW: Any one thing that sparked it off? Iraq or...
MICK JAGGER: There wasn't any one thing that sparked it off. I think you're always prepared to listen to people's points of view, but when you see they're not working you've got to speak up too.
KEITH RICHARDS: Very rarely do we touch on political subjects and I think some of the best ways we've done it is maybe 'Street-fighting Man' which were more like oblique but with this one he wants to go face-to-face, fine. I'm waiting for the counter-attack! (Laughs)
ROBIN DENSELOW: It was, it seems, Keith Richards' mistrust of anything to do with politics that kept the band from appearing at Live8 this summer.
KEITH RICHARDS: I just thought the connection between Geldof and the Labour Party policy about - look, it was just too tight, and I don't see the debt reduction as being - it's not going to feed the babes down there, baby. I mean, who is this gratifying and where are the Africans? Where was their say? I thought it was being stuck together too fast. I never had so much pressure in my life from so many knights of the realm. Whoa, boys, hold off. I'm busy. I can't afford the men or the materials.
ROBIN DENSELOW: So Mick and Bob were both trying to persuade you, were they?
KEITH RICHARDS: Oh, yeah. All the sirs had a bash. Believe me, every one of them. I wondered who was pulling the strings, if you know what I mean.
(Sings) * Honky-tonk, honky-tonk woman *
ROBIN DENSELOW: The Rolling Stones have survived against all of the odds. It is after all something of a miracle that Keith Richards is still playing considering his lifestyle in the early days. 23 years ago, when the band had already lasted for two decades, he gave 'Newsnight' a memorable and frank interview in a Paris bar.
KEITH RICHARDS: The very fact that I was a total junkie for almost 10 years leaves me now realising that it didn't worry me too much then because of the very nature of heroin. Nothing worries you. I carried a piece in those days.
ROBIN DENSELOW: How long did you carry a gun for?
KEITH RICHARDS: Until I stopped being a junkie. Until I didn't have to deal with that anymore. I'm not that way anymore - I don't have to be. I don't have to go and score. In those days, that was the way it was. I've recently retired from military combat. (Laughs) I don't want no more to do with fighting.
ROBIN DENSELOW: So how do you describe your lifestyle now?
KEITH RICHARDS: I'm a family man. I'm a grandfather, you know what I mean? I'm really a benign ol' chap.
ROBIN DENSELOW: 43 years on, the odd couple of rock 'n' roll are still going. Still writing new songs like 'Rough Justice' and with at least a year's worth of concerts ahead of them. So, could this really be the last tour? Charlie, of course, has been ill with cancer. There were stories this might be the last tour?
MICK JAGGER: I don't know. This is a long tour and I don't know what happens after this tour. I mean, I'm just starting this tour. I can't even think - I can't even get past Christmas really, to be perfectly honest.
KEITH RICHARDS: The way these guys are going at the moment, there is a pretty remote chance this is the last one, quite honestly. I'll let you know in a year or so when we get off the road, but at the moment these boys are ready to go. I can't believe it.
ROBIN DENSELOW: 100 more dates or so to go?
KEITH RICHARDS: Bloody teenagers, the whole lot of them. (Laughs) I'm trying to keep up with them.
(Sings) * Sweet justice You're going to have to trust me * |
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