The Rolling Stones
Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Tuesday November 19, 2014
By Martin Jones
Sure, they look ridiculous – like dehydrated refugees from a Jim Henson nightmare. And sure, Mick Jagger keeps one eye on a teleprompter reeling off song lyrics and suggested banter like “Anyone here from Mt Isa?” (Pity it didn’t offer suggestions on pronunciation).
HOWEVER. The Rolling Stones are still, maybe, dare I suggest, more than ever, a devastatingly potent rock and roll band. Completely comfortable in their own leathery skins, there are no illusions about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it – anymore. They have no weak new album to plug. They’re here to do (probably) a last lap of the Southern Hemisphere, wading through an unrivalled catalogue of hits… and they looked to be genuinely enjoying it.
The Stones also, it seems, have listened to reiterated pleas to strip out the pomp and hype and just play music. Because that’s precisely what they did last night. Besides a simple big screen backdrop and a large ‘tongue’ catwalk which enabled the band to wander out among their adoring fans at will, this gig was, for the most part, six guys on stage, playing their instruments in the most pure fashion. Virtually no guitar effects – just great sounding vintage guitars through great sounding amps. A very basic drum kit (Charlie Watts as unfussy as ever). A piano and organ (Chuck Leavell, what a player!) And a singer who has lost little of his infamous charisma, energy or vocal prowess, though over seventy years old!
No explosions! No stage props! Pretty much everything that was brought on stage was for the benefit of the music only – two saxophonists, two backup singers, a sitar, Mick Taylor for some showcase guitar cameos and a local choir (to present a truly momentous version of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’).
And it was loose! If Keith Richards got bored with a song, he finished it, whether the rest of the band were ready or not. The online “audience request,” ‘Silver Train’ was almost a trainwreck until everyone fell into place on the robust blues groove.
Richards’ trademark use of open tunings has come to serve him well in his arthritic old age. He only has to finger a couple of notes at a time to make a huge sound. And Wood is as dextrous as he ever has been.
Highlights for mine were: ‘Gimme Shelter’, vocalist Lisa Fischer sending the climax into another galaxy; an epic journey through ‘Midnight Rambler’ prominently highlighting Taylor’s guitar chops; a celebratory ‘Miss You’ to get the audience to their feet; and the climactic ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.
No other band today (now that the Allmans have gone) is playing rock music like this – this pure and old-fashioned, completely focused on the playing. I saw ex-Stones manager Sam Cutler in the audience. He was once reprimanded by Jagger and co for introducing them as “The Greatest Rock And Roll Band In The World.” Perhaps they should have dragged him up on stage and acknowledged his vision, for they have fulfilled that prophecy.
See Sam Cutler’s Facebook Post reprinted below, or head to: https://www.facebook.com/sam.cutler/posts/10205375755297208#>
Set List
Jumping Jack Flash
It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll (But I Like It)
You Got Me Rocking
Tumbling Dice
Silver Train (with Mick Taylor)
Bitch
Paint It Black
Honky Tonk Woman
You Got The Silver
Before They Make Me Run
Happy
Midnight Rambler
Miss You
Gimme Shelter
Start Me Up
Sympathy For The Devil
Brown Sugar
Encore:
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
TICKING OFF THE BUCKET LIST – ONE STEP AT A TIME – TAKING MY SONS TO SEE THE STONES:
By Sam Cutler
You know how it can sometimes be with bucket-list things. You wait so long for the damned things to eventuate that when they finally come around they can appear to be anti climactic. One finds oneself thinking stuff like did I REALLY wait seventeen years for this? That was how it was for me last night, outside the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, as I sat with my two sons waiting for the tickets to come downstairs to the box office from the Rolling Stones organisation.
We had purposely arrived early in order to avoid the crush and as a consequence we were virtually alone at the venue. Early is good, too early is ridiculous! We sat outside the entrance and I gloomily observed the few straggling punters that were arriving – they seemed to be exclusively middle-aged and all the women appeared to be wearing those impossible shoes designed by sadistic shoe-manufacturers to torture the slightly overweight into wobbling and looking ridiculous. Most of the men had those telltale rolls of flesh that illustrate belts tugged a little too tight around spreading waists. I counted a ponytail or two wandering behind the fuck-me shoes.
For an inexplicable reason I felt gloomy. I wanted to kick myself! I wandered to the box office and there was the ‘magic envelope’ with instructions hand-written on the front: go to VIP lounge and wait! We wandered into the venue which was rapidly filling up, I could see no one as young as my kids. Everyone, it seemed, was over fifty. I asked how much a program was, and I was told thirty dollars. I decided to save the money for a future meal. We wandered to the VIP lounge and to my sons’ delight there were sausage rolls and free beer – by the look on their faces you’d have thought they’d died and gone to heaven. A tip for the parents of teenaged boys – feed them beer and sausages and you’ll have friends for life!
I drank a Coke and began a conversation with the man sitting beside me, a Mr Daisuke Miya who had flown in from Tokyo with his wife. I told him that I was bringing my sons to see the band, and to my astonishment he told me that he knew who I was! How was this possible? He had read my Facebook page that very morning and he even knew the names of my sons – a lovely circularity ensued when I introduced a diminutive Japanese gentlemen to two hulking Aussies with beers in their hands and beards on their chins. Mr Miya seemed thrilled, as if he were being introduced to the Rolling Stones themselves, and he insisted upon photos being taken – an elaborate dance of the iPhones began with various permutations of phones and subject-matter and after a while everyone seemed satisfied. I reckoned about thirty pictures were taken by the time the gentleman was happy.
I was about to go back to being strangely gloomy when Charlie Watts appeared in what was by now a crowded VIP lounge. He wandered up to me with a grin, a tiny figure between to decidedly chunky security guards, and I introduced him to my sons Bodhi and Chesley, and we were instructed to “follow me” by a Charlie who keep staring up at my giant sons with an expression of detached bemusement. We followed behind him and entered a massive freight elevator, which descended down to the back stage area of the auditorium, and we were soon following Charlie through steel cages of equipment and all the detritus that accompanies a contemporary show-on-the-road. Just the empty show cases would require a couple of trucks to move them – acres of containers made walls of black behind which various technicians toiled. It looked like a strange vision of hell. I tried not to feel gloomy. Charlie led us to his dressing room.
In a small room the drummer for The Rolling Stones looked at my youngest son, who had been named in honour of a beloved friend of Charlie’s and mine (Chesley Millikin) and he asked if the two had ever met. Chesley (my son) explained the circumstances of his birth in Oxford England and drummer and son hit it off famously. Charlie stared up at Bodhi (six foot five) and asked how old he was, and shrugged with that bemused-Charlie look when he was told nineteen. Charlie’s sweet granddaughter appeared dressed in a little white chiffon number barely bigger than a handkerchief and the vibe noticeably improved amongst the teenaged contingent. Smiles got broader, eyes got sparklier, grins were grinning. Charlie asked us if we wanted to “go somewhere louder” and of course we agreed, and off we traipsed following his diminutive form across the corridor to a large room.
As we walked into the room there stood Keith, looking a trifle unsteady on his feet, and I wondered what he would say. Last time we had met (in 2003 at the same venue on their last Australian tour) he has said ,“ Sam Cutler, fuck me! Or should I say, ‘fuck you?’” I told him to “take your fucking choice, up to you,” and things kind of settled down. This time was to be different. Keith pointed to me from across the room, he wobbled, he focussed, he blinked and he focussed some more as he pointed a wobbly finger towards me. “Sam Cutler! Well isn’t this lovely?” and he stumbled forward and planted a solid kiss on what was more or less my cheek. He looked at my sons without knowing who they were and said to no one in particular, “He talks a lot of bullshit you know, but it’s lovely bullshit and we love him.” He hung round my neck as I introduced him to my sons and they looked down on a tiny Keith. “Big boys,” he said. “What you feed ‘em on?” and Charlie rolled his eyes whilst Keith introduced us to his wife Patty and “my rottweiller” Jane Rose (his assistant/manager), who immediately started taking pictures of everyone in those endless iPhone-sharing variations that we’d been through with the Japanese in the VIP lounge.
Mick Taylor wandered in and gave me a bear hug. He looked at my sons and after I introduced them said, “Sam was the first one to call us the greatest rock n roll band in the world,” and we all laughed when I said, “Yeah and you still haven’t paid me!” We talked of Hyde Park, and Mick and I winced as we remembered how embarrassingly out of tune the guitars had been, and Mick said he was stunned by the half a million people that greeted the band as they stepped on stage. It had all possessed a strangely ethereal air – the musicians couldn’t hear one another, the sun was baking hot, everything was ‘difficult’ and yet the audience received the whole event with a gratitude bordering upon rapture.
Ronnie appeared, and it was as if each successive Stone was smaller than his predecessor. Everybody laughed when I said that The Rolling Stones were the only band I had ever worked with that were, to a man, shorter than me !
Ronnie wobbled towards me in his bright green-suede shoes and we laughed about the lyric originally being green-suede shoes but how it sounded naff and was changed to blue. He put down his drink on the floor between his feet and leant dangerously forward and gave me a hug remaining remarkably careful not to kick over the drink and then wandered off to who knows where.
Keith was friendliness personified and we talked of people who had worked with him in the past, notably Tony Funches and Phil Kaufman, and Keith remembered them both clearly and demonstrated it by relating anecdotes covering both of the men. I was impressed. He looked fabulous. We are the same age and Keith looked as healthy as I have ever seen him, and more than that, he looked blissfuly happy. He told me he had six grandchildren and we spoke of his son Marlon who’s a long-distance friend of mine. Amiable, content, warm and gracious, erudite with a memory as sharp as ever, Keith was in the kind of shape that would make every one of his fans radiant with happiness and so pleased that he was obviously radiantly healthy and well. As we left he told my sons “look after the old motherfucker,” which was what I had done for him so many years before.
We wandered back to Charlie’s and lounged about whilst Charlie held his drum sticks and did some desultory warm ups. I stepped outside to chat quietly with Mick Taylor and the years rolled away. He wanted contact details and we exchanged emails and he told me how much it meant to him to be back in action and involved with The Stones. I felt so happy to be talking to him and we remembered a conversation we had back in the ‘60s about the difference between a road manager and a tour manager! We laughed and Mick once again told my sons as they emerged that I had named the band “the greatest” and we all giggled at the absurdity of it all. We left him puffing furiously on his cigarette in a room full of young ladies _ so that was where they all were! Having a fag with Mick! Charlie was talking to famous cricketer Jeff Thomson, Keith was getting ready, it was time to head up to the auditorium, and to smiles and with hugs all round we departed to find our seats and enjoy the show.
PART TWO
Having been ‘generously feted’ with my sons backstage by The Rolling Stones, I must admit I needed to sit down, take a deep breath, gather what was left of my senses, and generally ‘get it together’. I was more or less hornswoggled, and very slightly dizzy. My two strapping sons escorted the poor old fella (me) down into the bowels of the huge auditorium to our seats that were spectacularly close to the front – if they had been any closer we’d have been on stage! We were right against the barrier surrounding the walkway down which Mick would later prance his dance, and I was amused by the security as we sat down who instructed me and my sons (and some rather plump ladies) not on any account to mount the barricades. I mean! Who did they think we were? Revolutionaries? The audience that were closest to me looked barely capable of crossing a road, and the thought of them attempting to jump the barricade was patently absurd. Still, fair enough, middle-aged women have been known to do the most unlikely things when Mick is close by, though the high jump (I doubt) is one of them! We settled down. I regained my equilibrium. My sons went to the toilets to get rid of all the free beer they’d consumed. I looked around. Needless to say there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. The show was about to begin. My sons returned in the nick of time.
A man came out on stage, and at ear-splitting volume he screamed into the microphone, The Rolling Stones! The place went nuts, I sneered to myself at the amateur introduction that sounded like the pearly scream of an overly excited schoolgirl, and before any further thought was possible the band launched into a particularly ragged beginning to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’. “Jumping Jack Crash,” more like it, I giggled to myself. But no matter, The Stones were here, on stage, in front of us all, and what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief” kicked in with a happy vengeance.
“Who cares if it’s slightly wonky, who cares if it’s struggling to get going? It’s The Rolling Stones and we love them,” I could feel thousands of people saying to themselves, as a positive wave of generosity swept from the audience to the stage engulfing the musicians in joyful gratitude for their very presence. The audience were all smiling, the musicians were all smiling, hell even I was smiling! The beginning of the show felt like a form of mass inoculation where we were all once again protected from the cares of the world (if only for an evening) by a big shot of the medicine that is rock and roll.
Before I could get too analytical, The Stones launched into ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and it was a perfect reminder that this is happy escapism writ large – it’s fun, it ain’t that serious, and yes we like it, yes we do! I studied Mick’s face in glorious colour on the video screen – he looked a little unwell to me. A trifle stressed, but then that goes with the territory – it’s a stressful job being someone like Mick.
Before going on stage he isolates himself for several hours, sees no-one, and does the things that all singers have to do, namely warm ups (the voice is a muscle and needs to be cared for) and that search for the energy which is a necessary part and parcel of being a world famous entertainer. For years I have had my differences with him, but I have never failed to admire him – he is a giant amongst contemporary artists and where he gets the energy from is beyond me.
Mick strutted around on the stage, cajoling the troops and encouraging everyone and The Stones lumbered into ‘You Got Me Rocking’ and they were actually doing some rocking! Keith kept punching the air triumphantly and blocking out massively overpowering chords and grinning at Ronnie, whilst the impish Ronnie blasted away quite happily with a fag between his lips. (That’s a cigarette for you Americans reading this!)
By the time they hit ‘Tumbling Dice’, the band was together and sounding hot with the guitars at blistering volume and the keyboards cutting through everything and driving it crisply forward. Then Mick, in a slightly unconvincing explanation, announced that ‘the audience’ had chosen for the band to perform ‘Silver Train’, and off they went out of the station and I was happy as Larry. I have never heard them perform it live and whilst it was ragged it was wonderful, made more so by the presence of Mick Taylor invited on stage to add to the overall scrunching levels of the guitars. It was, needless to say, deafening!
‘Bitch’, and ‘Paint It Black’ rolled around the auditorium making me feel slightly dizzy, and with my sons exhorting me to “get up and shake my bootie,” I confess to feeling a trifle drained. Then the magic opening chords of ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ electrified the building, re-energised me, and off we went with the whole audience merrily joining in the chorus and band and everyone else grinning happily. I have never seen The Stones look so happy, feel so happy, and make it so obvious to one and all that they were genuinely having a ball.
Mick departed the stage and Keith stepped forward to the microphone to thunderous applause and we were treated to ‘You Got The Silver’ – Keith really is loved by the fans, and sings with a soulfulness that belies his sometimes overly cynical public persona. Feeling and warmth oozed from his vocals and he seemed genuinely gratified by the response he got. Keith, beneath it all, is actually a humble and decent guy, who never takes anything for granted, his smile when the audience applauded wildly was a million miles wide. His three songs were really special and the audience and band showered him with well –deserved affection. He reciprocated (again) with monumental grins and backslapping and hugs all round and it was obvious he was having a wonderful time.
Meanwhile, the enigmatic and ever-stylish Mr. Charlie Watts sat behind his diminutive drum set smiling ever so slightly at one and all and supervising the proceedings with that air of quiet authority that comes from long years of not only being the reliable anchor for the music, but equally the foundation upon which the whole edifice of The Rolling Stones rests. One can just see Charlie as the person in the outfit to whom the others turn in times of need – he has about him that certitude of the inherently good person, of the noble and the fine. It is so obvious that all the guys in the band not only love Charlie, but rely heavily on him on so many levels, and as he plays you can see him giving subtle encouragement to his mates with a slight inclination of his head, a shy smile, and even to Keith at one stage a shit-eating grin as they brought a number to a miraculously coordinated halt.
Sir Michael arrived back on stage and the band went into as raunchy a version of ‘Midnight Rambler’ as I have ever heard, with Mick sportingly inviting Mick Taylor up on stage. The Stones with three guitar players chugging along sounded as tight as a duck’s bum. Everyone knows a duck’s bum is watertight! Mick (the knight of the realm) seems to have cut back on the ‘theatricals’ in ‘Rambler’, and did a harp duet with Mick ‘Lord’ Taylor that would have rocked the aristocracy to its almost withered roots. It was stunning, with Mick blowing the harp and staring into the guitar player’s eyes with something that looked like adoration. He too cracked a smile as wide as the Nile when the collaboration ended and he resumed his front man duties, and M.T. simply returned to playing with the air of a man that CAN get some satisfaction.
‘Gimme Shelter’ shone with a rare distinction aided by Lisa Fischer’s belting and impassioned vocals. I remembered being in Los Angeles and hearing Merry Clayton sing the vocals as an overdub some forty six years ago, and to hear a woman of equal vocal dynamism backing Mick in a live venue was a treat that I’ll never forget. All the sense of impending disaster and of potential doom inherent in the song’s lyrics were emphasised with a frightening passion – one thing The Rolling Stones have learned is that “it’s just a shot away”. The dividing line between success and catastrophe is indeed a fine line, sometimes sofine as to be virtually invisible.
The music rolled on, the years slipped away. Between Chuck Leavell on keyboards and Charlie on the drums this very special rhythm and blues band were as tight and purposeful as any I have ever heard. It was a masterful performance. ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Satisfaction’ were my particular favourites, but then I loved it all. For all those who sneer at Keith and Ronnie’s relative skills on guitar all I can say is that you should have witnessed THIS performance. Ronnie’s slide guitar work on ‘Midnight Rambler’, Keith on ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ and ‘Gimme Shelter’, were as good as I have ever heard them. Mick Taylor was sublime, and it was noticeable that whenever he was on stage everyone ever so slightly lifted the game.
To borrow and slightly change a phrase of Picasso’s (referring to painting) I have to say that, “Talking about music is like dancing about Architecture.” You had to have been at this particular gig to dig where the music was coming from. To summarise, this is what I reckon. I have never seen the musicians looking healthier or happier or sounding better. It was a highlight of my life to have heard the concert and to have been able to introduce my sons to the band. (Thanks Charlie for arranging things). This ‘report’ would have been posted sooner but for the fact that today was my son’s High School graduation ceremony. Now how many sons can say they met the Rolling Stones AND graduated from High School all in the same week? And how many fathers can say they attended those two events and feel so grateful that they’re no longer sure as to whether they’re coming or going? As that other wonderful band, The Grateful Dead, used to say: “what a long strange trip it’s been!”
And here is a gallery of images from the Melbourne performance, courtesy of Mark Moray:
