Quote
nick
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.

Very hard to beat. It felt like that on the tours that followed that it was the Steel Wheels frame that was then built into the Voodoo Lounge and then the B2B

VOODOO was completely different from STEEL WHEELS. If anything, the BRIDGES stage was somewhat more in tune with SW's stage - but still better.

Their worst stage has got to be for the ABB tour. That was just uggggggggly.

Quote
GasLightStreet
VOODOO was completely different from STEEL WHEELS. If anything, the BRIDGES stage was somewhat more in tune with SW's stage - but still better.

Their worst stage has got to be for the ABB tour. That was just uggggggggly.

Yes Voodoo was different but still a fantastic 2nd best.

The Bridges stage was had it's own personality with that fireball opening then seeing Keith there alone at the front was friggin awesome. However at the very end with the last 2 songs they dropped the curtains in the back you saw how empty it became which was actually great because the fireworks behind it filled it back up.

I can't comment on the Bigger Bang stage because I had the "On Stage" seating (standing) for 3 shows and had a really good time. I had the upper row for the 1st one which was good because the next 2 shows were on the lower level, much closer to the action. I know that I would have been disappointed if it was lower first, then upper level. I will say that people who were unhappy with the on stage seats were brought down to into the audience on Keith's side where the Stones guests get to stand. I saw that happen in East Hartford and Hershey.

VL was my favourite , with that huge cobra.

I'll never forget how you could feel the heat when it flamed .

I thought my eyebrows were going to burn off standing in front of that Steel Wheels stage when Continental Drift stopped. I also got a small burning fleck of something just below my left eye when the sparkler type pyros went off for Jumping Jack Flash. That was F'ing cool!

Quote
The Worst.
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.

This is more or less how it was put in the (European) press back in 1990: that the Steel Wheels stage was designed for American Baseball (or suchlike) stadiums whereas most Europe shows were to take place in football stadiums, which have different measures so the Steel Wheels stage would not have fit in. Sounded reasonable to me. On a personal note, when entering the Praterstadium in Vienna in 1990 I was quite happy to behold the new stage, I didn't like the Steel Wheels stage at all. The Urban Jungle stage was so absolutely great and looked fantastic!

As for the IMAX movie, what the papers/zines wrote back then was that the originally filmed shows did not yield enough usable material so they filmed one (or two?) more shows in Europe (I seem to remember Hungary?).

Considering the amount of filling in the bad spots when they played to a recording from the filmed show(s) and did abhorrent miming (Ruby Tuesday, Honky Tonk Women being the two biggest flaws of the film that I can recall) they probably could've gotten away with not doing the amount of shows they used the SW stage for. But you know, artistic integrity and all that.

That bit aside, it was a fantastic experience in the theatre. It's too bad SHINE A LIGHT sucked so bad. It's odd that they did that for Imax when VOODOO and BRIDGES would've been much better for Imax, especially the bridge coming out to the B-stage for the BRIDGES tour. THAT would've been very cool in Imax.

Shine a Light wasn't really traditional IMAX. I went to a so-called IMAX theater in Nyack, NY to see it and the screen was smaller than At The Max in the Beacon theater. My peripheral vision was not consumed. I believe SAL was converted to IMAX. The only thing Imax movies are good for now is that they look clean and crisp vs.dirty and old like all movies look in a theater. The original configurations and specifications of that format should be restored. I think planetariums are the only places left to see a real IMAX film with those specs.

Quote
GasLightStreet
It's odd that they did that for Imax when VOODOO and BRIDGES would've been much better for Imax, especially the bridge coming out to the B-stage for the BRIDGES tour. THAT would've been very cool in Imax.

They should have did it for those 2 in addition. An IMAX trilogy.

I saw STONES AT THE MAX 3 times, in proper Imax theatres. It was fantastic with the slight rap-around-screen and the sound.

SAL was just on a bigger flat screen.

Are there still proper Imax theatres? I know the one in New Orleans is still going.

Quote
GasLightStreet

Are there still proper Imax theatres?

Yes, there are -- list of worldwide IMAX venues: [en.Wikipedia.org] .

I can remember arriving at Wembley 1990 for the August shows and you could see the lightening conductors from outside the stadium, so it was clear that something had changed. Anyway having managed to get a look through the loading doors there it was the Steel Wheels stage. Day already made and they weren't even on stage.

Now, this is from memory and it was a long time ago. Whilst I agree with everything above, daylight, stadium size, filming etc. the main factor why they brought a new stage design to Europe was weight. The European stadiums being football stadiums use grass as a playing surface and to put a stage as heavy as Steel Wheels on a pitch would cause untold damage to the irrigation and heating systems that the ground staff use, hence a smaller lighter stage design.So I think after the sausage finger incident it gave them the chance to bring over the Steel Wheels stage for filming and you will note that at those stadiums where the Steel Wheels was used it does not sit on the pitch. Wembley, Turin and Berlin all being much bigger than most of the usual football grounds i.e. Main Road. As I say this is from memory I don't remember if I was talking to someone or read it somewhere, but for what it's worth that's what I have.

Berlin-Weißensee 13-14 August 1990 (with Steel-Wheels-Stage) was btw no classic stadium - it was a cycling racecourse and is today a sports facility:


Google-Picture from 2009


Question: Does anyone know where the Steel-Wheels-Stage exactly was in Berlin-Weißensee ?

The IMAX theaters marked " 15/70mm " are the true ones they are the big ones when the IMAX technologies were first used. I can't speak for the rest but I do know for a fact that the one in West Nyack, NY (which is gone now) is where I saw Shine A Light and quite frankly it sucked ass compared to At The Max.