With a 20-minute video streaming from a concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the Rolling Stones on November 18, 1994, were the first major recording artist to broadcast a show over the internet.
The video streaming included five songs > Not Fade Away, Shattered, Tumbling Dice, You Got Me Rocking and Rocks Off.
Mick Jagger greeted the internet audience and said he hoped the system didn’t collapse, the New York Times reported.
The concert was part of the hugely successful worldwide Voodoo Lounge tour, promoting their album of the same name.
‘There were lots of hacks (reporters) out there who said we couldn’t do it anymore. But maybe what they meant was they couldn’t do it anymore.’
> that’s what Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine.
Jagger continued > “Anyway, once we started playing, all that died down. You can talk about it and talk about it – but, once we’re on stage, the question is answered.”
The tour took in $320 million to become the highest grossing of any artists up to that time.
Mick Jagger on the cover of his solo album Wandering Spirit.
ROLLING STONES CANCEL AUSTRALIAN TOUR AS JAGGER RUSHES BACK TO NEW YORK
Mick Jagger’s partner of more than 10 years, New York fashion designer L’Wren Scott, was found dead in her luxury Manahttan apartment on March 17, 2014. She committed suicide at the age of 49, Jagger aged 70 at the time.
It was reported that her fashion company had debts of over US$5million and she put a mortgage, unbeknown to Jagger, of over $1 million on her almost $5 million apartment, said to have been paid for by the Rolling Stones frontman.
The Rolling Stones had just arrived on their private jet in Perth to kick off an Australian and New Zealand tour. Mick Jagger quickly flew back to New York and the tour was rescheduled for October-November of 2014.
L’Wren Scott’s small, private funeral service was held at Hollywood Forever Cemetry in Los Angeles. At a later packed memorial service at St Bartholomew’s Church in New York, Mick Jagger sung the Bob Dylan song Just Like A Woman in tribute.
The Australian tour was rescheduled and then cancelled after Mick Jagger was beset by throat problems.
ROLLING STONES FIRST MAIN BAND TO LET IT ROCK IN HAVANA
With Cuba opening its doors and relations with America in a thaw, the Rolling Stones played a free, open-air concert in Cuban capital Havana on March 25, 2016, to hundreds of thousands of people. Some even estimated the crowd at half a million.
The historic concert came three days after US President Barack Obama wrapped up an historic visit to the island during which he declared an end to what was left of the cold war with communist-run Cuba.
“We know that years ago, it was difficult to listen to our music in Cuba, but now here we are in your beautiful land,” Jagger told the crowd in Spanish. “I think that, finally, the times are changing. That’s true, no?” The crowd roared their agreement, reported London’s The Guardian newspaper.
At the height of the Cuban revolution, which started in the 1960s, bands such as the Rolling Stones were seen as a threat to communist ideology, and their songs banned from being played on radio and their records also banned.
YOU INVADE MY SPACE, I SMASH YOUR FACE > if only I wasn’t so busy playing this guitar.
On the Rolling Stones 1981 American tour, Keith Richards spotted a youngish male fan who made it on stage. The Stones guitarist took an almighty swing with his guitar at the invader’s head > missing by centimetres.
This immortal moment is captured on Rolling Stones stage film Let’s Spend The Night Together > directed by Hal Ashby.
SUPPORT ACT PRINCE BELTED WITH BEER CANS
Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman tells of an incident with funk soul brother Prince on the same tour.
Opening for the Stones in Los Angeles and wearing a pair of black bikini bottoms > Prince was soon pelted with beer cans by Stones fans. [A tale from Bill Wyman’s book Rolling With The Stones]
ROLLING STONES STAGE TAKES ON ADDED DIMENSIONS
Prince on the front cover of his 1988 album Lovesexy
IT’s like the Rolling Stones had to outdo themselves each tour > with bigger and more spectacular stadium shows.
The 80-plus show 1981/82 tour of the US and Europe had a stage over 350 feet across at full stretch > adorned with large cloth replicas of paintings by Japanese artist Kazuhide Yamazaki.
Eight semi-trailers were used to transport the stage.
GUITARIST RON WOOD ARRESTED FOR COCAINE
The Rolling Stones guitarist and partner Jo were arrested in St Maarten, the Caribbean, in February, 1980, on cocaine possession charges.
They spent five days in jail before being deported to the US.
More than 2 million people saw the Rolling Stones during their 50-plus concert – September to December 1981 – tour of America > the biggest tour the band had so far undertaken.
Bass player Bill Wyman says in his book Rolling with the Stones that on this mostly stadium tour, at some venues the band played to more people than on their first US tour in total, in the early 1960s.
The 1982 European tour had over 1.5 million fans in 33 gigs across 23 cities > three times as many people as the Rolling Stones previous European tour in 1976.
Guitarist Brian Jones, pic from album Big Hits High Tide and Green Grass
MAYHEM THE NORM AT ROLLING STONES CONCERTS
RIOTS at concerts were an irregular, regular occurrence on early Rollings Stones tours, as were jibes from town officials, politicians and the like about their scruffy, unkept appearance.
There was even the media question at the time: “Would you let your daughter go out with a Rolling Stone”.
The group was often banned from hotels, partly because of trouble with fans, and had to flee fanatical, screaming fans after many concerts.
Female faintings and knickers wetting during shows were common.
POLICE PUT FANS IN STRAIGHTJACKETS
Rioting audience causes concert in Belfast, Ireland, to be called off after only 12 minutes. Hysterical girls carried out in straightjackets. (1964)
POLICE USE WATER CANNONS
5000 screaming fans dispersed by police with water cannons at Dusseldorf airport as the Rolling Stones begin a brief German tour. (September, 1965).
TEAR GAS
Police use tear gas to disperse a riot at a 15,000 fan show in Boston, USA, after audience members tried to storm the stage. (1966)
TWO POLICEWOMEN FAINT
> as well as 100 girls > and more than 40 police needed to control the crowd at a concert in Manchester, England. (1964)
Mick Jagger, pic from album Big Hits High Tide and Green Grass
IT’S SHORT BACK AND SIDES, FARNSWORTH
Almost a dozen boys suspended from a school in Coventry, England, for wearing *Mick Jagger* haircuts.
ANIMALS, CLOWNS AND MORONS
That was how a magistrate in Glasgow, Scotland, described the Rolling Stones after one of their fans was arrested for breaking a shop window.
ROLLING STONES GATHER NO LUNCH
The headline in one the British tabloids after the band were refused entry to a Bristol hotel for not wearing ties. (1964)
FANS SEE RED
Communist police, including on horses, use batons and tear gas to disperse 2000 fans outside the Rolling Stones concert venue > the Palace of Culture > in Polish capitol Warsaw. The Communist Party chiefs had kept the tickets for themselves and their families and cronies, leaving the real Rolling Stones fans seething outside.
TV SHOW RIOT
An audience riot on US variety show The Ed Sullian Show, with the host vowing he would never let rock and roll bands back on his high-rating show. But he did, the Stones among them. (October, 1964)
Bass player Bill Wyman, pic from album Big Hits High Tide and Green Grass
TAKING IT TO THE STREETS
150 people arrested, the theatre damaged during street riots at the show at the Olympia in Paris.
AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE
A 3000 fan riot upon arrival at the airport in Sydney for the Rolling Stones first Australian tour. (January, 1965). The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said of the group: “They’re shockers. Ugly looks, ugly speech, ugly manners”.
THE INJURY LIST
ELECTRIC BLUES
Keith Richards survived being knocked unconscious by an electric shock during a performance in Sacramento, USA. (1965)
ALL STITCHED UP
Mick Jagger had to get eight stitches to his head after being decked by a chair thrown on stage.
*Some source material from books The Rolling Stones Story by George Tremlett and Rolling With The Stones by Bill Wyman.
WRESTLERS BEAT UP FANS, KEITH RICHARDS COPS CUT EYE
Picture from the back cover of album Got Live If You Want it
WRESTLERS EMPLOYED AS BOUNCERS GIVE FANS A WHOOPING
Mick Jagger tells of a concert in Montreal, Canada. With police not allowed to interfere with the crowd, wrestlers were employed “to beat the wild fans up and those toughs really seem to enjoy it.”
“They hauled some little bloke out from the front row and about five of them were smashing him in the face. We stopped playing and booed them. Then the organiser came on stage and told me to get off”. A heated, foul-mouthed argument ensued
> from New Musical Express, July 1966.
CONCERT RIOT IN NEW ZEALAND > KEITH RICHARDS SUFFERS CUT EYE
“There was a riot in the theatre where we played tonight > the kids rushed the stage and tore us up. I’m all right but Keith had to go to hospital to have a cut eye treated after four girls jumped on him.”
With a 20-minute video streaming from a concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the Rolling Stones on November 18, 1994, were the first major recording artist to broadcast a show over the internet.
