Rock Hall to launch massive 'Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Satisfaction' on Memorial Day weekendBy Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer
on February 27, 2013
The Rolling Stones are planning a tour to mark their 50th anniversary in the rock 'n' roll business, and the Rock Hall is planning a major exhibition to do the same.
"Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Satisfaction" opens at the museum on Friday, May 24, the day that launches the Memorial Day weekend.
"It's been in the works for close to a year," said Greg Harris, the new president and CEO of the Rock Hall, in a telephone interview.
"The greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world is worthy of a showcase exhibit, and to be able to do it in their 50th year is great."
Well, TECHNICALLY, 2013 is the band's 51st year, having formed in London in 1962 with an original lineup that featured Mick Jagger on vocals and harmonica, Brian Jones on guitar, Ian Stewart on piano, Keith Richards on guitar, Bill Wyman on bass and Charlie Watts on drums.
Jones drowned in 1969 and Wyman retired in 1993. Stewart was dismissed from the band in 1963, but remained as road manager and occasional studio musician. He died in 1985.
Jagger, Watts and Richards are still with the band, which now includes guitarist Ronnie Wood.
The exhibit will take up the top two floors in the Rock Hall, in the space that previously held exhibits dedicated to "Women Who Rock" and Bruce Springsteen. It now features an exhibit paying homage to the Grateful Dead, which will close March 24.
The exhibit will include personal items from the Stones, as well as items from privately held collections, the Rock Hall said.
Harris said a curator from the museum was in London last week, hand-selecting items from the Stones' own storage spaces. A complete list isn't available now, but a partial accounting includes some of Richards' guitars, a drawing by Watts that was featured in a program sold on the Stones' 1966 U.S. tour and the band's 1963 publishing agreement.
A Richards jacket worn on the cover of the band's "Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)" album is already on the premises, and it had Harris excited. But he laughed when asked if tempted to try it on.
"When I first saw it, well, it's an artifact," Harris said. "When you hold it, like any great museum artifact, there's an energy there, there's a power there."
Most of the artifacts are on loan to the museum, and Harris said the Rock Hall is "working directly with the Stones, Mick, Keith, Ronnie, Charlie and their management."
After the exhibit's yearlong run in Cleveland, Harris said it's likely to go on the road.
Harris sees traveling exhibits as an outreach program, one that will play to bigger audiences and make the museum more relevant to a wider group. And they are a plug for the museum itself, he said.
"We think that when people see traveling exhibits, they don't say, 'I've seen it. I'm not going to go to Cleveland.'"
Rather it's an allurement to draw people to "the mother ship," Harris said.
Whether any of the Stones will actually be at the opening is still up in the air.
"It's too soon to predict any of that," Harris said. "All signs point to a big [Rolling Stones] tour, and we have no idea how the tour sequences with the exhibition. We're optimistic that at some point, they will come by to see the exhibition."
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