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Four Stone Walls
Exhibit Number 2 :-








Judge foy yourselves:

Loads of other good Knebworth clips at the end of above performance -

Saturday Nigt Special
Whiskey Rock and Roller
SH Alabama

- all showing a wonderful day - and a damn hot band.

ChrisM, I gather you are not a great LS fan - but just one question - what is the guitar that the guitarist in red (Gary Rossington?) is playing?

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yes - Allen Collins - I think I now have my Rossingtons and Collinses sorted, thanx.

I undersatnd your tuning-speak. We older Stones' followers are familiar with ther SG / Les paul combination. But I've never seen/heard of an Explorer. A rarity? Not one owned by Keith or Ronnie I should think? But a Collins' favourite, it seems.
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Collins main guitar through out most of the '70's was a Gibson Firebird. Knebworth is the earliest gig (chronologically speaking) that I've ever seen him play an Explorer. From Knebworth on through the plane crash in '77, he used the Explorer as his main axe. He also used a Strat some and some kind of double cutaway Gibson (Melody Maker? Les Paul Junior?) at some gigs during the band's last year.

Other notable guitarists who played Gibson Explorer's at one time or another include Eric Clapton, who played them occasionally on his mid-70's tours and can be seen playing one in clips from the 1983 A.R.M.s concert in on Youtube, and Blackfoot guitarist Rickey Medlocke who later joined Skynyrd after Collins' death.

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Logie says that 'common knowledge' (my expression) has it that the reason they were so late is cos Keith had been in no fit state to play earlier.

The reason it was 'sloppy' is that Jagger never got the crowd going. I wasn't that far from the stage. He tried early on to get people clapping as he stood on the tip of the stage's tongue - but he got very little response. He and the band just weren't doing it for them. I think that he then soon lost interest. This should have been a culmination, a climactical celebration of the '76 tour.

It was certainly fun to get the surprise numbers from an 'incredibly long list'. But they were rather like separate set-pieces. The show did not gel or flow or build - it just sort of stayed on one level never reaching any sort of intensity - no feeling of excitement that you did get at some of the '76 shows.

It was just the casual way they went from one number to the next. Yup, the soundboards sound ok - but that's not what you heard in the crowd. Perhaps my expectations were too high but in spite of how late it was when they started (2 a.m.?) I really had woken up and was raring to go. The opener (Satisfaction) was a nice surprise but it didn't grab you the way it can even these days when it's played predictably at nearly every show.

I was in my late teens and a 'hardened' fan of six years standing. I met someone in the 1980s who had been 16 when he saw them at Knebworth, (and btw this guy really liked to 'go for it' - he should have been putty in their hands). He said what struck him at the time was who how 'unprofessional' they were. i.e. the casual, sloppiness previously referred to. You can say now that that is part of their charm. But until '75-76 it had not been a charactersitic of their performances. They hadn't become the Greatest R&R band by being casual/sloppy/unprofessional. They'd (deservedly) earned their laurels from '69 to '73 by being tight, wild, generally full-on, with high calibre guitars and an all-round performance that was disciplined in the euphoric chaos it could create.

btw, as others have mentioned, it was an incredibly long, hot day (of the longest, hottest summer on record). Conversely, it was a very cold night. So people were both tired and cold. Perhaps the Stones were tired too - they really didn't exude life, passion and enthusiasm.

In summary, you can generally tell when a band is fired up and 'on form'. The Stones weren't that night. Lynyrd Skynyrd certainaly were that day - and did get people 'going' - they set the day alight.

And Silver Dagger is right - some great gear 'on offer'! - in the days of the 'quid deal'! (A great time was had by all at the adjacent campsite!)