Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/Dr. Doyle/Rolling Stones/tour.txt

Text File | 1994-10-23 | 9KB | 164 lines

THE ROLLING STONES - TOUR BY TOUR

The lotus-shaped stage with the unfolding petals.

The giant phallus.

The colorful Kazuhide Yamazaki scrims.

The giant, inflatable "Honky Tonk Women."

The cherry pickers, crow's nests and fireworks.

The Rolling Stones don't just play concerts. They put on shows -- shows that
etch themselves into rock'n'roll history as innovative, flamboyant and, most
of all, memorable.

They tour in a big way, whether it's the size of the stage - the 250 x 130
foot monstrosity for the 1989 Steel Wheels tour -- or the number of fans, such
as the six million plus that saw the Stones perform during 1989-90.

Top that off with the music, 30 years of trend-setting rock from the early
Chicago blues covers to the new Voodoo Lounge. Clearly, as they launch their
12th tour of North America, the Stones stand firmly at the head of the
performing class.

In his autobiography, the late Bill Graham (the promoter who coordinated the
Stones' 1981 and '82 tours) proclaimed that "on any given night, they were the
very best rock and roll band in the world... Truthfully, they got to me every
night. They were that strong. Fucking monsters."

"They have this feeling that, as kind of a show band, they ought to get in
front of something unique rather than something generic," explains Mark
Fisher, designer of the Stones' much-lauded set for the 1989 Steel Wheels
North American tour and the 1990 Urban Jungle tour across Europe. Fisher was
also tapped to design this year's Voodoo Lounge set for the Stones' -- a
layout sure to set new standards in rock'n'roll concert staging.

"There's a history of it with the Stones; it must come from their natural
curiosity and adventurousness. They're very brave in the way they think;
they're very responsive to new ideas.

"So we always talk about what it is we're trying to do -- trying to imagine
what the band are, what they represent. It's a business of representing some
kind of background for them, something they feel comfortable standing in front
of that reflects their values and their times."

As Fisher points out, the Stones are not a band that shies away from creating
spectacles and from daring to step out on a limb in order to create their
magic. They came up like other bands, playing package tours and performing
with woefully inadequate amplification that was usually ill-equipped to
overcome the screams of the Stones' rabid fans.

The Stones took charge in 1969, touring North America as headliners with full
control over their shows. Ike & Tina Turner whipped the crowds up, and the
Stones rolled them into ecstasy with one of the most fondly remembered tours
in rock'n'roll history -- performances that made Rolling Stone magazine's 20th
anniversary list of the top rock 'n' roll tours of all time.

$ * *

If anything, the raves were even greater when the Stones stepped out to tour
again in 1972.  Supporting their classic album Exile on Main Street-- and with
Stevie Wonder both opening the shows and jamming during the Stones' set -- the
Stones rocked to a crescendo that Rolling Stone critic Timothy Ferris called
"an explosion of the aura of music, a journey in the rarefied highlands of
pure white sound and rhythm."

The ' 72 tour also found the Stones innovating with production. Their arena
shows employed 150 speakers and 16,000 watts of power -- staggering back then.
To light the band, designer Chip Monck positioned a 16 x 40 foot mirror above
the Stones, bouncing six spotlights off them to simultaneously spotlight and
backlight the band, creating a striking new visual effect.

The Stones took another step forward in 1975, employing their famed lotus
stage. When concert-goers entered the arena, the stage was folded -- a bloom
ready to burst. The houselights went down and the stage "petals" slowly
unfolded to reveal Mick Jagger lying on one while Keith Richards played the
opening chords of "Honky Tonk Women."

The ' 75 tour will also be remembered for the giant, inflatable phallus that
Jagger rode and pummeled during "Star, Star" (aka "Starfucker"). In the
mid-'70s, it was so shocking that some cities banned the Stones from using it
during their shows; now the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has asked to include
the phallus in its exhibit space in Cleveland.

THE 1978 tour employed another body part for its stadium shows -- a giant
version of the Stones' lip'n'tongue logo. The lips towered above and spread
below the band, with giant tonsils visible at the back of the stage; the
tongue stretched out from the mouth to form a ramp that allowed the musicians
to work a little closer to the crowd.

In 1981, the Stones came up with their best indoor-outdoor combination yet.
The stadium stage was bordered by colorful scrims designed by Yamazaki
featuring cartoonish images of guitars, cars, and the United States flag. The
arena stage was nicknamed "the electric mouse" because of a module that held
the drum kit and amplifiers and traveled along a rail at the rear of the
stage, providing a constantly shifting orientation that gave fans different
views of the band throughout the show.

The '81 show closed with one of the Stones' finer feats -- Jagger cruising
over fans' heads in a cherry picker as the band cranked through "Jumping Jack
Flash."

With all that as a legacy, it's no wonder that the Stones were looking for
something even bolder when they returned to the stage in 1989. In his proposal
for Steel Wheels, designer Fisher "attacked the established form of a band
playing on a stage between two towers of speakers and looked for something
different." What emerged was a fully realized architectural design in which
every nook and cranny afforded the Stones a new way to decorate their
performances.

The Steel Wheels stage glistened and gleamed in a post-industrial spookiness.
Blinding pyrotechnics brought the Stones on stage for "Start Me Up." There
were giant, inflatable dolls for "Honky Tonk Women" (and inflatable dogs for
the "Urban Jungle " tour in Europe). Mick ascended a crow's nest 100 feet in
the air to sing "Sympathy for the Devil."

The Steel Wheels tour also introduced another new lighting effect -- an
eight-foot square "block" of 64 lights that washed the stage in hues rather
than what Fisher calls the "inky blinky" lighting that's standard on rock
shows.

Most importantly, all this was done without eclipsing the most important part
of the show -- the Stones.

"With a band like the Stones, that's no problem," Fisher says. "Their stage
presence is extreme. They could do a show, obviously, without any of this
stuff. So when I design a stage for them, the only action on stage is the
band. They're the only thing that's moving around. You don't need anything
else; they're the center and the focus."

THAT leads us to "Voodoo Lounge," which Fisher and the Stones have been
working on since the beginning of the year. Fisher says the primary goal was
"not to do anything like what we did before." The Voodoo Lounge production is
another massive undertaking: 220 feet wide, 92 feet wide and with 170 tons of
steel. A structure in the middle of the stage, dubbed "The Cobra," holds 1,000
lights as it hovers over the Stones. Inflatable figures are used again, but in
a markedly different way than the Steel Wheels and Urban Jungle tours.

"Steel Wheels was a bit more referential, you could look at it and say, 'This
reminds me of a steel mill or an oil refinery'," says Fisher. "I don't think
many people are going to stand in front of this and announce what it reminds
them of; they've never seen anything like it to be reminded of."

The stage itself will be a changing affair, giving the Stones different
scenarios in which to play. "We'll use the lighting and scenery to make it not
just one huge structure all of the time," says Keith. "We can change it, make
it a little smaller at times, gigantic at others. What we're looking for is a
bit of dynamics instead of a great, big grand slam show all the time."

Whatever emerges, it's likely Voodoo Lounge will be a big hit for the Stones,
yet another one of those productions that concert-goers recall years later.

"The fact that you can talk about this stuff five years later or more shows
how significant it is," Fisher says. "It also shows how seriously the Stones
take their live presentation."

"I see the Voodoo Lounge stage taking a different direction," Mick Jagger
explains, "This time it's more clean and open than before and is a metaphor
for turn of the century technology.  The trick is not to let the stage
overwhelm the music. I hope we've achieved this."