I was in Memphis this week and as I drove by the Liberty Bowl, I remembered that that's where the Stones tried to pull the elephants onstage in 1975 (along with Furry Lewis--it was called Memphis Stadium back then)

Anyway, a local gave me this interesting article about it--sort of cool--note how Jagger allegedly held up the show due a visit with a friend in Virginia--was Bianca off the tour by now or did she just let it slide?

MEMORIES OF '75 ROLL IN WITH STONES TOUR
September 25, 1994
By Larry Nager
The Rolling Stones' "Voodoo Lounge" rolls into the Liberty Bowl Tuesday night...unlike the Stones' last Memphis stadium date, this one doesn't require trained elephants or bluesman Furry Lewis, so local promoter Bob Kelley isn't too worried.
"This date is so organized, so controlled, so contracted, so specific," said Kelley, president of Mid-South Concerts, which is producing the show in conjunction with the national promoter, Toronto-based CPI. "In those days it was just, 'Stop complaining, you've got the best date in the country.' "
That "best date" was July 4, 1975, when the Rolling Stones played the Liberty Bowl, then known as Memphis Memorial Stadium. It was a wild time that remains infamous in Memphis concert lore, a brutally hot show day that found many concertgoers stripped to the buff, a time when marijuana consumption was so conspicuous that hemp plants could be seen growing out of the stadium turf a few weeks after the concert.
Today, many of those fans are respectable, fully dressed adults who'll be bringing their children to Tuesday's concert. But it was a different world in 1975 and, not surprisingly, Kelley had a rough time securing the date, as some in the city felt a rock and roll show on Independence Day was a form of treason. But while others had plans for patriotic fireworks displays to begin the Bicentennial year, Kelley had secured his bid in first.
Still, the holiday did trip him up a bit, as a few days before the show, the Stones decided they wanted to do something special for the occasion.
"So we got this elephant call," Kelley said. "They said that on the day we took the colonies back from them they wanted to ride onstage on elephants."
The Stones' production team had scoured the country, securing elephants from a Ringling Brothers troupe in Minnesota. "That afternoon or the next morning, eight elephants come sauntering into the stadium grounds," Kelley said, still sounding a bit exasperated. "So not only do we have elephants for them to ride onstage, but we have elephants to take care of. Three days before the show, these elephants are hanging around dumping on everything."
But the biggest problem was figuring out how to get them onstage. Every time they tried to get the lead elephant onstage, the wooden ramps were turned into piles of kindling. They reinforced the ramps again and again. "We had that ramp at least 2-, 2 1/2-feet thick and every elephant would go right through."
The solution, so they thought, was to use a swing like those used to maneuver large boats into the water and simply hoist the elephants onstage. The stage was rebuilt on show day, using more than 20 carpenters (all working at inflated holiday rates, Kelley recalled), and the first elephant was placed in the boat swing. "This elephant got about six inches off the ground and he starts freaking because he doesn't like being a boat," Kelley said. The pachyderm was tranquilized and slowly raised up to the stage, which had earlier withstood rigorous weight tests with heavy machinery.
"We took this elephant, swung him around, put him on the stage," Kelley said, pausing for effect before pounding his fist on his desk. "Right through the . . . stage. That was it. That's when I said, 'Enough, it's not gonna work.' "
But the Stones' American manager, Peter Rudge, refused to tell Mick Jagger. That was Kelley's job, he insisted. Jagger arrived the day of the show by private plane and when he got to the stadium, Kelley, who was being held in place by a terrified Rudge, approached the head Stone. "I said, 'Mick, the elephant thing didn't work out. Nothing we can do will hold them.' And he just said, 'Oh (expletive) it, then. Where's me makeup man?' That classic line, and he just walked right into the dressing room. We spent $45,000 trying to make a stage that would be able to hold elephants."
Furry Lewis did make it to the stage, but just barely. Lewis booster Knox Phillips had landed the octogenarian Memphis bluesman the gig of playing for the Stones when they arrived at Memphis Aero a couple days earlier.
"Furry set up on whisky cases on the runway playing, just as they got off and everybody else walked by except Keith (Richards) and (Ron) Wood," said Memphis musician-producer Jim Dickinson, a longtime friend of the Stones who played piano on the "Sticky Fingers" sessions that produced Wild Horses. ''And Keith literally sat at Furry's feet."
The band decided they wanted Lewis to open for them, but Kelley, thinking that the J. Geils Band, the Meters and the Charlie Daniels Band were enough, figured they'd forget about Lewis, according to Phillips. But as Knox enjoyed a Fourth of July at his father Sam's house, "I get an emergency call and Bob says, 'Knox, the Rolling Stones will not go on unless you bring Furry out here.' "
Phillips called Lewis and told him he'd be picked up at his house and Kelley dispatched a limousine and two motorcycle officers to bring Lewis and his girlfriend Fredonia to the show.
"I was there when he got there," Phillips said. Everybody was very kind to Furry, very respectful. But it was really surreal. Here he was, playing guitar, this old man standing there with Mick Jagger in major-league makeup."
Phillips said Lewis, who died in 1981 at 88, was paid $1,000 for playing onstage in front of the 51,000 Rolling Stones fans, the biggest crowd of the bluesman's lengthy career. But when he was done, Lewis was ready to leave. ''Fredonia said, 'Don't you want to see the Rolling Stones? They're the biggest rock and roll band in the world.' And he said, 'I don't care nothing about it.' "
But after Lewis left the stage, the crowd still had to wait for the band. ''The Stones waited until sundown to come on," recalled Walter Dawson, former music critic for The Commercial Appeal and now managing editor of the Monterey County Herald. "There was a long gap before the Stones. People were hot and things were getting a little tense. There was no trouble, but things were getting a little tense."
Kelley says Jagger delayed the show because he'd taken a private plane to visit a girlfriend in Virginia. "He delayed the show about two hours," Kelley said. "And the crowd was not getting unruly, but it was an extremely hot day and they were getting very, very tired. There was a huge amount of tension. And they came on about two, two-and-a-half hours late, and Jagger just pranced onstage with a parasol, like absolutely nothing was wrong and just said some snide remark to Memphis and then the band proceeded . . . and it was like nothing ever happened. The show was unbelievable."
The Stones made $275,000 from the Memphis date, which Kelley recalls paying in cash (he also bought his house shortly after, paying for it, he said, mostly in cash). Memphis did well, also, stadium manager Nat Baxter estimating the city earned $112,000 in rental, parking and concessions.
But the Stones' adventures in the Mid-South weren't over yet. The following day, at Dickinson's suggestion, Richards, Wood and a bodyguard decided to drive to the Dallas concert through Arkansas. But they got no farther than Fordyce, where they were arrested after officers said they smelled marijuana. Richards was later charged with reckless driving and possession of a knife. Bodyguard Fred Sessler was charged with possession of a controlled substance.
Kelley took part in a conference call with the Stones' attorney and the sheriff of Fordyce to try and get Richards and Wood freed. "And he (the sheriff) said, 'We don't need this kind of stuff down here in Fordyce, all this press, getting calls from all over the world. We don't need no Rolling Stones bringing attention to Fordyce, we don't need that.' And I said, 'Why is that, sir?' 'We're already famous. Bear Bryant was born here.' "
Years later, when Dickinson was touring England with Ry Cooder, he stopped in to see Richards and apologized for sending him off to Arkansas.
'I said, 'I'm so sorry. I had no idea that you would have that kind of hassle. And he looked at me, and sometimes he completely drops his accent. Keith thinks of himself as an American, which is the big difference between the two of them (Richards and Jagger). And his accent completely went away from him and he got this mysterious look on his face and he said, 'Man that was the most fun I ever had in my life.' "
Though the times have changed and rock and roll is much more of a business nowadays, Dickinson says the Stones' music hasn't changed much. Even with Darryl Jones replacing original bassist Bill Wyman, Dickinson said of the band's recent MTV Awards appearance, "It was the only real music anybody played."
In that, Kelley, who later promoted the Stones' 1978 Mid-South Coliseum appearance, agrees. "When you see the Stones live, you see how good they are," said Kelley, more hard-core fan than veteran promoter. "Once that band hits the stage, it's like all the stress, all the problems, everything that's been associated with the show melts aways and you just stand there and watch in awe."



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2008-03-28 19:38 by hbwriter.

Great post. Thanks.

Thanks, OF--I loved the last line of it--sort of sums up the entire point of the Rolling Stones.

Awesome post!

I was at that show. 17 years old, I remember feeling like I was at Woodstock. It was hot as HELL.

Loved the Bear Bryant line, Roll Tide!

What a great read!

Ross

Ross--isn't this article just bursting with info? No filler--I love it.

Here's a shot from the show, as it ran in the Commercial Appeal--man I love visiting Memphis--I was doing an event over at the Civil Rights Museum but found time to grab lunch at Elvis's booth around the corner at the Arcade...

I didn't know about the Elephants - that's hilarious.
thanks

Ross: I was there in '75 [as well as '94].
95F and humidity to match !
We got there around 11 a.m. to watch the early acts.
They ran out of ice and cokes [at least in our part of the stadium]; lots of sunburns around, and tired butts. All of that made it even more memorable.
And...like the article says...once the Stones [finally] came on, nothing else mattered !!!

Anybody want to share the boot of this show? I have heard it was a good one.

Great story

Very cool..thanks...i do remember seeing pictures of the elephants in the newspapers back in the day...1975 tour was my 1st stones tour...

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HEILOOBAAS
Anybody want to share the boot of this show? I have heard it was a good one.

If you find one let me know. The only version I've heard plays extremely slow.

It strikes me now how fitting the elephants would have been for this tour--which rolled across the land like one big tented, candy-colored, electric circus, replete with Mick's flying trapeze, confetti-spitting dragon and steel drum orchestra (at least in NY & LA).

Glimmer Twins da Barnum & Bailey of Rock ! Wooo Hoooo
security was " very heavy " for that gig



from C. Sykes tour book

Yeah - thanks Chippy
you're da man

those shots are from the genesis book, right?

I was also at that show (drove from KC where we saw them in June). Awesome warm-up by J Geils. Snuck in a bottle of Jack (tied with a belt to my ankle under the extra-wide bell-bottoms that were common at that time). Best line by Furry Lewis: 'why do I need a wife when the guy next door has got one?'

Compared to the KC show (which was about the fourth on the tour) they had 10X the power in Memphis. We fought our way close enough that we had to crane our necks to see the stage.

Favorite moment: just as Mick was getting the crowd sing-along going on the Tumblin Dice coda, Keith turns to Charlie and shuts it down. Mick, furious, throws the mike down, walks over and slams Keith on the shoulders with both hands - Keith looks at Mick, palm's up, like, 'What, man?' Absolutely jaw-dropping - maybe my favorite moment of the 20+ shows I've seen.

I have never heard a boot of this, but I'd love to hear the abrupt ending on that one.

Quote
harlito1969

Quote
HEILOOBAAS
Anybody want to share the boot of this show? I have heard it was a good one.

If you find one let me know. The only version I've heard plays extremely slow.

The famous Seattle '75 show that's now circulating like a good hit of coke on a lonely Saturday morning was speed corrected. Surely MEM75 can have the same majik applied to it?

"The wonder of Jimi Hendrix was that he could stand up at all he was so pumped full of drugs." Patsy, Patsy Stone

I was there too. I remember them announcing that the reason it was taking so long for the Stones' to come on was that someone had damaged a technical piece of equipment by throwing a cherry bomb and it had to be fixed. I knew that was a load of crap.

I remember the same thing about the cherry bomb - remember thinking they needed to put a little space between them and J Geils, after their hot set. Of course the Stones wound up smoking - but it was a brutally long day.

Did many of you take photos in '75? Would love to see postings from that tour, from personal cameras...

How I wish I had! We were way up high in the stands. I didn't have any photo gear that would have taken a decent shot anyway. I've seen very few photos from that show; Annie L.'s of course. Foolish me did not even save the write-ups from the Memphis paper as a memento.

I found a wire service recently that had some wonderful stuff from the tour--i'll try and post later