In a burst of activity to celebrate 50 years in business, veteran British rockers the Rolling Stones are staging a comeback with a mini-tour which kicks off tomorrow.
Once the machine gets fired up again, it’s hard to imagine there won’t be more live shows to come
With an average age of 68, the band members have recently produced a photo book, written two songs, collaborated on a documentary, released a greatest-hits album, played warm-up gigs in Paris and committed to five concerts.
They also faced questions about high ticket prices to the two gigs in London and three in the US that have given some followers the impression they are more interested in banking cash than bashing out the hits.
Yet that has done little to dampen broad enthusiasm for their return to the big stage five years after the A Bigger Bang tour became the most lucrative in pop history at the time, earning nearly €434 million.
Adding to the sense of occasion, the full-time quartet of Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on guitar and Charlie Watts on drums will be joined by former members Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor at London’s O2 Arena tomorrow.
Even before they step out for the first of two gigs in the British capital, the question on every Stones fan’s lips is what more they have up their sleeves, amid hints of a full tour and the possibility of a new studio album.
“It would be nice to think that wouldn’t be it,” said Paul Sexton, a music journalist who has met and interviewed the band in the run-up to the latest concerts.
“Once the machine gets fired up again, it’s hard to imagine there won’t be more live shows to come. If these dates went well, you could imagine sufficient momentum for some kind of recording project.”
The Stones first played at the Marquee Club in London in 1962, and with a changing line-up that settled with today’s foursome, the band who had to compete with the Beatles quickly became one of the biggest groups in pop history.
Their blues-infused output slowed from the 1980s, and some critics argue they peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, but the Stones’ longevity and a catalogue of hits like (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Honky Tonk Women have ensured the music world still cares.
Despite the promise of a major payout and another chance to enhance their legacy, the 50th anniversary celebrations were not always a certainty.
Jagger and Richards have bickered in the past and were at it again recently with Richards calling the charismatic frontman “unbearable” amid a stream of insults in his 2010 memoir Life.
He eventually apologised, clearing the way for the reunion.
“If you was married to somebody for 50 years, you can have your little spats here and there, and we don’t mind having them in public occasionally,” the guitarist told Rolling Stone magazine. “We can’t get divorced – we’re doing it for the kids!”
The Stones will play two gigs at the O2 Arena, where tickets cost £95 (€117) to £950 (€1,175) for a VIP seat, before crossing the Atlantic for a show at Barclay Centre, Brooklyn, on December 8 and two at the Prudential Centre, Newark on December 13 and 15.
Jagger has been quick to defend the pricing, saying that the shows were expensive to stage and tickets being traded on secondary sites for greater than their face value did not mean more money for the band.
Jagger and Richards are the only two members of the Stones who were there at its inception in 1962. Watts joined in early 1963 and Wood was recruited in the mid-1970s to replace Mick Taylor when he left.
Still touring after 50 years on the road
Here is a look at the group which used the name Rollin’ Stones for the first time in 1962 at a performance in London’s Marquee Club in London to replace Alexis Korner’s blues band.
• Michael Philip Jagger – who will be 70 in July 2013 – was an avid fan of American blues artists like Muddy Waters and he formed his first band in his teens. He had won a place at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) but admitted he did not take it seriously. At London’s Ealing Blues Club, Jagger met Brian Jones who was recruiting for a band he called the Rollin’ Stones, the ‘g’ was to be restored later – after a Muddy Waters song.
• The original line-up included Mick Jagger (vocals), Brian Jones (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Keith Richards (guitar, vocals), Ian ‘Stu’ Stewart (piano), Dick Taylor (bass) and various drummers such as Mick Avory (later of The Kinks) and Tony Chapman. Charlie Watts joined in 1963. Taylor left shortly after to return to art school, and was later to form The Pretty Things. He was replaced by Bill Wyman.
• There were riots when the band went to the US and it was in 1965 that (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction gave them their first US and British hit. Another hit, Get Off My Cloud, fully used Jagger’s defiant persona. Bad-boy controversy continued with Jagger, Jones and Wyman arrested for urinating at a London petrol station.
• A stream of hits followed, from Under My Thumb, to the anarchic 19th Nervous Breakdown and doom-laden Paint it Black. Jagger spat out a diatribe of abuse in Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?
• A Steel Wheels tour in 1989 catapulted the band into the record books earning more than €232.4 million. This was followed by the equally successful Voodoo Lounge tour. By the turn of the century, they still had not lost their appetite for touring. The group’s last major tour was their 2005-2007 Bigger Bang Tour which took in over 30 countries and brought nearly €434 million in sales. It has only been beaten by Irish group U2 during their 2011 360 tour.