THE OBSERVER 16 July 1995

The armies of pleasure

Thirty-two years ago, Salman Rushdie saw the Rolling Stones on their first tour. Now Britain's greatest author reviews them for The Observer.
By Salman Rushdie
THE OBSERVER
Clap your hands, Mick Jagger commands Wembley, and 70,000 People Obey. It looks like one of those mass callisthenics demonstrations the Chinese used to go in for. Yea yea yea WOO, he prompts us in the middle of 'Brown Sugar', and yea yea yea WOO we reply. 'You're in good voice tonight,' he flatters us, and for a moment there we feel as if we're all in the band. When I was 20 I was volunteered from a student audience to ding a cowbell for Robin Williams and Mike Heron's Incredible String Band, but on the whole it's better singing back-up vocals for the Rolling Stones. In a successful stadium rock show, the audience becomes the event as much as the performers or the set, and Jagger knows that. So for two and a half hours while Keith plays his monster riffs and kisses his guitar, and Charlie lays down the law on his drums, Mick plays us.
What's that like, facing tens of thousands of people and working them like a small room? A couple of years ago (never too early to begin your research) your correspondent found himself, for a few minutes, up on the Wembley stage with U2, and is accordingly able to offer a brief report.

Light surrounds you like a wall. You can just about see beyond the bouncers to the first rows of upturned faces but beyond that, zilch. The space feels almost intimate; then the invisible crowd roars like a sci-fi beast and you, well, if you're a novelist who has somehow strayed out here, you panic. Five hundred people is a big literary audience, a thousand is gigantic, but this? What are you supposed to do with this? Sing to it? But - as in all the best nightmares you can't sing a note. At which point, the authentic Rock Star takes charge. Standing next to the Star, watching him coax, caress and control the invisible Hydra out there, you feel more than impressed. You feel grateful.
I had met Bono a few times but when I looked into his face on the Wembley stage I saw a stranger there, and understood that this was the Star-creature that normally lay hidden in him, a creature as powerful as the big beastie it sang to, so overwhelming that it could only be let out in this cage of light. The Star-creature in Mick Jagger was rampant at Wembley on Tuesday night. it had been going a lot longer than U2; it was old and huge and brilliant.
All the old-age jokes have been trotted out this past week: Rock'n'Wrinkle, Crock'n'Roll. I sat next to a man who remembered seeing the Stones on their first tour, September 1963. Thirty-two years ago - 32 years! - I saw that tour, too; as a 16-year-old schoolboy I skived off from school on the bus.

My neighbour and I couldn't agree on who had topped the bill that autumn: one of those guys who died in a plane crash, he thought, while my vote was for Gene Vincent singing 'Be-Bop-A-Lula'. But we were both wrong. it was the Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley. The Stones have been going so long that their original audience's memory has started playing tricks; that's how long.
On your way to a galaxy-sized rock supershow like Voodoo Lounge, you must pass through meteor showers of facts and factoids. As well as all the age stuff- did you know their average age is higher than the Cabinet's? - you hear, once again, the old yarn about Keith Richards having all his blood changed; from a disgruntled hatter who failed to gain Jagger's favour you learn that the great man has a 'really tiny head'; it is even suggested - is there no respect any more? - that Mick has a penchant for exaggerating his assets by shoving assorted fruit and vegetables down the front of his leggings. We also know, by now, that even though the tour is sponsored by 'Volkswagen ('Stones Team Up With Beetles'), Mick drives a Mercedes; and that, in spite of all their rebellious postures, they're just social climbers, really, in it for the money and the swank. We, know that the Ramones are retiring and have advised the stones to do the same, and that they won't, not while the megabucks are pouring in.

We have heard that squillions of dollars are raining down upon our heroes. ?What can a poor boy do'cept to play for a rock'n'roll band?' Yeah, right. Maybe, these days, they should be singing 'Diamond Life' instead.
Even a 32-year devotion to the Rolling Stones can fray, under such a bombardment, into irritability, especially when the Canadian mafia in charge of seat allocation bungs you behind a pillar, and it takes a friendly stadium security officer to get you a seat you can actually see the show from. I'll admit to sharpening a few adjectives while waiting, for the dinosaurs to appear.
Then came dragon-fire, and all carping became instantly redundant. Mark Fisher's 'Cobra' set came to life: the great high-tech serpent-head in the sky belched flame.

Fisher, also responsible for the recent Pink Floyd and Zoo-TV stages, is currently the man to call if you want to spend a fortune turning sports stadia into futureworlds. The show's promoters like to compare the tour to a military operation, but that misses the mark. What's more astonishing is to reflect that all this theatrical gigantism - '250 personnel, four days to construct, three different steel crews leapfrogging around the country, eight miles of cable, the world's largest mobile Jumbotron video screen, 56 trailers, nine buses and a Boeing 727, 3,840,000 watts of power produced by 6,000 horsepower generators,' it says here - is being employed in the cause of mere fun. 'Only rock'n'roll, but I like it.' Good to know that pleasure has its armies, too.

And from the moment the Stones launched into 'Not Fade Away' to the single encore of 'Jumping Jack Flash', there was pleasure; intense, cup-overflowing delight, two and a half hours of it. The set was a pyrotechnic marvel, cascading with light, erupting into fireworks, and conjuring up, during 'Sympathy for the Devil', those marvellously eerie giant inflatables -Elvis, a snake, a Star Child, a Hindu goddess - who danced, like huge voodoo dolls, slaves to the rhythm, above Jagger's Baron Samedi capers. And as well as the set, the sound was magnificent, every note rich and clear, every word audible and resonant; and the high-definition video screen was the best I've seen. But none of this is the point.

The point is that the Stones were amazing. Their force, their drive, the sheer quality and freshness of Jagger's singing and the band's playing (Keth Richards, during 'Satisfaction', seemed atone point to be mouthing 'I love this song'); Mick's athleticism and grace of movement (once he would Walk the Dog and do the Funky Chicken the way Tina Turner showed him;

now there's something almost Oriental in his dancing, like a Bharat Natyam dancer with 3,840,000 watts of power coursing through him); and Keith planted front and centre with his feet wide apart, whanging his guitar in classic rock-hero style; Keith withhis ruinedMount Rushmore head, effortlessly dominating the stage while Mick skipped, leapt and zoomed. Keith does not run. He leaves that to his mate. (He should probably leave the singing to Mick, too. At the very least he should not tempt fate and the critics by singing songs called 'The Worst'.)

By their second song, 'Tumbling Dice', it was clear that the new 'engine room' in which Charlie Watts had been joined by bass guitarist Darryl Jones, was as tight and potent as ever. It was also quickly evident - and soon underlined, in her duet eith Mick on 'Gimme Shelter' - that the back-up vocalist Lisa Fischer was a bit of a star herself. Not content with having come on stage in what looked like leather underwear, and fuck-me stilettoes with bondage straps all the way up to her calves, she also unfurled a rich, sexy voice with sustained high notes that could spear you in the heart.
The new songs just about held their own against the wonders of the back catalogue, but it was the classics that really got us goung; inevitably , because this music - the 'Satisfaction' riff, the dirty genius of 'Honky Tonk Women' - has sunk so deep into our blood that we may even be able, by now, to pass the knowledge on genetically to our children, who will be born humming 'how come you dance so good' and those old satanic verses, 'pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name'.
And how satisfying that the Stones haven't fallen into the Bob Dylan trap of murdering their old songs,. As a result, Wembley was full of kids bopping happily to songs that were older than they were, but felt new. This is not a nostalgia show; these songs are not museum pieces. Listen to Keith's guitar playing in 'Wild Horses'. These songs are alive. There was a grey-haired geezer in a pink T-shirt and jeans - still crazy after all these years - who got himself frog-marched out by a squad of Meat Loafs. There was a dark-haired girl in an outfit that seemed to have been painted on to her body who stood up in the posh enclosure and danced so voluptuously, during 'Sweet Virginia', that people (men) turned away from the stage to watch her.

There was some mutual nipple kissing between Mick and Lisa Fischer that got our attention back. There was an ovation for Charlie Watts. You couldn't have wished for more The Rolling Stones may not be so dangerous now, they may no longer be a threat to a decent, civilised society, but they still know how to let it bleed. Yea yea yea WOO.
©Salman Rushdie 1995



VOODOO LOUNGE 1994 - 95


Performed by the Rolling Stones
Production design: Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Patrick Woodroffe, Mark Fisher
Stage Design: Mark Fisher, Jonathan Park
Lighting Design: Patrick Woodroffe
Graphic Design: 4I Limited
Production Manager: Jake Berry