Next weekend China makes yet another spectacular pirouette on
the international stage of the 21st century as the world's greatest
rock band, the Rolling Stones, play their first Chinese mainland
concert.
The band's inimitable front man Mick "The Lips" Jagger and
original axe man Keith "I'm Still Alive" Richards took time out
just ahead of their Tokyo Dome concert to talk with Shanghai
Daily.
So the phone goes and it's Cheryl who's working with the Stones
in Tokyo, and she says: "Right, are you ready? I'm going to hand
you over to Mick."
I say "yes" and the next thing it's: "Awight?" Textbook,
trademark Jagger - the man who for more than four decades has
fronted the Rolling Stones the band which right from the get go,
and all the way ever since, has been one of the biggest on the
planet.
Official figures for 2005 have them once again crowned as the
biggest grossing band of the year with ticket sales in North
America alone worth a staggering US$162 million.
So how is the man, for whom the adjective swagger was invented,
feeling about coming to Shanghai?
"I'm really excited. We all know that Shanghai is a big
important city so we wanted to make sure it's on our itinerary. We
don't want to leave it out," says Jagger. "Although China as an
economic force has been around ... well forever really ... as a
place for us to play it's not really been on the map for that
long."
Speaking to "Keef" Richards a little later he says: "Shanghai?
I've always wanted to get there. We're very grateful for being
allowed in, we'll stick our noses in and see what's happening."
What does he want to do whilst in Shanghai?
"I want to buy some of my own bootlegs ... I just want to get a
whiff of it and look around and see what's happening, it's all
brand new to me ... China will be a bit of an adventure for us,
we've never been there before, it's a first and by now we don't get
many firsts," he says.
The band has been on the road since August with their Bigger
Bang tour which ends at the Millennium Stadium in Wales on August
29 after 120 concerts.
That's a gig every three days for an entire year (the Tokyo Dome
gig lasted a full two hours and included 21 songs) — the Rolling
Stones are far from work shy.
I put it to Richards that they can hardly be doing it for the
cash.
"You wouldn't get any of us doing it for the money, I'll tell
you that," he says. Pressed as to why then, he offers: "There's a
sense of mission. There are millions of people out there who want
to see it. You know it takes a bit to put this stuff on, we come
away with a bit and we give a lot away," he says in his home
counties, eccentric and slightly squiffy uncle voice.
So how does Jagger explain the enduring appeal of the band that
formed in 1963 and has just played to the biggest crowd in history,
1.2 million people on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil?
"People have written essays trying to pinpoint our enduring
appeal, it's very hard for me, I don't really know.
"A big part of it is basically our longevity, people like us
because we are still around after all this time, we're still here
so people like that -- we're kind of a connection with the past for
them and yet we are still here in the present.
"We try to do our bit to avoid being just a nostalgia band. Of
course part of our appeal is nostalgia, but not all of it. There's
definitely longevity in our songs — people like to hear them over
and over again."
Richards expounds: "What's nuts is that in those days (the
1960s) we wrote a song on Monday, on Friday we recorded it and by
the next Wednesday it was in the shops. And there it is — it's
stuck for all time and you realize that you hardly know the thing.
It's like something that has just broken through the egg and you
spend the next 40 years learning the thing you wrote.
"If I knew what our appeal was, I'd bottle it and I wouldn't
tell you ... There's some sort of chemistry that goes on with this
bunch, I don't know, maybe it's addictive, quite possibly knowing
this bunch. At the same time it's one of those great imponderables.
It's a suspension of disbelief," he adds.
On the Rio concert Jagger says: "I've been playing these kind of
stadium things for a long time now and it takes a lot to faze me
but at the end of that gig I bowed and I thought as I was doing it,
'mmm, I've never done that before, bowed in front of quite so many
people,' that was an interesting one."
Richards puts it slightly more colorfully: "It was just as well
we couldn't see all the crowd or we'd just have been running to the
john, man!"
On the business of performing the famously athletic football and
cricket nut, Jagger says: "It's a bit like going out to play in a
cup final or something, you soak up the energy from the crowd."
As to how long they will continue playing, Richards is candid.
"You can actually play this stuff until you croak and you can get
better at it," he says. "We just love doing it."
Jonathan Krane, the tour promoter, says: "Tickets for this
concert have sold not only to fans all over China but all around
the world?-- Italy, South America, Japan and the United
States. This is a real international, historic, milestone event and
people want to be able to say they were there when it
happened."
A few tickets for the upcoming Shanghai concert are still
available. The hot line is 6481-2938 or go to Emma Entertainment's
office at the Shanghai Grand Stage, the venue, itself.
Date: April 8, 8 PM?
Address: 1111 Caoxi Rd N.
Tickets: 300-3,000 yuan
Tel: 6481-2938, 962-288 ext 2
(Shanghai Daily by Douglas Williams March 31, 2006)
