1. Long, funky outro to Tumbling Dice
2. Long, funky intro to Honky Tonk Women
3. Keith's acoustic guitar intro to Paint it Black
4. Happy played a little faster and bouncier
5. "Can you hit me one time" Satisfaction breakdown
6. Best Sympathy drum track
7. ...

7. Mick's "why why why why!" riffing on "Miss You" breakdown.

8. The emergence of Lisa Fischer, and the first live female duet with Mick on "Shelter."

9. "Play with Fire" with drums.

10. "Start Me Up" with a stand-alone Ronnie solo.

I find 1989-1990 shows completely unlistenable. 1989 was the first time I saw them . The Stones were (and still are) my #1 band. I was expecting raw, unpolished Stones and got...something else.

Not trying to be a troll, but the "great" things noted so far are kinda cringeworthy to me.


Peace.

11. Horns (what a great sound they had)
12. 2000 Light Years From Home (nightly)

13. In Toronto Keith played the official opening of JJF. I LOVED IT



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-07-20 03:22 by DrPete.

14. Bill Wyman

The band was never tighter or more professional...Ronnie and especially Keith were on point, playing with some real precision and showing off lead chops.

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DrPete
13. In Toronto Keith played the official opening of JJF. I LOVED IT

[www.youtube.com]

WOW. I've read this before but this is the first time I listened to it. How many times did they actually perform it this way in '89?

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keefriff99
The band was never tighter or more professional...Ronnie and especially Keith were on point, playing with some real precision and showing off lead chops.

I know a lot of people who followed the Stones preferred the raunchier, sloppier versions from earlier tours and tended to view the Steel Wheels tour as being slick and over-produced I was not one of those. I thought that this was one of the best versions of the band. They were tight, professional and their live songs-for the first time-actually sounded like their studio counterparts. THe two shows I saw in Syracuse, NY on that tour were great.

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keefriff99

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DrPete
13. In Toronto Keith played the official opening of JJF. I LOVED IT

[www.youtube.com]

WOW. I've read this before but this is the first time I listened to it. How many times did they actually perform it this way in '89?

From what I can remember, they performed Jack Flash this way (the original studio arrangement) during the beginning of the tour and went back to the usual way sometime in mid to late September. If I am wrong, I sure the "regulars" on this site can correct me...

5. "Can you hit me one time" Satisfaction breakdown






Perhaps a nod to this song?


[www.youtube.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-07-20 06:13 by ryanpow.

I don't know anything about this tour other than I think it's the one with the stupidest Mick hair ... but I listened to four or five songs from the Toronto show linked above ... and man that is some truly woeful shit. I take it they got somewhat better as the tour went on?

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LongBeachArena72
I don't know anything about this tour other than I think it's the one with the stupidest Mick hair ... but I listened to four or five songs from the Toronto show linked above ... and man that is some truly woeful shit. I take it they got somewhat better as the tour went on?

That's the one thing that I dislike about the Steel Wheels tour...it is so painfully '80s. I really don't like watching Live At the Max because of how dated the show is visually.

There's no other tour of theirs that I feel this way about. You can watch Voodoo Lounge footage from only 5 years later, and it seems timeless, but the SW/UJ tour is stuck in a time warp visually.

I didn't listen to the whole boot (just skipped to JJF), but most audio from that period, they sounded totally on their game.

I have Mixed Emotions about this tour ha... ha...ha



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2017-07-20 06:28 by ryanpow.

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Sighunt

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keefriff99
The band was never tighter or more professional...Ronnie and especially Keith were on point, playing with some real precision and showing off lead chops.

I know a lot of people who followed the Stones preferred the raunchier, sloppier versions from earlier tours and tended to view the Steel Wheels tour as being slick and over-produced I was not one of those. I thought that this was one of the best versions of the band. They were tight, professional and their live songs-for the first time-actually sounded like their studio counterparts. THe two shows I saw in Syracuse, NY on that tour were great.

Yeah, I obviously love all incarnations of the band for different reasons, but a little professionalism and polish, especially at the stage they were at in their career at that point, was NOT a bad thing.

I think the Voodoo Lounge, B2B and No Security Tours re-introduced some sloppiness to their sound (for whatever reasons: arthritis, and substance abuse not mixing so well with aging) and walked that line between professionalism and looseness almost perfectly.

The Rolling Stones could have been polished and professional in performance from the start if they wanted to -- and they were, as one listen to their BBC radio stereo experiment from the Camden Theatre in 1964 will attest: [www.youtube.com]
In the above BBC set, they were also performing their music exactly as it sounded on record.

It makes you realize that the earlier "sloppy" version of the band was an act, like the 1981-1982 shows. Part of it was just drink- and drug-induced laziness on the part of the front line -- the rhythm section was never sloppy. The other part of it was posing to jump on the punk/new wave bandwagon, which in retrospect is ridiculous -- like a bunch of dissatisfied middle-aged reprobates who all of a sudden decide to rebel against their own history.

Live at the Max is unlistenable, like the proverbial fingernails down the chalkboard -- in post-production for that DVD release they really messed with the sound, made it all tinny, trebly, scratchy, and that's not the way I remember broadcasts from that tour sounding.

There was a live radio broadcast of the last night of the U.S. tour. For the first time in living memory, they were actually playing music. Mick was actually singing -- in melody -- rather than those years of monotonal, coked-out shouting, which is part of what makes that recent LA Forum 1975 DVD release so unlistenable. I was also very impressed with Bill Wyman's bass playing on the tour, and the fullness and clarity of the musical arrangements overall.

I also recall from cable TV in the early 1990s an HBO(?) special taken from the last show of the 1990 Urban Jungle tour, at Wembley Stadium. I enjoyed that over and over, because they could actually recreate the sound and tempos as they were originally recorded, like your favorite classic records were coming to life in a technicolor cartoon, with a fullness you never imagined. So, I don't know what happened with Live at the Max, because that's not the way it really sounded.

If they had toured in 1986, it would have been the heavy metal tour, which would have been the fashionable bandwagon to jump on then -- Mick with his extra long tour hair like in the One Hit video, the guitars extra loud and shrill to prove that they could match the worst of the hair metal bands of the time. I suppose we should be glad that tour never happened. The 1989 SW/UJ tour wouldn't have had the same impact.

I like the Stones more if they do NOT sound very professional.

The begin of the Vegas years and of the plink plonk orgies of Chuck Leavell. Unfortunately the evolution to what I call to be one's own cover band.

Some arrangements were great, others didn't work so well.

The Atlantic City PPV-SHOW is the Stones at the top of their game. Live At The Max sounds thin and unfocused in comparison, imo.

The beginning of the "Vegas Era" . Slick high gloss shows .Which to me is really not the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the whole world .To me the greatest was 1969-1981 live .

The Atlantic City PPV-SHOW is the Stones at the top of their game.

That´s so true. Now only topped by Paradiso/Olympia/Brixton 1995.

AC is indeed one of the better shows. But good shit is still shit.

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Send It To me

5. "Can you hit me one time" Satisfaction breakdown

A complete low point for me. Starting point for the Vegas era.

1989/90 - Far too much Matt Clifford and not enough guitars (although the Dallas '89 soundboard is an exception). Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the 1990 shows that I saw - the setlists were great.

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stonehearted
If they had toured in 1986, it would have been the heavy metal tour, which would have been the fashionable bandwagon to jump on then -- Mick with his extra long tour hair like in the One Hit video, the guitars extra loud and shrill to prove that they could match the worst of the hair metal bands of the time. I suppose we should be glad that tour never happened. The 1989 SW/UJ tour wouldn't have had the same impact.

Can you imagine how stuck in time THAT tour would look today had it occurred? I can't imagine what gaudy neon stage and inane Reagan-era fashion that would have been on display for that one.

15 - Factory Girl

We got a taste of this with Micks solo tour. It's truly cringe worthy to watch

Quote
stonehearted
If they had toured in 1986, it would have been the heavy metal tour, which would have been the fashionable bandwagon to jump on then -- Mick with his extra long tour hair like in the One Hit video, the guitars extra loud and shrill to prove that they could match the worst of the hair metal bands of the time. I suppose we should be glad that tour never happened. The 1989 SW/UJ tour wouldn't have had the same impact.

Can you imagine how stuck in time THAT tour would look today had it occurred? I can't imagine what gaudy neon stage and inane Reagan-era fashion that would have been on display for that one.[/quote]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-07-20 15:59 by DrPete.

Greatest version of Start Me Up on that tour, with the Atlantic PPV possibly being the best of all the ones I've heard.

Great set list. Deep cuts. They played like a well oiled machine.

my first gig was hampden glasgow 1990. was a cold chilly evening. was glad to see the stones but felt they wernt intense enough, set list could have been better and i felt the first half of the gig they were going through the motions, the concert seemed to get better as it went on though.

I think one thing about this tour which was different from the others was this tour became more theatric. Mick had to stand in a specific spot at a specific time. The roll with whatever is coming along was gone.
There were some great songs pulled out for the tour. Ruby Tuesday, Play With Fire, and 2000 light years.
I think Little Red Rooster and Boogie Chillen from Atlantic City was the peak of their playing on this tour. The look on Mick's face during Clapton's solo is priceless.
They had lost a step from the 1981/1982 tours. Mick couldn't jump and do the splits and the buckets of water on the crowd were gone. I am sure this had to with age and maturity.