Sunday, September 02, 2007

Back to the Stone Age

I was last in the Millennium Dome back in 2000 when it was full of empty stuff. Before that it was in 1999 when I was filming in the empty structure - someone had parked a double-decker bus in the very centre where the performance area was located (where Peter Gabriel's show was performed on millennium night). It was necessary to have that red bus there to get a real sense of the scale. We were shooting from the top of a three or four storey building, one of several such structures already within the Dome, and it still felt pretty empty.

Courtesy of Yahoo!, the other evening I had the pleasure of seeing the Rolling Stones fill the Dome in North Greenwich with their charm and charisma. I had low expectations. I'd never seen the Stones live before, reckoned it would be a good idea to catch them before they died or had hip replacements, but assumed they were long past their prime. As it was, they turned out to be plenty hip.

Mick performed with the enthusiasm and generosity of the best of them - he was having a good time and he was giving 100% to make sure we did too, right from the first strains of Start Me Up as he followed Keef and his opening riffs onto stage. It's always struck me what consistently great openings the Stones have to their songs.

It was my great good fortune that this particular performance, my first, was itself a closing - the very last night of a two year tour, the Bigger Bang tour.

Keef played up to his Captain Jack image, at one point eating an unlit cigarette to take the mick out of Greenwich Council who had given them a hard time about lighting up on stage the week before. He reaffirmed his deep commitment to the Blues by performing vocals on a couple of old blues numbers in the middle of the set. That they hadn't strayed far from their roots in their love of the Blues was one of the most striking things of a great night.

Besides how much of their 19 year old selves they'd retained (if you averted your eyes from the big screen you could imagine it being their young sixties selves - Mick still has the moves, which is as astonishing as Bruce Springsteen's elder statesman energy), besides that, Ronnie Wood's immense charm was the other surprise of the night, adding a distinctive warmth to the perfect chemistry of the band.

The undoubted highlight of the night was Sympathy for the Devil. What was striking about the Stones live is that at moments throughout the set you really felt rock'n'roll as the devil's music, a sense of that dark, chaotic, dionysian vibe. Paint It Black followed to complete the crescendo. I was transported and stoned immaculate.

6 comments:

Douglas Miller said...

The Strolling Bones are a real simple pleasure and I am glad you enjoyed them One-up on me. I listened to Let it Bleed the other day and it is a really great album. I must tell you Adam (and you didn't known this). I once had a band at Coleraine called Dr Rabbitfoot and we got invited to play what was billed as Ulster aid in 1986 - NI's version of Live Aid. About 250 people there max. And we did Sympathy. I was Mick for 5mins!!

ArkAngel said...

Now that I would have loved to see! Where did Ulster Aid take place?

Douglas Miller said...

At the now burned down Northern Counties Hotel in Portrush. Una will remember it. Actually a classic late Victorian building which was allegedly torched in the nineties as an insurance job.

Our guitarist was a guy who apparently went on to play for a while with a well-known Irish band called the 'Four of us'. I could probably verify this on the internet.

We were ok and had a brilliant cartoonist Chris Gilligan as our backing vocalist and harmonica player who did all of our promotional posters. We did quite a few gigs on the Causeway Coast circuit. I also sang with a band called 'The Xdreamysts' a couple of times live. Una might remember the bassist Roe Butcher who owned a sweet shop in Portrush and was always good for a loan. They were actually very good and made two albums for Polydor. Supported Thin Lizzy on a UK tour in 1979-80 but were a pub band (and a very good one) by 1986.

Ah, those were the days.

To complete the story I would imagine that the money raised did not get as far as Africa. It might have made it to the Shankill.

ArkAngel said...

I remember the Four of Us. A friend of Una was a kind of male groupee of the band (in a purely platonic sense). Think I've got a single knocking around somewhere.

On the subject of music and Ireland, got a couple of recommendations for you:

Mavis Staples (with Ry Cooder):
We'll Never Turn Back

and

Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band:

Live in Dublin

Both cracking Americana.

Douglas Miller said...

The Mavis Staples I will check out as I always loved The Staple Singers and enjoy Ry Cooder too - although I never saw him in the front rank of guitar players he has a great ability to spot and work with true talent. Sorry about the Springsteen - I have never 'got' him at all. Leaves me cold I have to say. I exclude you and a few others from my next comment - and it will wind you up no end - but the people I have known who weren't particularly interested in music generally seemed to like Bruce Springsteen. And the people for whom music touched them deeply never liked BS. Perhaps it is just the friends I keep...

However, give me Nils Lofgren's Grin anytime. They were great.

Douglas Miller said...

I have checked out the 'four of us' and it seems our guitar player did NOT end up joining them.