I am bringing on the following questions I have got by e-mail:

Question:

I'm wondering if you could help me with a question I have since a long long time about the urban jungle tour I attended in France Parc des Princes.

The stage design was far different compared to the steel wheels tour. By the way, watching the Stones at the Max DVD (captured in europe) the stage design seems to be the former US one and not the one newly designed for Europe ? That bugs me !

Do you know if the two stage design were involved, do I make a mistake on dates/tours or wathever?

My reply:

The 1989 shows were STEEL WHEELS. When they took it to EUROPE they changed stage design and tour brand into URBAN JUNGLE.

When Keith cut his finger on a guitar string in UK during the summer of 1990 they had to cancel Cardiff, rescheduled to the week after, and also they moved two of the five Wembley shows to August. For the two August London/Wembley shows they brought the Steel Wheels stage and the IMAX team to Wembley so that they could make a concert movie.

[en.wikipedia.org]

More questions:

Surprisingly the two stages US and EUR were touring during at least the second half of the tour !

Live at the Max is filmed in Turin and Berlin as well

[en.wikipedia.org]

and stage design remains the US one on screen
US for Turin :

[www.rollingstonesitalia.com]

EUR for Roma a couple of days earlier : [www.rollingstonesitalia.com]

Did they finally needed two stage to keep the remaining schedule on track ...
Was it a commercial opportunity to film with US design for the success of the movie in the US ...

There might be an obvious reason for the Stones management.

Feel free to discuss this subject here...

Bjornulf

In a similar thread from 2014, I wrote the following:

"Mick has stated in several interviews that the costs of transporting the Steel Wheels stage from USA and Japan to Europe was much more expensive than designing a new (and cheaper) set that could be used. This doesn't make much sense anyway, because the Steel Wheels stage was eventually transported to Europe in order to shoot the IMAX concert film.


Patrick Woodroffe added, however, in interview with MTV at the time, that the main reason they made a new design for the European shows in 1990,
was because most shows would start in daylight - thus designing a stage with brighter scenery.

On his website, Woodroffe now writes this about the Urban Jungle stage design:
"The extraordinary scale of the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour had to be downsized when the tour came to Europe and played in smaller stadia.
Urban Jungle was the result of these changes but although smaller than Mark Fisher's original epic design in America, the stage still looked theatrical and impressive."

Source: [woodroffebassett.com]"

This doesn´t answer all of the questions, but gives some insight I reckon.

«The extraordinary scale of the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour had to be downsized when the tour came to Europe and played in smaller stadia».

But did the Stones really play smaller stadia in Europe?

Yes and no. Most of the stadiums used in USA and Canada were wide baseballs stadiums, but still they played at some narrow football stadiums and managed to squeeze the entire stage inside the rather small convention center in Atlantic City. For the European leg it is interesting to notice that the Steel Wheels stage were used at the extremely wide and almost circular stadium Delle Alpi in Turin, an at the the wide cycling track Radrennbahn Weissensee in Berlin - near the end of the tour.


I think it´s a combination of all the mentioned factors:

1) Big transportation costs, as Mick said. Perhaps they only shipped one of the Steel Wheels stages to Europe (whereas in USA they used three). This one Steel Wheel stage was probably shipped a bit late and could only be used at a handfull of shows, at the end of the schedule.

2) They wanted a stage with brighter scenery because most of the shows would start in daylight, as Patrick Woodroffe said, and added;

3) Some of the venues in Europe were not large enough to accommodate the Steel Wheels stage. (This could explain why the Steel Wheels stage was used at the wider stadiums Delle Alpi and Radrennbahn Weissensee, and not at the rather narrow Parken in Copenhagen that occurred between Turin and Berlin in the schedule).

+

4) I guess they wanted the big stage for the IMAX film.

Quote
The Worst.
Yes and no. Most of the stadiums used in USA and Canada were wide baseballs stadiums, but still they played at some narrow football stadiums and managed to squeeze the entire stage inside the rather small convention center in Atlantic City. For the European leg it is interesting to notice that the Steel Wheels stage were used at the extremely wide and almost circular stadium Delle Alpi in Turin, an at the the wide cycling track Radrennbahn Weissensee in Berlin - near the end of the tour.


I think it´s a combination of all the mentioned factors:

1) Big transportation costs, as Mick said. Perhaps they only shipped one of the Steel Wheels stages to Europe (whereas in USA they used three). This one Steel Wheel stage was probably shipped a bit late and could only be used at a handfull of shows, at the end of the schedule.

2) They wanted a stage with brighter scenery because most of the shows would start in daylight, as Patrick Woodroffe said, and added;

3) Some of the venues in Europe were not large enough to accommodate the Steel Wheels stage. (This could explain why the Steel Wheels stage was used at the wider stadiums Delle Alpi and Radrennbahn Weissensee, and not at the rather narrow Parken in Copenhagen that occurred between Turin and Berlin in the schedule).

+

4) I guess they wanted the big stage for the IMAX film.

Sounds plausible.

And maybe:

5) They wanted a film with a cooler-looking stage for At The Max?

Quote
The Worst.
In a similar thread from 2014, I wrote the following:

"Mick has stated in several interviews that the costs of transporting the Steel Wheels stage from USA and Japan to Europe was much more expensive than designing a new (and cheaper) set that could be used. This doesn't make much sense anyway, because the Steel Wheels stage was eventually transported to Europe in order to shoot the IMAX concert film.


Patrick Woodroffe added, however, in interview with MTV at the time, that the main reason they made a new design for the European shows in 1990,
was because most shows would start in daylight - thus designing a stage with brighter scenery.

On his website, Woodroffe now writes this about the Urban Jungle stage design:
"The extraordinary scale of the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour had to be downsized when the tour came to Europe and played in smaller stadia.
Urban Jungle was the result of these changes but although smaller than Mark Fisher's original epic design in America, the stage still looked theatrical and impressive."

Source: [woodroffebassett.com]"

This doesn´t answer all of the questions, but gives some insight I reckon.

The thing about this is, (so I read) in the US they were using 3 stages because they took so long to put up and take down (& then transport).......

For the few European shows (Berlin, Turin, London?) they only needed to bring one.....so I guess that made a difference

Bjornulf,

Very glad to help you with some information about gigs for a change! As you said, Cardiff on July 11th was postponed due to Keith suffering a cut to his finger during the Hampden Park, Glasgow gig on the 9th. During his vocal slot he said to the crowd he thought he'd bust a finger but who gives a sh** and carried on playing as normal. However,it soon went septic and it was widely reported in the news here in UK. Also posponed were Wembley shows 4 & 5, scheduled for 13th & 14th July (the Friday and Saturday of the same week). The Wembley shows weren't postponed until the last gasp and I was already in London so not best pleased. 25/26 years ago it may have been but I remember all the details very vividly as it was my 1st ever Stones show, and I also thought it was going to be my last

The Cardiff show was rescheduled for a week later than originally planned. The Wembley shows were postponed a full 6 weeks, until Fridat 24th and Saturday 25th August and ended up being the final 2 shows of the 89/90 World Tour.

I was at the Friday show. I'd seen photos of both stages in the press and the 1st thing I noticed upon entering Wembley was the stage - the Steel Wheels one, even though it was billed as the Urban Jungle Tour. Bizarre I thought and it stuck in my mind.

I didn't buy 'At the Max' until 3 or 4 years later, but I remembered enough of my gig to notice that a lot of footage from it was used in the film.

Regards,

Gregor



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2016-01-12 16:43 by grzegorz67.

Berlin-Weissensee (August 13+14, 1990, East-Berlin, still GDR/DDR) had the Steel-Wheels-Stage:









A report from Berlin-Weissensee by german public broadcaster [www.mdr.de] .

On June 6, 1990 the Stones played already in Berlin Olympic Stadium.

Link to the 25 Years Urban Jungle - Thread: [www.iorr.org] .

Quote
DandelionPowderman

Quote
The Worst.
Yes and no. Most of the stadiums used in USA and Canada were wide baseballs stadiums, but still they played at some narrow football stadiums and managed to squeeze the entire stage inside the rather small convention center in Atlantic City. For the European leg it is interesting to notice that the Steel Wheels stage were used at the extremely wide and almost circular stadium Delle Alpi in Turin, an at the the wide cycling track Radrennbahn Weissensee in Berlin - near the end of the tour.


I think it´s a combination of all the mentioned factors:

1) Big transportation costs, as Mick said. Perhaps they only shipped one of the Steel Wheels stages to Europe (whereas in USA they used three). This one Steel Wheel stage was probably shipped a bit late and could only be used at a handfull of shows, at the end of the schedule.

2) They wanted a stage with brighter scenery because most of the shows would start in daylight, as Patrick Woodroffe said, and added;

3) Some of the venues in Europe were not large enough to accommodate the Steel Wheels stage. (This could explain why the Steel Wheels stage was used at the wider stadiums Delle Alpi and Radrennbahn Weissensee, and not at the rather narrow Parken in Copenhagen that occurred between Turin and Berlin in the schedule).

+

4) I guess they wanted the big stage for the IMAX film.

Sounds plausible.

And maybe:

5) They wanted a film with a cooler-looking stage for At The Max?

That's it, #5. The impact of the album and tour was probably more important in the US as a corporation, hence shipping the STEEL WHEELS stage over to Europe for the filming.

The part of the cost being a lot more to drive the SW stages around is true, as it was stated it was cheaper to make the URBAN JUNGLE stage and ship it around. And the shipping of the SW stage over for the movie shows does make sense - because it was for the movie, which was heavily aimed at the US market as far as I recall. Who wants to see a mustard ugly stage in an IMAX movie?

Quote
grzegorz67
Bjornulf,

Very glad to help you with some information about gigs for a change! As you said, Cardiff on July 11th was postponed due to Keith suffering a cut to his finger during the Hampden Park, Glasgow gig on the 9th. During his vocal slot he said to the crowd he thought he'd bust a finger but who gives a sh** and carried on playing as normal. However,it soon went septic and it was widely reported in the news here in UK. Also posponed were Wembley shows 4 & 5, scheduled for 13th & 14th July (the Friday and Saturday of the same week). The Wembley shows weren't postponed until the last gasp and I was already in London so not best pleased. 25/26 years ago it may have been but I remember all the details very vividly as it was my 1st ever Stones show, and I also thought it was going to be my last

The Cardiff show was rescheduled for a week later than originally planned. The Wembley shows were postponed a full 6 weeks, until Fridat 24th and Saturday 25th August and ended up being the final 2 shows of the 89/90 World Tour.

Regards,

Gregor

The postponement meant that I was at the first of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle shows in Philadelpia in August '89, and the last of the shows in London in August '90. I've always loved that symmetry.

The postponement was a bit of a shambles.

My source close to the band knew (but simply didn't understand) that I was able to get a message out to people using this new fangled thing called The Internet (using email and Usenet Newsgroups) so I was called at work early afternoon on the Friday and asked to make it known as widely as possible. (Google ate all the Usenet archives so my messages are presumably there somewhere).

People who went to the gig were outside waiting to go in until about 4:00pm - which was LONG after news of the postponement had reached me. Not only were they the last to find out, but the many many small vendors in the stadium didn't know either!

The official message from the promoters to the stadium did not get through to the people on the ground until far too late.

(In trying to find my posting I found the original list of dates for the Urban Jungle - and it included Moscow which I had forgotten. Never happened, but it WAS on the Official List the day I posted it).

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

I have many great memories from the two final Wembley Stadium shows in 1990. The last two shows with Bill Wyman. The STEEL WHEELS stage. All the cameras. I was front rom working hard to keep my position. There were a camera row running straight from one side to the other in front of the stage. The camera "train" would be moving into position BEFORE Mick moved there, they knew exactly when and where Mick would be moving. Start running, stop for a while, and so on. A lot of Mick's moves are still staged i.e. planned for, like the same routines on Gimme Shelter, Miss You and so on, but on these two IMAX shows (or was it one of them?) I am pretty sure they were running by a more tight script as for Mick's and the other band members movements. The large IMAX cameras had to be in position.

After the last show show I put my t-shirt in a plastic bag, it was soaking wet of my own and probably a lot others sweat. Bodies against bodies very very tight up there at Wembley. When I came home I thought the T-shirt was so heavy I weighed it, it was 2 kg, but the t-shirt itself is really just 0,2 kg so that show was for sure a great joy for not just me but alo many many others squeezed in there that late summer evening.

And like every single one of the twelve Wembley shows, it finished sharp 10:30pm, may be one minute past, just to annoy the curfew keepers of the Wembley area. So many great memories from the three weeks I spent in UK in the summer of 1990. Enough for a book probably. From Glasgow. From Cheltenham (on our way to the first Cardiff). From the Cardiff first and return visit. From Manchester Maine Road, Newcastle. Great days. But another tread, another time...

Bjornulf

Quote
DandelionPowderman
«The extraordinary scale of the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour had to be downsized when the tour came to Europe and played in smaller stadia».

But did the Stones really play smaller stadia in Europe?

Wembley certainly wasn't.

I don't know how relevant this may be to European staging but I'll throw it out there.

I met a Stones stage manager a few years ago and we eventually talked about the US Steel Wheels stage, which (like everyone else) had me in awe, especially for the time (Intel 486s had just come out!). He said the largest stage he had ever heard of was by The Who at about 600,000 watts of power, until Steel Wheels required 1.5M watts. Just saying this could have been a factor in planning things out.

When I went to that show in 1989 in Detroit and I walked into the mezzanine level of the Silverdome out to the field I was floored: it looked like someone had driven some kind of cargo ship right into the dome.

Then I went down to the field and walked across it... just incredible.

Although I missed the chance to see ZOO TV, the photos and videos from that U2 tour show a stage just as incredible as the STEEL WHEELS stage.

Of course things got silly from there but those two tours really reshaped the stadium concert industry. It probably helps that Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park helped design ZOO TV as well as they designed STEEL WHEELS.

The first tour I went to was the Urban Jungle Tour.
In Rotterdam and Paris they had the UJ-stage.
But when I walked onto the field in Berlin I was really really impressed by the huge Steel Wheels stage. That was a great surprise for my last Stones-concert that year! :-)

Question I've always wanted to ask:

Is it safe to say Keith Richards (apart from perhaps planning, rehearsals, locations, set lists, sound) had nothing to do with the stage design and/or production of the concerts 1969-current?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-01-22 17:26 by nightskyman.

If I may, taking into account I'm almost 2 years late, I read they incredibly had 3 stages for the US tour as they took too long to disassembly and transport and etc.

What do they do to the stages after the tour ends? I mean, it's a massive high-cost structure for them to simply get rid of.

Quote
nightskyman
Question I've always wanted to ask:

Is it safe to say Keith Richards (apart from perhaps planning, rehearsals, locations, set lists, sound) had nothing to do with the stage design and/or production of the concerts 1969-current?

From what I've read, Mick and Charlie are very involved when it comes to artwork, stage designs, approving t-shirt graphics, etc.

It's surprising that Ronnie isn't engaged on that front considering he's quite a good artist, but maybe part of that comes down to him still being the "new guy" even after all these years.

It's also surprising that Charlie takes such a keen interest in the stage designs and the merchandise since he always appears so weary and disinterested in the whole Stones circus, but it's nice that he gets involved at that level.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-12-30 02:47 by keefriff99.

I'll have to look for it on You Tube but the was a ABC-TV (US) I believe called In Concert and they had a Making of At The Max episode and it was stated there that the Steel Wheels stage was brought there for the movie.

Part 1 - [www.youtube.com]
Part 2 - [www.youtube.com]
Part 3 - can't find it

Quote
nick
I'll have to look for it on You Tube but the was a ABC-TV (US) I believe called In Concert and they had a Making of At The Max episode and it was stated there that the Steel Wheels stage was brought there for the movie.

Part 1 - [www.youtube.com]
Part 2 - [www.youtube.com]
Part 3 - can't find it

Well that makes sense. I remember watching Live at the Max thinking, "Okay, so this is the Urban Jungle stage...and this is the SMALLER stage?? How goddamn big was the Steel Wheels stage then??"

Mick and Charlie discussing stage design for the Steel Wheels tour.
[www.youtube.com]






"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

Quote
nick
I'll have to look for it on You Tube but the was a ABC-TV (US) I believe called In Concert and they had a Making of At The Max episode and it was stated there that the Steel Wheels stage was brought there for the movie.

Part 1 - [www.youtube.com]
Part 2 - [www.youtube.com]
Part 3 - can't find it

Part 3 - [www.youtube.com]


"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

Thanks for the reminder of one of the best happiest things that ever happened in my life!

THE STONES CAME BACK!!!
AND THEY CAME BACK BIG!!! WOOHOOOO!!!

STEEL FREEKIN WHEELS WAS SO MUCH FUN!! and it has been pretty much non stop ever since


STONES!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-12-30 06:05 by Leonioid.

I found this company called Air Artists, which seems to have been responsible for the inflatable part of the stage.

Here's their website: [www.airartists.co.uk]

Curiously, the dogs were only included on the UJ tour, whereas the girls were originally on the SW, something that for me was not obvious. Found this photograph of them apparently still in the factory:

The Urban Jungle stage was also recycled and reconfigured a little to make the Voodoo lounge stage.

Quote
Haecio
If I may, taking into account I'm almost 2 years late, I read they incredibly had 3 stages for the US tour as they took too long to disassembly and transport and etc.

What do they do to the stages after the tour ends? I mean, it's a massive high-cost structure for them to simply get rid of.

I think you're correct here, as I remember reading 3 stages were in use in North America: 1 hosting a gig, 1 being torn down and 1 being built... I'm sure I have that info somewhere buried in the collection!

I believe the Steel Wheels program had listed in the credits, A crew, B crew and C crew... or was it Voodoo Lounge?

Anyone... anyone?

One of the 3 stages were larger than the others and the smaller stage was modified enough to fit in the Convention center for the Atlantic City PPV.
The IMAX movie had the Steel Wheels stage in mind to showcase how mammoth it was.

They've had multiple stages for every tour up through A BIGGER BANG I think. For VOODOO LOUNGE it took 3 days for one show. So they had more than one stage for that tour. I've read about these things in books but can't seem to locate anything online about how many stages they used for etc.

This is all quite fascinating to say the least .My first time seeing the Steel Wheels stage was late October 1989 at NYC Shea Stadium and it was quite the spectacle on a grand scale .Which for me the Stones set the bar very high and never disappointed this wide eyed fan

My 2nd show was the Oct 11th show at Shea. I had 2nd row center with the people in front of us leaving after 20min.(how do you leave the front row???) My seat lined up with one of the 2 small staircases that came down from the stage. I said then if I never saw them again it wouldn't matter. That stage is the all time best.