A Rolling Stones concert is a battle between man and machine. On one hand, the band makes some of the simplest, most primal rock-and-roll around; after 30 years, they continue to play basic blues progressions and write swaggering songs about their virility. On the other hand, the Stones have developed one of the most intricate, technologically advanced stage shows in the business. One of the hardest tasks for the design team that puts together the concerts is to negotiate between the Stones' raw energy and the computer-controlled precision of their technology.
High above the crowd at the concert on Monday night at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Patrick Woodroffe, who designed the lighting and directs the visuals for the Stones' tour, discussed this predicament, 10 minutes before show time. "We're trying to find a balance between the technical and the emotional," he explained. "Without detracting from the band, we have to make the greatest spectacle in rock."
Mr. Woodroffe and a small crew of engineers stood around three lighting boards and several computer screens on the second floor of the control booth. The booth, covered with a black hood and sitting in the middle of the stadium, concealed a sound-mixing desk, lighting boards and video-editing equipment, as well as V.I.P.'s like the clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger and Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, the opening act.
The Stones had just added an extra song to their set -- "Brand New Car," from their brand new album, "Voodoo Lounge" -- and Mr. Woodroffe, a top lighting designer whose past productions range from AC/DC and Phil Collins concerts to Keith Richards's garden and the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, had to borrow a lighting scheme from another song. Things could have been worse. At the concert the night before, the computer that stores and executes all the lighting instructions malfunctioned. The schematics for every song had to be reloaded, delaying the concert by 15 minutes.
A Stones concert is a work of precision: on their set list is not just the titles of the 23 songs they perform, but the keys the songs are played in, the duration of each, down to the exact second, and the beats per minute. Mr. Woodroffe explained that Mick Jagger tends to speed up the songs when he's singing and Mr. Richards likes to slow them down when he's playing guitar, so they have to find a comfortable compromise during rehearsal.
The concert opened with "Not Fade Away," and garish green flames, pretaped videos and aqua-green lights, which matched Mr. Jagger's shirt, danced across the stage. Because of the stage design, there were no lights to the side or directly in front of the band. Instead, a cantilevered, futuristic-looking 95-foot-high tower holding two and a half tons of lighting equipment hung over the musicians like a giant beauty-salon hair dryer.
For fast rockers like "Start Me Up," the Stones were bathed in white; for ballads like "Memory Motel," it was dark purple. Mr. Woodroffe, who began discussing light design for the tour with Mr. Jagger, the drummer Charlie Watts and the set designer Mark Fisher in February, said he tried to enhance new songs with spectacular lights. "Sparks Will Fly," for example, was strengthened by a back wall of 960 small, individually controlled bulbs that flickered and waved in patterns.
Altogether, the lighting, which costs $100,000 a week, requires close to a million watts of electricity per concert.
After the show, Mr. Woodroffe walked onto the stage. He pointed out the not-very-private alcove where Mr. Jagger changed his outfits, the incense sticks that kept the stage smelling nice and an aloe plant sitting on the workbench where Mr. Richards's guitar accessories were kept.
Onstage, he met the group of roadies who have one of the most important jobs on the tour. In the few minutes that elapse between the coda to "Love Is Strong" and the introduction to "Monkey Man," they must deflate 14 very flammable 60-foot-high inflatable dolls before the flash pots used for "Monkey Man" ignite. A particular nuisance is an eight-armed doll of the Hindu god Shiva, known by crew members as "the fat chick." It takes six men to wrestle her to the ground. "We try to keep the show exciting and dangerous," Mr. Woodroffe explained.
The Rolling Stones are to perform the last of their four Giants Stadium shows tonight.
Instant Reflection
When the music died down at Woodstock '94, concertgoers with access to computer terminals and phone lines typed personal observations, opinions and reviews on the Internet, America Online, the Well and other computer networks and bulletin-board services. Others waited until after long rides home to post their takes on the 25th-anniversary festival. Their experiences ranged from miserable to life-affirming, and almost all of the postings provided a perspective absent from news reports.
Here are some words from the front retrieved from cyberspace. Keep in mind that most people on line use pseudonyms and that veracity is not a precondition for any of these messages. All typos, misspellings and punctuation quirks have been left intact.
Mud Person wrote: "You know haw Eskimos have some phenomenal number of words to describe different types of snow? Well, that's what we needed at Woodstock -- a new language . . . to describe the richness of mud. We had runny mud. Soupy mud. Gloppy mud and sticky mud. Grassy mud, creamy mud, chunky mud, sucking mud."
Jhoward witnessed violence, but had other priorities: "Did anyone see the naked guy punching people out near the bridge to the right of the North Stage?" . . . I'm still trying to figure out how he got his drugs into the show."
Capfit must have been standing elsewhere: "Despite horrendous conditions (crowding, mud, shortages, lines, awful sanitary conditions, you name it) people seemed almost uniformly good tempered an cool. i didn't witness a single angry personal exchange."
Sean, an employee at a food-concession stand, wrote about beer sales near the supposedly alcohol-free festival: "Places near the site are getting 30-40 bucks a case. . . . Cops are short tempered and tired looking. Garbage everywhere. Now we're looking like Woodstock."
I/I I I/I wrote about the band Nine Inch Nails: "nin got on stage covered from head to foot in mud, and totally rocked the house. . . . no, i didn't have a ticket, but when i arrived . . . the police were only checking weapons. they didn't care about tickets."
And Baldy wrote from Manhattan: "We're setting up the 'third' Woodstock tribute in my living room. . . . Baldy '94. . . . Two days of channel surfing, chinese food, and air conditioning."
