I love the Australian shows. I have often thought about this: the pics from the tour all seem to be small-ish venues, small-ish crowds, daylight gigs; and I recall reading that the press conferences didn't g so well for lack of interest.
But the music is so redhot. They must have been flat-out unable to play a bad gig. The stars were lined up right: age, personnel,chemistry, the songlist was perfect:warhorse material, that hadn't been played to death yet, and was at it's prime; Keith had not been consumed by the H yet. Taylor was soaring, Jagger wasn't barking, and Nicky was still aboard.

I do wonder what exactly happened in their world in between the end of US 72 and the beginning of the Far East tour-leg. Besides the haircut, I mean.
Jagger already wore make-up in '72, but I always see that tour as the culmination of the '68 Stones. It's the last leg in a push that began with Jimmy Miller, Banquet.
So '73 feels different to me.

Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
I love the Australian shows. I have often thought about this: the pics from the tour all seem to be small-ish venues, small-ish crowds, daylight gigs; and I recall reading that the press conferences didn't g so well for lack of interest.
But the music is so redhot. They must have been flat-out unable to play a bad gig. The stars were lined up right: age, personnel,chemistry, the songlist was perfect:warhorse material, that hadn't been played to death yet, and was at it's prime; Keith had not been consumed by the H yet. Taylor was soaring, Jagger wasn't barking, and Nicky was still aboard.

I do wonder what exactly happened in their world in between the end of US 72 and the beginning of the Far East tour-leg. Besides the haircut, I mean.
Jagger already wore make-up in '72, but I always see that tour as the culmination of the '68 Stones. It's the last leg in a push that began with Jimmy Miller, Banquet.
So '73 feels different to me.

The Autumn '73 European Tour wasn't too shabby either...

Very true. But now you got Billy Preston, you got the GHS tracks in the setlist, a different sound. Europe 73 is maybe as good as they ever got, but Australia 73, as short as it was, has it's very own identity. Very compressed, no reverb at all.
The boots all sound odd. Maybe it's because they were all standing upside down?

Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
I love the Australian shows. I have often thought about this: the pics from the tour all seem to be small-ish venues, small-ish crowds, daylight gigs;

Smallish venues? They played the regular venues for any rock band of the day, with an average of 20.000 in attendance, just as average on the '72 tour.

Mathijs

The Perth show is a killer, I also like that dry sound, even though the reverb on for instance the Brussels '73 serves the sound right.

Quote
Mathijs

Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
I love the Australian shows. I have often thought about this: the pics from the tour all seem to be small-ish venues, small-ish crowds, daylight gigs;

Smallish venues? They played the regular venues for any rock band of the day, with an average of 20.000 in attendance, just as average on the '72 tour.

Mathijs

+1 at the time, the US and Canada were the only countries to have an abundance of massive 15,000+ basketball and hockey indoor sports arenas, which is why a lot of the Australia '73 shows took place at outdoor tennis courts and outdoor stadiums. I've read somewhere how Mick and Robert Plant complained at the time that England had no such venues except Earl's Court.

FYI: anyone else think it's slightly ironic they played 2 Sydney shows at--of all places---an outdoor racetrack so soon after Altamont--especially when Mick said the reason they didn't play the big outdoor stadiums in 72 was to avoid "a repeat"? Talk about a lack of suitable venues resulting in real compromise.

Quote
Mathijs

Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
I love the Australian shows. I have often thought about this: the pics from the tour all seem to be small-ish venues, small-ish crowds, daylight gigs;

Smallish venues? They played the regular venues for any rock band of the day, with an average of 20.000 in attendance, just as average on the '72 tour.

Mathijs

Well, that's where the -ish comes in. 20,000 out in broad daylight, in a venue where it's real function is still very much in evidence; in other words - where not much effort has been made to create a suitable "rock'n roll atmosphere" - is a tough sell.It feels like a much smaller crowd. I would say that playing to 5,ooo fans in a sweaty hall, under red lights, with hash smoke and incense swirling, is going to feel like a proper gig.
Pulling out the belt for the "Midnight Rambler" routine in 110 degree afternoon heat, under a sun umbrella, and the crowd noise getting lost in the outside space is going to feel like a small-ish" gig.
But that is my point: that never the less the Stones delivered on all cylinders. I know bands that would done the work, the minimum to get by, and gone home.

Playing outdoor venues in February in Oz - got to give it to them - man, the heat the Aussie summer!!The Great Rockman was there!Would have been absolutely fantastic to have seen them.

Quote
Palace Revolution 2000

Quote
Mathijs

Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
I love the Australian shows. I have often thought about this: the pics from the tour all seem to be small-ish venues, small-ish crowds, daylight gigs;

Smallish venues? They played the regular venues for any rock band of the day, with an average of 20.000 in attendance, just as average on the '72 tour.

Mathijs

Well, that's where the -ish comes in. 20,000 out in broad daylight, in a venue where it's real function is still very much in evidence; in other words - where not much effort has been made to create a suitable "rock'n roll atmosphere" - is a tough sell.It feels like a much smaller crowd. I would say that playing to 5,ooo fans in a sweaty hall, under red lights, with hash smoke and incense swirling, is going to feel like a proper gig.
Pulling out the belt for the "Midnight Rambler" routine in 110 degree afternoon heat, under a sun umbrella, and the crowd noise getting lost in the outside space is going to feel like a small-ish" gig.
But that is my point: that never the less the Stones delivered on all cylinders. I know bands that would done the work, the minimum to get by, and gone home.

But don't forget that any major band in those days where playing 20.000 seaters maximum. The '70 tour was made up of 5000 to 10000 seater halls, the '72 tour between 10.000 and 20.000 (except JFK), and even the '75 tour was mostly 15.000 to 20.000 seaters. And most of these halls wheren't meant for concerts -they where sports arena's, or used for agricultural fairs.

In '70 and '71 there where many bigger places to could play, but the Stones simply wheren't big enough. They could not fill the Rotterdam Ahoy in '70 so they played the (truly awfull) Rai in Amsterdam.

Mathijs

Europe '73 was great in many ways, but it was a little more decadent, a bit more auto pilot than Australia. Taylor was noodling more, Keith's playing was more basic rhythm guitar, Nicky was gone, etc. And in the end -- though I like Goats Head Soup -- Australia got a better setlist, IMO.

All in all, the Oz tour was a bit more dynamic, tight and inspired.

Mathijs, you're so literal! LOL That is why you are the guitar tech wiz. Okay - 15,000 then. My point was more about 'big crowd' and 'small crowd'.

That surprises me: that they couldn't fill a bigger venue in Rotterdam in '70. Could any rock'n roll act fill the Ahoy in '70?
Maybe there just weren't as many rock'n roll fans around yet. Had not become the big business yet. And like you say: many of these venues that got pulled into double duty for concerts, were originally built for different events.

Quote
Mathijs

But don't forget that any major band in those days where playing 20.000 seaters maximum. The '70 tour was made up of 5000 to 10000 seater halls, the '72 tour between 10.000 and 20.000 (except JFK), and even the '75 tour was mostly 15.000 to 20.000 seaters. And most of these halls wheren't meant for concerts -they where sports arena's, or used for agricultural fairs.

In '70 and '71 there where many bigger places to could play, but the Stones simply wheren't big enough. They could not fill the Rotterdam Ahoy in '70 so they played the (truly awfull) Rai in Amsterdam.

Mathijs

?

The new Rotterdam Ahoy opened in january 1971. Prior to that Ahoy had a temporary accommodation at the famous Heliport, that got closed in April 1970. (Hendrix played there in '67 for a 3 or 4 thousand people). So Ahoy wasn't available anyway at 10/09/70... The Rolling Stones played the old sports in Amsterdam. According to several internet sources, 20.000 (?) crazy fans attended that show. That wouldn't be bad for a 1970 Rockband.

Quote
MadMax
The Perth show is a killer, I also like that dry sound, even though the reverb on for instance the Brussels '73 serves the sound right.

The sound of a (bootleg)recording doesn't tell me anything about how the Stones actually sounded...

The Sydney show from that tour is about as good as they ever played live. That one's a smoker!

So do we know what they did collectively once the US Tour ended? I'm trying to get a feel for what went down in their crazy lives in those months gearing up for more touring; in a way a continuation, on other hand very different.
Wer they in UK? Experiencing TRex mania? Or in Jamaica?

Chip Monck left the Stones before Australasian tour!


In excerpts from
Chip Monck: “Grandfather of Rock and Roll Productions”
By Kevin M. Mitchell

Up next was Altamont, the infamous misguided attempt to re-create Woodstock at a raceway in San Francisco. Hells Angels, in addition to murdering a man, stole the famous carpeting that covered the stage. When Monck caught the gentleman doing it, he tried to smooth talk him out of it. Said gentleman responded by knocking out a handful of Monck’s teeth via the butt of a pool cue. Monck, not one to give up, simply showed up at the house of the stolen soft goods with a case of brandy and sweet-talked his way into retrieving the precious stage prop.

But the more important, more successful gig with the Stones was to come.

Stansfield, currently of Patrick Stansfield & Associates, first met Monck when Stansfield worked for Bill Graham in the early 1970s, and was tour manager for a Crosby Stills Nash & Young tour in 1971 with Monck as the lighting director.

“I was entranced [by Monck] because he’s very flamboyant, and already had this reputation of being a conceptual genius. I was bowled over by him and his mastery of technical terms.” Stansfield then launches into a dead-on impersonation of Monck’s accent and speaking style, ordering a replacement part and being very specific. “He’s Mr. Nomenclature.”

Kidding aside, Stansfield and Monck bonded immediately because they both were passionate that the art of what they did was in the details. “The phrase ‘good enough for rock and roll’ drove us both nuts,” Stansfield tells. “We did not want to fly by the seat of our pants—we wanted to know.” He adds that they were the first people who really advanced shows and says that Monck liked him because Stansfield got into the number of seats, the type of power, the door heights, the stage depth.

Stansfield says he “wiggled onto the ’72 Rolling Stones tour.” Historically, in our industry, this is the tour that launched the period when tours became events. Preproduction, staging, better lighting and sound, special effects (however quaint by today’s standards)—the bar was raised forever on this tour.

Stansfield still can see Monck stalking the spot operators and shouting out cues, then on stage, at the piano, cueing from there. Specific cues are still vivid.

“Going into ‘Street Fighting Man,’ we had a big truss with probably 100 PAR-cans with gels, on a hydraulic lift,” Stansfield recalls. “The lift would bring down the lights, and we’d skitter on and pull the gels off [by hand], so when it went up again, it would all be blazing white. It was a huge effect, a big part of the show… a pre-technical color change. Now, you’d just flip a switch and it would all be white, but in those days, that’s not how it happened.”

There was a breach in their friendship when the Stones used a legal mark against Monck to fire him and keep him from continuing with the tour on to Australia. Monck: “It was February 8th, 1973, and I’d done advance for the show in Australia, but when I get to Honolulu, I’m told that my prior [drug offense] has come up in the Commonwealth record, a record shared by the U.K., Canada, and Australia. So they decided there is only one drug offender who gets to go to Australia and it has to be Keith [Richards]; I couldn’t understand [their choice],” he laughs. (The “drug offense” in question was being caught with a single joint in Canada after doing the Monterey Pop Festival earlier. He was thrown in the slammer for six days.)

“It made it easy for them to kiss me goodbye,” he shrugs. “But I just went on and worked with Peter Gabriel.”

Stansfield took over Monck’s duties when they left him on the beaches of Hawaii. “It was like a military operation, a field promotion, and I was brash enough to take it. He was very hurt,” said Stansfield. The awkwardness led to a period when the good friends didn’t speak to each other for eight years before finally burying the hatchet. “It made us both sad [to not be on speaking terms], and we were both happy when we became friends again.”

Quote
Amsterdamned

Quote
Mathijs

But don't forget that any major band in those days where playing 20.000 seaters maximum. The '70 tour was made up of 5000 to 10000 seater halls, the '72 tour between 10.000 and 20.000 (except JFK), and even the '75 tour was mostly 15.000 to 20.000 seaters. And most of these halls wheren't meant for concerts -they where sports arena's, or used for agricultural fairs.

In '70 and '71 there where many bigger places to could play, but the Stones simply wheren't big enough. They could not fill the Rotterdam Ahoy in '70 so they played the (truly awfull) Rai in Amsterdam.

Mathijs

?

The new Rotterdam Ahoy opened in january 1971. Prior to that Ahoy had a temporary accommodation at the famous Heliport, that got closed in April 1970. (Hendrix played there in '67 for a 3 or 4 thousand people). So Ahoy wasn't available anyway at 10/09/70... The Rolling Stones played the old sports in Amsterdam. According to several internet sources, 20.000 (?) crazy fans attended that show. That wouldn't be bad for a 1970 Rockband.

I thought Ahoy opened in January 1970, not '71. In any way -with the old Ahoy with only one ring it held 14.000 or so. It wasn't until the renovation and the addition of the second ring that the capacity went to 18.000. I know they looked for different places at first, like the bigger Brabanthallen, but had to settle for the Rai. They weren't allowed to stay at The Doelen hotel by the way, they had to stay in Utrecht.

Concerning the Rai -no way that 20.000 people can fit in the hall they played. And, they did not play at the far end of the hall, but to one of the sides of the hall. The hall did not change a bit since then, and I would estimate a maximum capacity of 6.000 to 7.000.

Mathijs

I thought Ahoy opened in January 1970, not '71. In any way -with the old Ahoy with only one ring it held 14.000 or so. It wasn't until the renovation and the addition of the second ring that the capacity went to 18.000. I know they looked for different places at first, like the bigger Brabanthallen, but had to settle for the Rai. They weren't allowed to stay at The Doelen hotel by the way, they had to stay in Utrecht.

Concerning the Rai -no way that 20.000 people can fit in the hall they played. And, they did not play at the far end of the hall, but to one of the sides of the hall. The hall did not change a bit since then, and I would estimate a maximum capacity of 6.000 to 7.000.

<Mathijs>


That's my point. No doubt they could have done 10 sold out shows in a row, regardless the venue. They where more than big enough.

I don't know Xactly how many people actually could get into the old sports in Amsterdam, as the hall has changed a bit since then:
It got teared down in 1975.

Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
So do we know what they did collectively once the US Tour ended? I'm trying to get a feel for what went down in their crazy lives in those months gearing up for more touring; in a way a continuation, on other hand very different.
Wer they in UK? Experiencing TRex mania? Or in Jamaica?

Wasn't after the 72' tour that Keith went to Switzerland and learned how to ski?

the stones werent big enough in 70/71 to play a bigger hall???

its laughable how history is renovated on the internet.they brought 300,000 people to hyde park for a free show in 1969 but in 70/71 they werent big enough to get 20 or 30,000 to cough up a few quid to see them play.yeah,ok

the 71 tour was made up of small gigs intentionally as a kind of back to the roots/farewell to the u.k.

funny someone would bring up australia 73,i just downloaded a couple of those shows onto my itunes. great shows and some great boots of them.

Facts that make sense.

Quote
Amsterdamned
I thought Ahoy opened in January 1970, not '71. In any way -with the old Ahoy with only one ring it held 14.000 or so. It wasn't until the renovation and the addition of the second ring that the capacity went to 18.000. I know they looked for different places at first, like the bigger Brabanthallen, but had to settle for the Rai. They weren't allowed to stay at The Doelen hotel by the way, they had to stay in Utrecht.

Concerning the Rai -no way that 20.000 people can fit in the hall they played. And, they did not play at the far end of the hall, but to one of the sides of the hall. The hall did not change a bit since then, and I would estimate a maximum capacity of 6.000 to 7.000.

<Mathijs>


That's my point. No doubt they could have done 10 sold out shows in a row, regardless the venue. They where more than big enough.

I don't know Xactly how many people actually could get into the old sports in Amsterdam, as the hall has changed a bit since then:
It got teared down in 1975.

Which hall got torn down? The Rai? I was there three weeks ago for an international trade show.

Mathijs

I'am sorry, nobody is perfect. Below a few minutes Amsterdam history, the old Rai building, teared down in '75
Ive never seen it before. I thought they played there.






It says 20.000 people:
[www.angelfire.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-08-16 12:42 by Amsterdamned.

Quote
Amsterdamned
I'am sorry, nobody is perfect. Below a few minutes Amsterdam history, the old Rai building, teared down in '75
Ive never seen it before. I thought they played there.






It says 20.000 people:
[www.angelfire.com]

Indeed nobody is perfect.

The demolished building in the clip is a completely different building. This was the old Raai (with double A) in the Ferdinand Bol, which was replaced by the new Rai at the Europaplein in the early 60's.

When the old Raai was replaced by the new Rai it worked as a sports center until it was demolished in '75 to make place for awful concrete buildings. I know you are from Amsterdam: it's the old pensioner’s home behind the Okura, between the Jozef Israelskade en Cornelis Troostplein.

The new Rai at the Europaplein is a large middle section, with eleven seperate smaller buildings around it. The largest hall (the middle section) has a capacity of something like 10.000 (this is where the Top Gear show was last year), and the other halls vary in size by sliding doors that can be locked.

When the Stones played, there weren't eleven but four or five halls. These old halls can be recognized by the structures holding up the roof. These are much like trees. The Stones played the hall at the right entrance of the center building, and this hall has a capacity of around 6.000 max. I understand from people who where there, that the gate at the entrance was pulled up by the crowd, and many people without tickets went in. Still, the hall simply can't hold anymore than say 7000 people.

Mathijs
By the way, I remembered the reason the Stones played in the Rai: this was arranged by Paul Acket, the famous impressario of the North Sea Jazz festival, and the guy who booked the Stones and the Beatles in the early 60's. He was a share holder of the Rai, and had arranged previous concerts of the Stones in the Netherlands.

I'll check it out next week.