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The Rolling Stones in the press: “Stones fans go wild down under”(by Paul Dainty)
DATELINE BRISBANE, MONDAY: “They say that the kiwi is mute, without voice for either calling or singing. You can discount this.” So wrote McLean about New Zealand’s All Black rugger fans.
You can say it again and again — 31 Stones lovers — as far as the Stones outdoor at Western Springs Stadium concert was concerned. It’s the largest number of people ever assembled in one place in the country — the best police check. The Stones magic: the prancing, wild cavorting Mick Jagger — garbed in his extrovert Ossie Clark see-through petrol blue jump suit and boots, seven years on and, unquestionably, the No. 1 top number one rock star. The Auckland Star’s critic Eric Gifford, headlined over his column: “The Stones — legend that does survive.”
He wrote: “The Stones’ rugged, down-to-earth appeal to the Rolling Stones’ fans is unbroken. And he ended: “An exceptional performance, a fine sound. You can believe the record!”
And the paper which is not famed for showbiz, the New Zealand Herald, devoted no less than two thirds of its front page to the Stones concert. Four major pictures appeared on stage plus the first color picture of the concert — Mick and Alan Young, their critic, declared that the record crowd was “swayed by Jagger’s magic.”
CARNATIONS White carnations covered the stage and at the end of the first performance thousands of rose petals from suspended flower baskets showered the audience — a triumph for the promoters.
Yes, and it was music that lived. But the impact of the sound — the music — was, in the words of one journalist, “as if Billy Graham had suddenly discovered the electric guitar.”
Mick Taylor’s slide solo on the 37-year-old Robert Johnson classic number “Love in Vain” was hauntingly extended and, with masterly chorus work by Jagger and the swamped amps for keyboard, it swept listeners into lyrical rhapsody.
Nicky Hopkins flew in from Virginia with Keith Richards and the result: finely tuned sensitive acoustic guitars and Jagger hissing it along on harmonica.
The extension of sound, musical color, the exciting tempo and refreshing dramatic effects on Hopkins and the brass section — including multi-saxophonist Bobby Keys.
Your nearly 90 minutes were rewarded, strutted with classic Stones numbers, a crowd-pleasing new crowd who had been waiting for it with a hunger unknown in the southern hemisphere.
Nearly 35,000 screaming fans, and it looked more like 40,000 by 10 p.m. — cheered and hollered and chanted for more and still more.
Jagger swung his long blue scarf — borrowed from a fan and tossed it to the crowd as a thank you.
The encores lasted 10 minutes and the fans knew they were listening to the Mick Jagger they admired before Altamont, the Keith Richards they loved after playing under Tina Turner and the flowing Mick Taylor from “Sticky Fingers,” now for all time, a blues man for being sweet. He closed with “Thank you for making us feel so welcome, wherever that is”.
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