1982 LONDON
photo by Peter Still



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-10-10 15:59 by exilestones.

                   
                       photo by Lawrence Kirsch

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-10-10 16:01 by exilestones.

The Rolling Stones at Roundhay Park
Enjoy these memories from The Rolling Stones at Roundhay Park in 1982.


The support acts that day were J. Geils Band, George Thorogood, and Joe Jackson. Roadies put up the main stage ahead of the concert.


More than 120,000 fans were at Roundhay Park that day for the final concert of a 32-date tour, including Gothenburg, Paris, Munich and London.


The Stones opened with Under My Thumb on a hot day in Roundhay Park.


The Stones took to the stage to promote the album Tattoo You.






It was a performance which brought satisfaction to the 120,000 fans in Roundhay Park that day.
The Rolling Stones concert in July 1982 was the end of a two month European tour by the band with Mick Jagger celebrating his 39th birthday on stage.
It was not the first time they had played in the city having taken played at the University of Leeds’s Refectory in March 1971 when they were gearing up
for the release of their classic Sticky Fingers album.

That was one hot and gruelling day ...

..not sure I could hack it so well now !

TURIN


When Mick Jagger wore Paolo Rossi's t-shirt



It seems like yesterday, but it was another world.




It was July 11, 1982, when the Rolling Stones held their first concert in Italy, since 1970, at the Stadio Comunale in Turin.



The show was opened by another group I love very much and in Turin is a real hit: the J. Geils Band & the magnificent Peter Wolf.




Thinking back to Turin brings back the memory of having seen that concert with my father Nello. I still have the ticket – how could I
not, especially today when tickets are downloaded from the internet, without images and only with a sidebar. Impersonal, unpreservable.
Memories, however, live in us and it is nice to share them with our children, knowing that we have lived those moments.
“The best years of our lives”, quoting Renato Zero this time.




The Stones' latest album, at that point, was 1981's Tattoo You: 11 tracks, from the explosive "Start Me Up"
by Jagger & Richards, initially recorded in 1975 in Munich, to the unreleased gem "Waiting on a Friend", which emerged
from the 1972 Goats Head Soup sessions in Jamaica; Mick Taylor on guitar, Nicky Hopkins on piano, Jimmy Miller on percussion.
The album also features "T & A" sung by Keith Richards, with Ian Stewart on piano and Ronnie Wood on bass, from the
1978 Some Girls sessions in Paris. We also find "Slave", from the Black and Blue sessions in Rotterdam (1975), with
legendary keyboardist Billie Preston and percussionist Ollie Brown. From the same sessions comes "Worried About You".
Also noteworthy is “No Use in Crying”, a song written by Jagger/Richards/Wood, recorded at Pathé Marconi Studios in 1979.





Mick Jagger wears the t-shirt of the great Paolo Rossi, is picked up by a crane wrapped in the tricolor,
and rises 20 meters above the field.

He predicted that Italy would defeat Germany 3 to 1 in the final of the World Cup in Spain, and it happened!




It is not known whether Jagger is, in fact, a supernatural creature, but he is certainly not “human” and it is enough to have seen him
in just one concert to understand the truth of this assertion.

In Turin, Mick throws two footballs into the crowd, runs twice around the very long stage, and finally disappears shouting “Forza Italia!”
The roar of 70 thousand spectators rises.

Libertà Editorial

The Rolling Stones concert at the Stadio Comunale on 11 July 1982 (the day in which the Italian national football team won its third world title).





Fans watch the J. Giles Band.

An emotional swarm, from 15 to 40 years old, eager to steal an infinitesimal moment of history from every single person.
Like authentic gods of sacred rock, with faces sculpted by history and immortal physiques, they explode in the clockwork cauldron with opening songs imprinted in Under My Thumb, When The Whip Comes Down and Let's Spend The Night Together .
The crazy joy is displayed in the explosiveness of the glimmer-twins , creators of a rebellious, profane, sexual world. The sacred devilries of hot lips pour out in prayers and ballads like Miss You, Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Woman and many others. The closing will be a ballad with the devil in the riffs of Star me Up and (I'Can't Get No) Satisfaction .
That afternoon ended with the awareness of having attended an epic and historic concert, among the most vivid in the memory of the Rolling Stones in Italy. The Rolling Stones taught generations that passion, madness and transgression are always part of us.
Everyone felt like a champion of the world. In a few hours, it would truly become one.






The Stadio Comunale, Claudio Gentile and the magic of the Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones had been absent from Italy for 12 years. Jagger and his bandmates had stopped in Milan and Rome in 1970 as part of The Rolling Stones European Tour . The double dates in Turin in 1982 included concerts on July 11 and 12. Aware that they were already halfway rock legends ( Jagger and Richards were 40 at the time), they descended on the alchemical city of the Mole on an afternoon of infernal heat.
Fate, with the help of the temperatures and the emotion, fueled the dreams of the spectators who in the afternoon – the concert was scheduled for 3:00 p.m. – would admire the greatest rock'n'roll band of all time and in the evening – at 8:00 p.m. – the kick-off of a historic World Cup final.







The day that all Italians have been waiting for forty-four years.
An infinity for the fans who dream of redemption. That revenge finally comes before them in a hot July summer, between heat and
mosquitoes, political crisis and instability, like in the best Italian movies.
The Nation dreams, it is hanging on a night of hope.
The Panzers are beatable, but they know us well thanks to Briegel and Rumenigge.

Is this the concert were Keith says he almost dropped on stage because of the exhausting heat and Mick was losing it too...'

Ultimate satisfaction for Rolling Stones fans at Slane Castle in 1982


Some of the large crowd at the Slane Castle gig.


Fledgling Fan

Des O'Driscoll at Slane in 1982


“I was 13 at the time, but was already into the Stones,” says Des O’Driscoll, arts editor, Irish Examiner.

“Like many music tastes formed in that era, I’d gotten into them from an album a friend’s sibling had — Solid Rock was part of the Griffin family’s collection in McGrath Park, Blackrock. It had some of the band’s classic hits, as well as covers like 'Poison Ivy' and 'Fortune Teller'. The Tattoo You album had also been released the year before, so the singles from that were also getting plenty airplay."

“My mother was a huge Stones fan from the 1960s, and had always regretted missing the Cork gig in 1965, so she decided to bring me to Slane. Pat Egan’s shop on Patrick Street was organising buses so we went up on one of them, setting off really early in the morning. I remember being blown away by the sheer scale of it all. Seventy thousand people in that natural amphitheatre in Slane was spectacular.”



The Rolling Stones at Slane in 1982.
Picture: Des O'Driscoll



Mick Jagger performing at Slane Castle, Co. Meath in 1982.


First-Hand Accounts of the Rolling Stones’ Groundbreaking Open Air Slane Castle Gig

The news in April 1982 that the Rolling Stones would perform their first gig in Ireland for 17 years was huge. There was a rush on tickets — 70,000 sold at a price of £12 each.

Irish music fans hadn’t seen the likes of it before. The concert dwarfed the scale of Slane Castle’s first outdoor gig a year earlier — when Thin Lizzy, supported by U2 and other bands, sold 20,000 tickets. According to a contemporary RTÉ report, the Stones gig at the same venue was going to be “the biggest event of its kind ever held in this country”.

The gig was set for July 24, 1982, a Saturday. On the Thursday evening before the concert, Mick Jagger had dinner with his Slane Castle host, Lord Henry Mountcharles. The band’s production crew slept in the drawing room of the castle the following night. Thousands of fans also flocked to the County Meath village on the eve of the gig, finding patches of ground outside the castle grounds for their tents.

The concert almost never happened: at the eleventh hour, the Rolling Stones threatened to pull the plug on their show because of the IRA’s bombing campaign in London. Four days before the gig, bombs in Hyde Park and Regent’s Park at military ceremonies killed 11 military personnel and several horses. Keith Richards wrote to Bill Graham, the organiser of the European Tour, threatening to cancel the Slane Castle gig. It went ahead, however, with assurances that all profits went to victims of the bombings.




“Jagger seemed in pursuit of a youthful 80s relevance that should have been beneath him,” says Anthony DeCurtis, author of Rolling Stones: Unzipped and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine.

“His athletic stage wear looked ridiculous, and the band's stage effects seemed pointless. As Keith Richards told me in an interview, ‘We don't need the lemon-yellow tights and we don't need the cherry picker.’ That says it all.”


Dinosaurs from Another Era

The band were 20 years on the road. Critics said they were dinosaurs.

“I remember all the jokes at the time were about ‘the strolling bones’ and that the band members would be on Zimmer frames on stage. They were formed in 1962, so surely they had enough now. This kind of talk,” says Dave Fanning, who reported for radio on the day of the Slane Castle gig from an RTÉ roadcaster.

Anthony DeCurtis confirms this view that the band were a bit long in the tooth: “Punk had presented a challenge to the Stones. They were all into or nearing their 40s, an age that at the time was considered inconceivable for a rock band. Let alone 80! Some critics and fans spoke dismissively of the band for that reason. The Stones were covering Eddie Cochran's 'Twenty Flight Rock' on the tour [and performed it at Slane Castle]. Some reviewers pointedly noted the lyric, ‘When I get to the top, I'm too tired to rock'."

The fans at Slane Castle didn’t pay much heed to the obituary writers. There was a huge buzz of anticipation on the morning of the gig, as the band’s appeal was already spanning the generations.




The Longest Day

Fiachna Ó Braonáin, co-founder of the Hot House Flowers, was a 16-year-old Stones superfan at the time — he even smoked Marlboro cigarettes because he knew it was the brand his hero, Keith Richards, smoked. He got a bus to Slane Castle from Dublin at 7am with a French friend of his.

“We were one of the first to arrive. We wanted to get into the venue early to get close to the stage,” he says.

The gates opened at 10am. The Stones were due on stage at 6pm, an early kick-off for the main event to ensure the gig was wrapped up in daylight, owing to infrastructure/lighting reasons.

The support acts on the day included the Chieftains; George Thorogood & the Destroyers; and the J Gails Band, whose lead singer got a big cheer when he told the audience he wanted “to apologize to the world for giving it Ronald Reagan."

Helicopters landed intermittently to drop off VIPs by the castle.


Not a Bed in the House Made Up

The novelist Colm Tóibín, who was covering the gig as a reporter, was watching events unfold from the wings.

“Henry Mountcharles was trying to win favour at the time with the people,” says Tóibín.

“He invited journalists to come into the castle. He fed us and we got drinks. You could see the whole thing from the perspective of his ‘house’. This wasn’t enough for an article so I decided to go upstairs, to give myself a private tour of Slane Castle. I opened every door and went into every room. I discovered that the beds were unmade, all of them. I decided to report on this — the state of the bedrooms. I made an enemy for life. He would still glower at me if he saw me.”

Dave Fanning also hung out in the castle for a while, eavesdropping on conversations: “Henry Mountcharles was on the phone at one stage. He was talking to someone in England, possibly an older relation. I could hear him say ‘because we have a band here playing in the garden’. I didn’t hear the next bit, but he replied ‘the Rolling Stones’. Silence again. Then he said, ‘I will’. The person must have said something like ‘enjoy yourself’ or ‘be careful’.”

Fans were enjoying a festival-like atmosphere


Dante’s Choc-ice Inferno

Maev Kennedy, reporting on the gig for the Irish Times, painted a Dantesque vision of some bikers who were enjoying the sunshine, eating Choc-Ices: “a ferocious, savage, vicious, terrifying gang of Hell's Angels, from the badlands of Waterford, sat in a reeking huddle on the grass, shunned by 20 yards by the rest of the crowd”.

Ó Braonáin recalls their presence but was less perturbed: “I was aware of the Waterford Freewheelers at the gig. They came across all menacing, but they were sweethearts.”





The Rolling Stones arrived on stage a few minutes after 6pm. Hundreds of balloons were released into the air to celebrate their arrival.

Derek Speirs, a photographer covering the gig for Magill Magazine, had planted himself close to the front of the stage: “I was in amongst the crowd, which I don’t do anymore because it’s too crazy."

“I got in early, and ate nothing or drank nothing all day. I remember the whole atmosphere was heating up.

"The organisers decided they needed to cool us down so they fire-hosed us, with water from the river. It was like they were putting out a fire.

"Fortunately, I had a plastic mac in my bag so I was able to protect my cameras and equipment. Their opening song was 'Under My Thumb'. It was quite astonishing, with that jazz riff intro.”



The band ran through several classics, including 'Angie', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Honky Tonk Women'.

“The Stones don’t have four or five good songs. They have 50 brilliant songs,” says Fanning. The biggest audience response during the performance was when the audience joined Jagger in the chorus for 'You Can’t Always Get What You Want'.

Tóibín was into the swing of it by the time the Stones came back on stage for their encore, a rendition of '(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction'.

“I found a bottle of Tequila in the castle,” he says. “I’d never drunk Tequila before. It was delicious. I had a pair of binoculars. I found them tremendously exciting. It wasn’t my sort of music, but I found the noise and the way Mick Jagger moved around the stage, singing 'I Can’t Get No Satisfaction', 'Jumpin’ Jack Flash' — I suddenly became a fan, a rocker.”


The gig was a huge success for Irish promoter Jim Aiken, possibly the most memorable of several at Slane Castle in the 1980s, as Bob Dylan (1984), Bruce Springsteen (1985), Queen (1986) and David Bowie (1987) followed suit. It sparked a flame.

Now Aiken’s son, Peter Aiken, is an important concert promoter in Ireland. He was at the gig, which made an impression.

“I was only 12, but I was working, giving my dad a hand. My main job was with a brush at the side of the stage, and if any of the bands dropped what they were smoking I had to sweep it up. I remember seeing the Stones backstage and thinking they looked so cool.”

The Stones returned to Slane Castle in 2007. “It’s great to be here,” said Keith Richards. “It’s great to be anywhere.” Hopefully, they’ll make it a hat-trick further down the trail.

Pictures by Eddie O'Hare

The Rolling Stones play one of the biggest concerts ever staged in Ireland.

70,000 fans paid £12 to see The Stones play at Slane Castle, County Meath. In glorious sunshine hundreds of balloons were released into the air as the band open their set with 'Under My Thumb' taken from the album 'Aftermath'. Two days before his 39th birthday, Mick Jagger struts his stuff on stage as Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Billy Wyman and Charlie Watts crank out the tunes.

Support acts on the day were The J Geils Band, The Chieftains, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

This was the second concert to be held at Slane Castle. In 1981 Thin Lizzy were the first band to headline the venue with support from U2, Hazel O'Connor, Rose Tattoo, Sweet Savage, The Bureau, and Megahype.

An RTÉ News report broadcast on 24 July 1982.






[www.rte.ie]



The Rolling Stones Played Slane


photo Colm Henry


On July 24, 1982, 70,000 fans descended upon the Boyne Valley in Co. Meath to see the Rolling Stones play Slane Castle. The second of the iconic Slane concerts, following Thin Lizzy the year before, the day also featured performances from The J. Geils Band, The Chieftains, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. To mark the occasion, here's both Fiachna Ó Braonáin and Alex Conyngham's memories from the gig...


Fiachna Ó Braonáin
Musician/broadcaster

"The stand out Slane, for me, was the Rolling Stones in 1982. I was 16 at the time, a Stones superfan, and I went down very early in the morning to make sure I was up the front. It was the 7am bus because, back then, there was no such thing as premium tickets.

"The Chieftains were the first band on – what a brilliant start. They were followed by George Thorogood & The Destroyers, who’s a great blues guitar player; and then The J. Geils Band.




They began their set with ‘Under My Thumb’. I had a Marlboro in my mouth because I knew Keith smoked Marlboro – these are the things that are important when you’re young! I went with a friend, a pal of mine from France who was over for the summer. We had our rucksacks, with just a bottle of water and a sandwich between us. We ended up staying there the whole day, not moving at all. It was super exciting."



Alex Conyngham
Slane Whiskey co-founder, son of Henry Mountcharles

“The Stones’ first Slane was in 1982, but Mick had actually visited a few years earlier. My dad got a call from my grandfather, saying, ‘I’ve got someone coming to dinner. I think he’s called Michael Jogger...’ Dad was like, ‘Do you mean Mick Jagger?’ and sure enough it was! He and dad hit it off straight away.

"I remember as a kid watching the ’82 show from the balcony of the house and nearly killing myself trying to catch one of the balloons that were released at the end! A few people thought, ‘Can they conjure up the same magic again?’ when the Stones returned in 2007, but once again it was a sensational gig.”





Lord Henry Mount Charles: ‘1982 was magic’


Speaking to the Irish Times about the Rolling Stones's 1982 concert, Slane Castle owner Lord Henry Mount Charles said Ireland had never seen anything like it before.

"The weather was beautiful, the show was magic. Mick Jagger came down the Thursday before the show and had dinner in the castle and the production crew slept in the drawing room of the castle the night before the show. It had an almost gypsy-like quality about it."

Some 70,000 music fans paid £12 each for a ticket in 1982. Thousands arrived the night before to camp out wherever they could find a pitch around the village. Fans complained of being charged £5 for a six-pack of beer and £1 for a can of Coke, with one newspaper report at the time remarking that “every kind of huckster, three-card-trick man and itinerant salesman had a stall in Slane”.

The day of the concert, July 24th, saw brilliant sunshine, with those who weren’t sprayed by two massive water hoses taking advantage of the lack of security to swim in the River Boyne.

After the warm-up acts, which included the Chieftains, the Rolling Stones bounded on, with Mick Jagger proclaiming: “It’s great to be back in Dublin. After 16 years, it’s very nice of you to come, so let’s spend the night together.” Jagger showed a hazy knowledge of Irish geography and also of the band’s own history. They had last played Ireland in 1965.



Concert report, Slane, 1982
by Maev Kennedy

They were a pretty audience. They brought their babies and some of them brought their mammies.

In the interminable gaps between the live music they shinned over the 10-foot fence to leap into the Boyne and every mother’s son and daughter of them was decently clothed. Some stripped down to pants, some modestly leaped in fully clothed.

A ferocious, savage, vicious, terrifying gang of Hell's Angels, from the badlands of Waterford, sat in a reeking huddle on the grass, shunned by 20 yards by the rest of the crowd. Hunched menacingly in their colours, they were eating Choc-Ices.

The crowd got younger all the way into the centre. Half way down were the 20-year-olds, sprawled out on rugs with their wine, in plastic bottles as per instructions, and their dope. The worst crime they committed was to fall sound asleep in the hot sun, and some slept right through the Stones.

Only in the first 10 rows, damped down by fire hoses and at one ecstatic moment sprayed with fire hose by Mick Jagger HIMSELF was there that wild dangerous electric excitement the media associates with huge rock concerts. They leaped and shrieked and held up imploring arms.

“You’re all right!” Mick Jagger yelled at them. “You’re not too bad yourself!” they shouted back.

Up at the top of the hill, up at the top of a 60 foot pine tree, a lunatic fan leaped up and down hysterically.

“It’s great to be back in Dublin,” Jagger assured them. Nobody had the heart to correct him.

By the last chords of the opening Under My Thumb a steady stream of denim was pouring up the slopes and out the gate. They'd waited 10 hours to see the Rolling Stones, and they'd seen the Rolling Stones; they knew exactly what they were going to play, so they left, perfectly happy.

People kept comparing the Stones concert to the Pope’s visit, but nobody ever left a Papal gig before the Last Blessing.



Dave Fanning: Slane 1982 was ‘a big circus’
Mick Jagger at Slane Castle, Saturday, July 24th, 1982.
photo Peter Thursfield

Dave Fanning spoke to The Irish Times in 2007: "I remember the first Slane, standing backstage and watching Phil Lynott arrive by helicopter. There wasn't such a big vibe about hanging around the castle – everyone was either in the crowd or backstage.
KjIgm0Lwept78D10WYtHuz5ZAD3YkhWzkMGKD6DSA&oe=6714DDE3[/img]

“The Rolling Stones in 1982 was like a great big circus, and the stage had these two big catwalks that spread right out into the crowd like a pair of wings. When Keith Richards walked down one of the catwalks, he was standing just 50 yards from us, and that was cool.



P

Leeds 1982
can not recall they used a video screen already back than



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-11-02 11:39 by Dorn.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-12-06 13:10 by exilestones.

Quote
Dorn




Leeds 1982
can not recall they used a video screen already back than

There is a photo from a show on the STP `72 tour
where you can see a video screen

Keith Richards Talks Tone, Playing Live and the Stones' Longevity in His 1983 Guitar Player Cover Story

"The time to stop is when you can’t do it anymore."





This interview originally appeared in the April 1983 issue of Guitar Player.



Back in 1964, when Lennon and McCartney wanted to hold your hand, Jagger and Richards were walkin’ the dog. Constantly compared to the Beatles - and often to the Who - the Rolling Stones staked out their original turf with gritty music and a don’t-mess-with-me stance. The Beatles disintegrated a dozen years ago, and the Who say they’ve unpacked their road cases for the last time. The Stones are in the studio, and they’re not about to bid farewell to anyone. And, of course, Keith Richards stands in the eye of the hurricane.

Around him swirls a rock and roll empire with 20 years of history and mystery, success and excess, acclaim and controversy. He and his mates have been called many things by discerning critics and impassioned fans. One description recurs: The World’s Greatest Rock And Roll Band.

Chuck Berry was a major influence on your guitar style.

That’s quite a left hand he’s got there [laughs].

Are the reports true that he punched you in the face?

Yeah, a little while back he did. I came up behind him to say hello. He didn’t know it was me, and he didn’t want to be bothered, but I got a nice note from him a little later, actually.[youtu.be]


The “Bitch” solo is in a Chuck Berry style.

Which I do every night.

And the beat turns around several times. Was that completely spontaneous, or semi-planned?

Maybe listeners knew a year or six months later that the beat turned around, but, at the moment, I wasn’t conscious of that. It comes so naturally, as it’s always happened, and it’s always given that extra kick when the right moment comes back down again. That’s what rock and roll records are all about. I mean, nowadays, it’s “rock” music. But rock and roll records should be two minutes, 35 seconds long, and it doesn’t matter if you ramble on longer after that. It should be, you know - wang - concise, right there.

Rambling on and on, blah blah blah, repeating things for no point - I mean, rock and roll is in one way a highly structured music played in a very unstructured way, and it’s those things like turning the beat around that we’d get hung up on when we were starting out. “Did you hear what we just did? We just totally turned the beat around [laughs]!” If it’s done with conviction, if nothing is forced, if it just flows in, then it gives quite an extra kick to it.

You turn the beat around often. There’s the intro to “Start Me Up,” where it turns around twice in the first ten seconds, “Little Queenie,” where Charlie turns around the intro, and the end of the bass part on “Street Fighting Man,” which you played yourself.

Right. You can do that in a band that’s got enough confidence not to collapse when it happens. It can make things much more interesting, and it sounds great as long as nobody’s fazed by it. You have to be able to keep it straight, thinking about what you’re doing at the moment, and also about where you’re going to take it. I guess that just comes from 20 years, same location.

So many of the things you play, if you were to put them on paper and analyze them musically…

What a mess [laughs]!


For example, the opening of “Start Me Up” is a simple chord change, and yet it’s recognizable as the Rolling Stones. The sound is so specific. Would altering anything about it - the echo, tone setting, string gauge - change the impact?

I just can’t get the things to sound any different [laughs]. They always come out just about the same when it comes to recording, because without really thinking about it I shift slowly as I go. And no matter where I start, sooner or later I’ll get to where the rest of the band is going. I eventually get back to the one kind of thing.

It’s sort of a trademark sound, but it’s more than that because of the way I go about getting it, working it through with what’s going on, rather than getting the sound first and then pushing it on the band. A lot of it is adjusting to Ronnie, and Ronnie to me, which brings a certain continuity as well as a certain flexibility.

You’ve often mentioned the two-guitar sound as a cornerstone of the band. On Still Life there’s a different kind of interplay - probably tighter than ever.

Well, Ron’s getting better [laughs]. I think that’s due to the fact that Ron and I have been working together now since ’75, and the more we play together the tighter we get it.

It sounds like you and he are two sides of the same coin, like you could almost change places.

We do. If he drops a cigarette I’ll play his bit, and we’ll realize later that I’ve covered for him and he’s covered for me. And you think at the time, “Oh, my God, what a gap,” but when you listen to the tape, you find that it’s been fixed right there at the moment, in a very un-thought-about way. We pick it up and cover each other so that sometimes you can’t really tell who’s playing.


When Ron joined in 1975, did the band have to make a change in the way you interact or rehearse?

No, that was the beauty of it. He was already so familiar with our stuff. After Mick Taylor left, we rehearsed for about six months with a lot of good guitar players from all over the world. And we could work with them, you know, and they could work with us. But when Ronnie became available and suddenly walked in, that was it. There was no doubt. It was easy.


With Mick Taylor’s style so well defined as a lead guitarist, there seemed to be a clear distinction between the two of you.

It was much harder to get a Rolling Stones sound with Mick Taylor. It was much more lead and rhythm, one way or the other. As fabulous as he is as a lead guitarist, he wasn’t as great as a rhythm player, so we ended up taking roles.

When Brian and I started, it was never like that. It’s much easier than with Brian, personally. But also with Ron, the basic way we play is much more similar, and this isn’t in any way to knock Mick. I mean, he’s a fantastic guitar player. But even if he couldn’t play shit, I’d love the guy. But chemically we didn’t have that flexibility in the band. It was, “You do this, and I’ll do that, and never the twain shall meet.” With Ron, if he drops his pick, then I can play his lick until he picks it up, and you can’t even tell the difference.

Had you and Ron worked together very much before he joined the group?

Yes, for about 18 months. And I did a lot of work on Ronnie’s first and second solo albums. He’s never been the same since.

Have you found that your styles affected each other, now that you’ve been working together for several years?

Yeah, that’s what’s great about it. I neglect something, and he makes up for it. That’s the great thing about two guitar players, because if you get it right, you know when to lift one of his licks, and vice versa, without thinking about it. He lifts more of mine than I do of his [laughs].

When the two of you are onstage, how much of your interaction is subject to change?

It depends on the sound system. If you’re going to make a change, you need to hear what you’re doing in the first place, so a lot of that gets down to the technicalities of the stage monitoring. On our last tour in ’81, we had those long ramps out to the sides of the stage. The idea of having that stage is to get out where most performers don’t get with audiences of that size. Well, if the monitors aren’t working out there, and you’re just making signs at the sound guys instead of concentrating on your playing, then you forget it, just leave it. But if the sound’s good and you can hear everything, then you tend to give it a bit more, adjust more to what’s going on, change as you go.


Do you have much trouble communicating onstage at that volume?

It’s all done by semaphore and eye signals. It’s the only way you can really do it. But the thing is, there isn’t that much need for communication or looking at each other, except when things go wrong. Otherwise the communication is just through the music. But if things are going wrong, then everybody’s looking at me. “How’s he going to get out of this?”

Your records have sort of an indoor sound, the effect of an enclosed space. Are you happy with your outdoor concert sound?

Never totally satisfied with live things, no. If you were, you wouldn’t keep trying to make it better. But I’m not disappointed with it. You just look forward to being able to do it better. You’re always wondering about the people way at the back, what they’re hearing. There are so many people and they’re so far away - you have no idea what’s being heard out there.

You’re hoping for the best and taking it for granted that the sound crew are doing the job for you and giving out the sound onstage as much as possible to everywhere in the place. But there’s the one problem, always that nagging doubt there - they’re not all getting it the way they should.

Your live versions of songs are often faster than their studio counterparts. For example, “Shattered” on Still Life. Is that intentional, to make it more exciting for the audience, or is it the adrenaline of performing?

It’s the tempo of the whole gig, the adrenaline - especially the huge gigs. The show just takes its own speed from the start, and you go with it. It might be great or it might be terrible, but the tempos one night may be almost twice as fast as the night after. And you can always learn when you listen back, you see? You may find, “Wow, that should’ve been that tempo all along - we made the record too slow [laughs]!”

On the live version of “Just My Imagination,” in the second half the guitar figure changes some notes and sustains others for a country feel, almost like a pedal steel feeling.

That’s Ron and me doing the parts together, and you get the sustaining thing like that. We aren’t using a pull-string or a lot of slide now, but Ron plays pedal steel, a bit on “Shattered” and “Faraway Eyes.” Country music’s a part of the way we do that kind of thing, and it comes through even if it’s done with straight guitars sort of pulling up against each other.


On recent tours you’ve taken occasional breaks from the outdoor arenas, getting into clubs. Do you miss the smaller venues?

Yeah, always. You hate to do the same thing all the time. I love playing the ballparks and the domes, you know. For the satisfaction of the band it gives you a terrific buzz - so many people. But by doing just one thing all the time you forget how to do anything else. You just become good at playing the domes and never learn anything else again. And I’ve always found that if you put in a few 3,000-seaters on the tour, and even 300, it gives the band itself a confidence quite apart from anything else.

Then you can deal with 300 people or 90,000 and know how to play it. And probably the band feels that working in one of the nice old places like the Fox Theater in Atlanta is kind of more satisfying most of the time.


Because of the immediacy?

Yeah. The sound isn’t dissipated totally, and you don’t have to worry about the wind factor and things like that. It’s much simpler and easier to get - it’s just [snaps fingers] turn it up, get to it.

In the last few years there’s been a new aspect of your tone - more distinct, with a slight click, almost like a slap bass in rockabilly. “Hang Fire” and “She’s So Cold” are examples, and especially the last section of “Little T&A.”

It’s our equivalent of that rockabilly thing. I think you’ll find that comes from using a lot of analog delay on Ron’s guitar or my guitar or both of them, and I dampen it. That’ll give you that ticka-tacka-ticka. I always use that green MXR analog delay. I’m told it’s quite out of date now and old fashioned, but I got it free and I forgot that time marches on and they make better ones, or so they say. I don’t know. I’ve worked very well with those MXR things, and they’ve been very reliable.

Can you judge the sound of an electric guitar before you plug it in?

Maybe to a certain extent. If the neck and the action feel right, you’re more than halfway home, even before hearing the electronics. Things like weight and the density of the wood indicate certain things, but you simply need to play it to really tell. And it doesn’t take long.

On record you’ve used several very different types of guitars - Gibson Les Pauls and ES-335s, Fender Telecasters and others. And yet a listener can tell right away that it’s you, from stylistic clues, but also from the sound alone.

I use a whole load of different guitars, that’s true, but they’re not all that dissimilar in type. I mean, 90 percent are probably Telecasters, old ones, but more than that, you can’t really separate style and sound, you see. People do separate them when they’re talking about music, but all of that often misses the whole point.

You’re suggesting that the style is the sound?

Yes, part of it, more than any particular tone setting or pickup or anything like that. I’ll just adjust to the sound of the track as we go - the sound of the bass drum and especially Ronnie’s guitar. The style is adjusting along with the sound. There’s never a conscious effort to get that “Honky Tonk Woman” tone or a thing like that. You may get it or you may not. But that’s not what you’re thinking about. You’re thinking about the track.

Some people were amazed to read in your first Guitar Player cover story that on “Street Fighting Man” there are no electric guitars.

Two acoustics, one of them put through the first Philips cassette player they made. It was overloaded, recorded on that, and then hooked up through a little extension speaker, and then onto the studio tape through a microphone.

You’ve paid quite a bit of attention to acoustic guitars in rock music.

Well, I started on acoustic guitar, and you have to recognize what it’s got to offer. But also you can’t say it’s an acoustic guitar sound, actually, because with the cassette player and then a microphone and then the tape, really it’s just a different process of electrifying it. You see, I couldn’t have done that song or that record in that way with a straight electric, or the sustain would have been too much. It would have flooded too much.

The reason I did that one like that was because I already had the sound right there on the guitar before we recorded. I just loved it, and when I wrote the thing I thought, “I’m not going to get a better sound than this.” And “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is the same, too. That’s acoustic guitar.

In the choruses of “Honky Tonk Woman” and “Start Me Up,” the bass leaves huge holes for the guitars to fill. Does Bill Wyman get a lot of direction from you in that regard, or is that something he’s always done on his own?

I would say in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, Bill would be given more direction - not always the right direction [laughs] - but Mick and I would be more inclined to say, “Do this and that.” Sometimes he comes and asks, but less and less. You know, relationships change. But Bill, he’s kind of like Charlie. He just keeps [long pause] amazing me. He just keeps getting better.

He’s not always what I’m expecting. I know he’s good, and he’s always there. But I kind of take his playing for granted. And then when I listen to what he’s doing, I realize he’s not always playing the same thing. He’s much better than we think. You see, we’re the world’s worst Rolling Stones critics [laughs].

You and Pete Townshend seem to have much in common, at least on the surface - the components of your styles, your use of the guitar, the way your bands are compared in the press. Do you feel any particular kinship with him?

You mean Trousers? Now let me see - one reason for that is probably that we started playing the same clubs almost at the same time. I never took credit for this, but apparently he said that he lifted that arm swing he does from seeing me. I don’t recall doing it, but I guess if he says so, he did. It’s something I’ve never been aware of. In certain respects, yeah, we’re both coming out in the same place at the same time, more than anything else.

He was quoted as saying that there comes a time for a band to retire, to pass on the torch, so to speak, to younger bands.

I love Peter, but the time to stop is when you can’t do it anymore, or when you’re fed up. There’s no passing on of the goddamn torches. Other people will pick them up anyway, and besides, that’s not the point. I don’t know if he was accurately quoted, but other people have said it anyway when they can’t think of anything else to say. You see, if rock and roll is what you do, then that’s what you do, and that’s all. You don’t sort of say, “Oh, now I give up and I’ll hand it on to this band who I think is quite good.” You don’t hand it on in that way.

Pete already handed it on, the same as we did, to some of the young guys that are playing now, the way we played Chuck Berry. It’s not, “Here, I’ve got to hand you a document.” It’s the records that you’ve done that the younger players have listened to and grown up with and sat around learning.

People have been predicting the end of the Stones…

…From the beginning [laughs]!

With the kind of life you seem to lead, longevity might appear to be the last thing you’d be able to gain. What’s the secret?

The secret is, there is no secret. It’s finding people that not only play well with you, but that you can get along with. There’s no constant battle about who’s Mister Big, none of those problems. When I see Charlie and Bill - I ain’t seen ‘em for a few weeks - it’s like a pleasure. Ron says we’re his closest friends. I guess that’s the only secret.

Is that what it means to play in a band?

Most people don’t know what a band is. People have heroes, and they copy them - I mean, we copied things very carefully when we started. But you don’t get this picture and then do everything to fit it. You do what you do.

The musicians are there to contribute to the band sound. The band isn’t there for showing off solos or egos. A lick on a record - it doesn’t matter who played it. All that matters is how it fits. The chemistry to work together like that has to be there. You have to work on it, always - figure out what to do with it. But basically it’s not an intellectual thing you can think up and just put there. It has to be there. You have to find it.



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Rolling Stones - San Diego - 1981

video: [youtu.be]

Quote
Dorn


Leeds 1982
can not recall they used a video screen already back than

Seeing the screen now the Leeds DVD makes sense. I always thought - everything was a little too close up. But if you have a screen, you need to be close up.

ORLANDO

GOTHENBURG


June 16, 1982
photos by Jan Persson

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-12-25 02:10 by exilestones.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-12-25 02:12 by exilestones.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-12-25 02:13 by exilestones.