Rolling Stones, Anyone?

[mc_squared]

why was he taken to NZ when he fell in Fiji?

 

I would guess the medical facilities in Fiji might be lacking somewhat..........................;)

[beckhamcrosses]

So he can get the free medical care off my taxes!

[Sam]

:laugh4: Its undertstandable that he didn't go somewhere in Fiji, but why not Darwin or something?

[an_cat]

Oh Keith... tut tut..

[mc_squared]

I wonder if he rolled after hitting the ground?:thinking:

[chlorofit]

i read this this morning and i found it so funny. :embarassed:

[Karlinha]

hahahaha ... i have seen rolling stones this year .. so perfect !!

hope nothing bad happens .. he is a f****** awesome guitarrist!!

[busybeeburns]

I wonder if he rolled after hitting the ground?:thinking:

:rolleyes: :P

[busybeeburns]

Rolling Stone Celebrates 1,000 Issues

 

NEW YORK -- Rolling Stone magazine celebrates its 1,000th issue this week with a burst of rock 'n' roll excess: a glitzy Manhattan party with the Strokes as house band and a 3-D cover that mimics the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper" sleeve and cost nearly $1 million to produce.

 

It's an audacious sign of how Rolling Stone, which has numbered its issues since Jann Wenner put out No. 1 in 1967, remains dominant even with changing times and music.

 

Rolling Stone loves to mark special occasions with special issues; this time, it's focusing on its covers. Dr. Hook once sang of the thrill musicians get when they're "On the Cover of Rolling Stone." At Wenner Media's office in New York, all the covers are lined up on hallway walls, starting with John Lennon on RS No. 1.

 

"The cover is iconic," Wenner said. "The cover, more than any other thing we do, resonates in people's minds. By and large the greatest things we've done, the greatest stories, have had the greatest covers."

 

The 3-D cover is pure Wenner. Much like Beatles fans pored over the pastiche of faces on "Sgt. Pepper," he wants readers to study his cover for their own cultural reference points. There's Chuck Berry duck-walking, Madonna grabbing her crotch, Bono with a microphone and even -- upon very close inspection -- Waldo.

 

Wenner believes it's the costliest magazine cover ever. He denies with an expletive reports that the magazine's publisher, Steve DeLuca, left in February because his boss was pinching pennies on the party.

 

The issue is clogged with details like Wenner's favorite cover (Annie Leibovitz's portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono taken hours before Lennon was shot) and the most memorable cover headline ("He's Hot, He's Sexy and He's Dead" about Jim Morrison). Mostly, it's a nostalgic look at a time when the magazine spoke for a generation and an art form.

 

Getting on Rolling Stone's cover "wasn't just publicity, the way all magazine covers have become," comic Steve Martin writes in RS 1000. "It was in itself an artistic achievement."

 

When he first saw his face upfront, Tom Petty said, "I felt I had arrived."

 

Although Rolling Stone's circulation has been flat the past few years at slightly more than 1.3 million, it still comfortably leads other music-oriented magazines such as Vibe (836,000) and Blender (693,000), according to the Capell Circulation Report.

 

"Rolling Stone is so clearly the big dog," said Alan Light, former editor of Vibe, Spin and the late Tracks magazines who did freelance work for this most recent RS issue. "They're the biggest player on the table and you can't go into that space without defining yourself in some way in relation to Rolling Stone -- it's an urban Rolling Stone, or a younger Rolling Stone or it's not Rolling Stone."

 

The magazine tries to walk the tightrope of appealing to its original subscribers yet also attracting readers born two decades after "Sgt. Pepper" was released.

 

"The average age of our audience is 28 years old," Wenner said. "When I started it was 21. In 40 years, it's aged like seven years. We keep bringing in new readers and holding the old readers."

 

No other music magazine "has put a glove on us editorially," Wenner said.

 

"Our competitors -- God bless them all -- you can't think of one memorable article, interview or issue they've ever done, whereas Rolling Stone keeps knocking them out of the park," he said. "Can you think of one great Blender issue?"

 

Retorted Craig Marks, Blender editor in chief: "Of course I can.

 

"How about the issue we did featuring the pampered offspring of such baby boomer legends as Art Garfunkel?" he said. "Oh, wait. That was Rolling Stone. OK, then, how about the one where we broke the news that Jim Hendrix was still dead?

 

"Shoot, that was Rolling Stone, too. Perhaps if Jann wasn't so busy reliving his magazine's bygone glory years, he'd realize that music fans -- not to mention contemporary superstars U2, Gwen Stefani and Coldplay, among many -- have long ago turned away from their dad's publication and instead turned to Blender."

 

Marks wouldn't talk further about his competitor unless it was for an article that equally discussed Blender's fifth anniversary.

 

Blender clearly rattled Rolling Stone at the outset. While "it hasn't proven to be real competition," Wenner said, he admitted to stealing ideas like running more and shorter music reviews.

 

After briefly trying to reinvent itself and appearing lost as a result, Rolling Stone returned to its original template, said Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi journalism professor who publishes an annual guide to consumer magazines.

 

"We have nothing like it," Husni said. "We have nothing that really combines the music as the jumping point toward politics, national affairs, business. Rolling Stone is really unique in that respect."

 

Rolling Stone's interest in things besides music is key to its success and longevity, Wenner said. Hunter S. Thompson became famous because of his political and social reportage in Rolling Stone. So did P.J. O'Rourke.

 

It's all filtered through Wenner's distinctly liberal point of view; he has autographed pictures of Bill Clinton and Al Gore hanging outside his office. RS No. 999's cover story had historians speculating whether George W. Bush was the worst president ever.

 

"There's no question in anybody's mind that the No. 1 story the last two or three years has been the war in Iraq and Bush," he said. "People are obsessed with it and furious. I am, personally. Beyond that, it's just good journalistic sense."

 

Rap, punk rock, emo, death metal, alt country -- all are musical genres that emerged since Rolling Stone's birth and all have publications that cater to them. It's harder for Rolling Stone to have the impact it used to have because there's no real cultural center anymore and a voracious media is covering subjects that Rolling Stone virtually had to itself at the beginning, Light said.

 

But nothing has really replaced it.

 

"How can you be a general interest pop culture magazine when there isn't a general interest listener?" Light asked. "There's a bunch of stratified listeners with different interests. What would you do differently with that magazine? I have yet to have anybody come up with a really good answer."

 

The mercurial Wenner, who edited every piece in the anniversary tribute, is still an enthusiastic music fan who boasted of seeing Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Weezer, U2, the Rolling Stones twice and Bob Dylan three times in a four-month period.

 

He's also now 60, at the vanguard of his generation. He said he figures to have another five, 10 years in his current job, and insists he'll be able to lie on a beach somewhere as an old man and read a Rolling Stone that he had nothing to do with.

 

"It's important to me that the future is provided for, that it will keep going," he said. "You work all your life on something, you want to keep it going."

 

Source: Various

[busybeeburns]

Band aid

 

They are the walking wounded of rock’n’roll. But the Rolling Stones nearly didn’t make it. Robert Sandall reports on the men who gave them the kiss of life

 

The Last Time, It’s All over Now, Paint it Black, Not Fade Away – few bands have given obituary writers as many headline opportunities as the Rolling Stones. Every time the Stones have turned up in the UK, prancing about on giant stages in a manner astonishing for men of their age, the question has hovered: how much longer can they keep doing this?

 

Nobody knows for sure – and the group, as always, refuses to comment – but the smart money now says until the summer of 2007, when the Stones finally get to play some of the European dates that were postponed in May and June this year. The reason for the hiatus – Keith Richards’s brain surgery, following his tumble from a coconut tree on the island of Fiji – primed the rumour mill. Richards is also said to be suffering from severe arthritis in his hands, which in a recent television interview did indeed appear to have grown all swollen and knobbly around the joints. Not great for a guitarist, even one whose fingers are more often slashing out chords than executing tricksy solos.

 

Then there’s the drummer, Charlie Watts, and his recent bout of cancer, which was treated by chemotherapy in 2004 but could recur. Keith’s guitar partner, Ronnie Wood, also has problems – most relating to a diet based for years on cocaine and Guinness. Wood went into rehab, again, this year, having broken a promise made to Mick Jagger during the band’s 2002 tour that he would refrain in future from staggering around the stage, flailing wildly, off his face.

 

But at 63, Sir Mick seems indestructible. He still has the stamina of a much younger man.

 

“I don’t know how I do it, I just do it,” he told an interviewer in a Tokyo baseball stadium, where he was about to hare back and forth across a stage 100 metres wide for most of the Stones’ two-hour live show. “It’s like breathing, to me.”

 

But mortality has clearly been on his mind recently. Earlier this month, while the group were preparing new wills, it emerged that the Stones have set up two foundations in the Netherlands. Dutch law relating to posthumous settlements required the disclosure of many aspects of the Stones’ business arrangements over the past 20 years, including the function of these foundations: to manage the rights to the Stones’ royalties and to arbitrate over questions of ownership among their heirs in the event of the death of any of the three principals – Jagger, Richards and Watts. (Wood is not a party to this arrangement; 31 years after joining, he remains the “new boy” and is still not a full partner.)

 

Add all the above together and it is at the very least plausible that the Stones’ current UK tour, which ends at the Millennium stadium in Cardiff on August 29, 2006, will be their last. If that’s the case, we will have witnessed the passing of a unique phenomenon: a public spectacle of flabbergasting scale. There will be no more sets to compare to the techno-baroque, eight-storey metallic structure that accompanied their Steel Wheels outing in 1989. A post-industrial fantasy inspired by the film Blade Runner, it was designed, in common with all their recent stages, by Mark Fisher, a part-time professor at the Architectural Association in London. He called it “guerrilla architecture”. Jagger called it “an urban mess, sort of glamourised”. It cost an estimated $18m. Nor will we see the Stones’ signature stage extras: the 60ft-high inflatable Honky Tonk Women that rear from the sides of the stage to tower and wobble in the sky. The motorised stages that surge above the crowd (a trick the Stones devised for their Bridges to Babylon tour in 1998) are, for most tour planners, too much hassle. Aside from what they cost to build and ship, such stunts impact severely on one of the largest expenses: insurance. But ever since Jagger emerged from a mechanical lotus flower in 1975, such audience-bewitching coups have been deemed essential to every Stones tour. They are known, in Stones patois, as the “f***-me factor”.

 

The hot bands of today, Coldplay being a good example, are too well-mannered for this kind of theatrical bombast, which is probably their loss. No other troupe of live entertainers comes close now to matching the Stones’ global appeal. Their current outing will take in around 125 venues and attract about 4.5m customers. Having begun in the States in July 2005, by the time of Keith’s accident this spring they had played to sold-out stadia all over North and South America and Asia, including Shanghai. In the States they played to the ageing baby boomers whose youths they once soundtracked. In their biggest South American date, at Copacabana beach in Rio, they were greeted by a crowd of around 1.5m – mostly under-25s – paying tribute to a band whose big hits happened years before they were born.

 

With such a thick demographic blanket, it’s hardly surprising that the Stones are making more money than ever. For years they have prioritised live work over studio recordings, which is why, since Steel Wheels, they have waited until the staging of their tours has been finalised before naming their albums. This has turned out to be a prescient move. Over the past 10 years, CD prices have plummeted, and the price of concert tickets has risen dramatically: in 1989 it cost $30 to see the band in a US stadium; now it costs between $90 for the cheapest, so-called “nosebleed” areas at the back, and $400 for the VIP seats on the stage. Even with the 15 cancelled shows, their box-office takings for the first half of 2006 were £80m, almost twice those of their nearest rivals, U2. By the time the aptly named A Bigger Bang tour has wended its way around Europe, revisited America and stopped off in a few of the richer parts of the Third World, it will have grossed around £250m.

 

The Stones are not a cheap date. Tickets for their Twickenham shows start at £40 and rise to £340 for the “onstage experience” – seats in balconies built into the sides of their vast stage set. Such prices deter some, particularly younger fans, but they are in line with those charged here this summer by Madonna and the Eagles.

 

They still provoke howls of protest from those who believe Jagger to be a monster of greed; charges that date back to his offer of $100,000 to his first wife, Bianca, when they split in 1978. (She claimed $12.5m and settled for $1m in 1980.) Apart from the chorus of disapproval that regularly greets the private behaviour of “Tricky Mick”, many feel unease when rock stars seek to maximise their earnings the way other successful public figures, such as sportsmen and entrepreneurs, routinely do without criticism.

 

A more appropriate response would be to marvel at how on earth the Stones managed to achieve their present position. Before the Bigger Bang tour began, Billboard magazine calculated their total revenues from live work since 1989 at just over $1.1 billion, with 12m tickets sold in the 1990s. For much of the 20 years before their situation stabilised in 1989, however, the soi-disant “Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World” was a shambles. When Keith Richards tells the crowds now, as he often likes to do, “It’s good to be here tonight… It’s good to be anywhere tonight,” he isn’t joking, and he isn’t just talking about his own chequered past either.

 

The acclaim with which their biggest hit from the 1960s is greeted whenever they play it today is apt: in many ways the Stones really did get “no satisfaction” from that fabled decade. By the end of 1969 they were scarcely in better shape than their old rivals, the openly disintegrating Beatles.

 

Their original leader, Brian Jones, drowned in his swimming pool shortly after “leaving” a band that had run out of patience with him, ostensibly because of his drink and drug problems. In fact, relations within the band had become untenable after Keith Richards absconded with Jones’s girlfriend Anita Pallenberg in 1968.

 

Both of their biggest gigs backfired badly. The Hyde Park memorial for Brian Jones, held in front of 250,000 grieving fans in 1969, was remembered chiefly for Jagger’s baffling reading from Shelley’s Adonais, and the release of several hundred white butterflies, most of which dropped down dead, having suffocated in their boxes. The free show the band gave at Altamont later that year, which was intended to deflect criticism of the high ticket prices charged on a recent US tour, ended with the knifing of one of the 300,000 audience by one of the Hell’s Angels – installed by the Stones themselves as “security”.

 

Drugs had started to seriously erode band unity. After a much-publicised bust at Richards’s country residence, Redlands, near Chichester, in February 1967, Jagger and Richards had become heroes of the “permissive society”. William Rees-Mogg, then editor of The Times, wrote a supportive editorial, Who Breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel? Two years later, however, the butterflies had turned into less appealing creatures of the night. Once Keith and Anita had moved into Cheyne Walk in August 1969, they preferred to stay at home, shooting “speedball” cocktails of heroin and cocaine. Most threatening of all, though, to the group’s future as the 1970s dawned were its muddled finances. Having turned, in 1965, to an American accountant, Allen Klein, who had looked after the affairs of the late soul star Sam Cooke, four years later the Stones were individually broke. Despite having received about $15m on his clients’ behalf, Klein paid it out in meagre salaries; a sensible precaution, he argued, given the uncertain future of pop groups. But this meant the Stones’ office in London was endlessly telexing New York for cash to pay its bills.

 

Bill Wyman, meanwhile, was living off a personal overdraft of £12,000. In order to secure the £20,000 he needed to complete on the house in Cheyne Walk, Richards had to fly a roadie to Klein’s office to collect bundles of banknotes. And to cap it all, the Inland Revenue was after them for “supertax” – the highest bracket of a confiscatory regime that claimed 90% of their earnings for the state. In 1970, each member of the band had an unpaid tax bill of over £100,000. When they toured Britain in early 1971, budgets were so tight that they took public transport.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2318644,00.html

[busybeeburns]

Rolling Stones 'beat tour record'

 

 

The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang tour is the 'top-grossing tour in history', Billboard magazine has reported. Since August 2005, the band have grossed $437m (£226m), playing 110 shows in front of 3.5 million fans.

 

The Stones' success comes despite the tour being dogged by delays and cancellations due to throat problems for lead singer Sir Mick Jagger, 63.

 

The tour was also postponed when guitarist Keith Richards fell from a tree while on holiday in Fiji.

 

Earlier this month, the band postponed five concerts and cancelled what was to be the final date of the tour in Honolulu, Hawaii, after Sir Mick was advised to take four days off to help him recover from laryingitis.

 

Sir Mick also returned briefly to the UK two weeks ago to spend time with his father Joe Jagger, who was in hospital and later died aged 93 of pneumonia. The Stones have been supported on tour by big names including Kanye West, Van Morrison and Alice Cooper.

 

The band's tour record does not include a free concert in front of two million fans on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in February.

 

Irish rock group U2 previously held the record for the top-grossing tour, according to Billboard. Their recent Vertigo tour grossed $377m (£195m).

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/6183182.stm

[an_cat]

Irish rock group U2 previously held the record for the top-grossing tour, according to Billboard. Their recent Vertigo tour grossed $377m (£195m).

 

Bastards can thank me for that! Jerks just MAKE me stalk them around

 

 

:laugh4: ;)

 

 

Yeah well the Stones gross more because they charge 400 bucks for the floor seats! :stunned: ah well, whatever! I payed 149 dollars PER SEAT when I saw them at Fenway Park. I had no idea the tickets were that much, I had a fucking heart attack when I saw what they charged me in the end....... baaaad feeling. And they were waaay high up.

 

'Twas worth it though.

 

Sir Mick also returned briefly to the UK two weeks ago to spend time with his father Joe Jagger, who was in hospital and later died aged 93 of pneumonia.

 

I was about to say, his father's still alive?? But yeah.... that's sad... :\

[busybeeburns]

Stones star 'snorted dad's ashes'

 

 

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has claimed he snorted the ashes of his late father during a drugs binge.

 

"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow," he told NME in an interview.

 

His father, Bert, died at the age of 84 in 2002. Richards added: "It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

 

The 64-year-old also spoke of his disdain for modern bands, calling the Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines and Bloc Party "a load of crap".

 

'Cut open'

 

He also revealed more details of the accident which left him facing brain surgery last year in Fiji, when it was widely reported he had fallen out of a tree, forcing dates on the Rolling Stones tour to be cancelled.

 

"I wasn't climbing a tree," he said, "I was sitting on a shrub. I was sitting on that shrub again today, but I happened to fall off it the wrong way that day."

 

He added: "I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain. I've got pictures of it, mate.

 

"They cut my head, brain, skull open, went in and pulled out the crap, and put some of it back again."

 

The Rolling Stones are currently in the middle of their A Bigger Bang tour, which finally hits the UK in June.

 

They have already played to more than a million people, selling tickets worth £76m.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6524661.stm

[Black Rose]

It's amazing how far an april fool's joke goes. That interview he did with the NME was done last sunday.

 

"The Rolling Stones are currently in the middle of their A Bigger Bang tour, which finally hits the UK in June."

 

So what tour were they doing last year then?

[TraceOddity]

LMAO. THat's a way better prank than my Talking Dog.:lol:

[MrMagpie]

that was in the newspaper here today. I read that while eating breakfast.

[ProgRocker]

I read about this on another forum. I find it sort of hard to believe, although anything's possible.

[blackchickintheback]

Thank God it's a joke. :stunned:

[busybeeburns]

What’s the story with . . . Keith Richards?

 

 

EVERY so often a story comes along which, in spite of its absurdity and tastelessness, you find yourself longing to believe. Nine times out of 10 this type of tale is splashed across the front page of a tabloid newspaper, accompanied by unflattering pictures and unflattering headlines. It runs for the remainder of the news week as though its very ludicrousness is the source of its momentum.

 

And so it was this week when Rolling Stone guitar legend Keith Richards "confessed" to inhaling something very unusual. "I SNORTED MY DAD'S ASHES" screamed the headline, and how we laughed. That's certainly one way to be sure you will never forget a dead relative.

 

The 63-year-old's fondness for generally behaving like a over-stimulated hedonist is already well documented. Remember this is the same man who was rumoured to have travelled to a Swiss clinic for a complete blood transfusion before one Stones tour, so toxic was his blood from the cocktail of cocaine, heroin, LSD and Jack Daniels.

 

Then there's the tale of how a short circuit caused Richards's guitar to erupt in a blue flame, knocking him unconscious for seven minutes. His rubber-soled shoes were said to have saved his life. But then what for? Ah yes, only so he could have brain surgery last year after falling out of a palm tree in Fiji. That one was almost true (it was actually concussion).

 

But now, in the twinkling of an eye, this latest revelation of crazy antics has moved Richards on to a higher plain of rocker misbehaviour. In one move he has managed to make Pete Doherty, the drug-addled Babyshambles frontman, look like Coldplay's clean-living fair-trade crusader Chris Martin. For only in court appearances is Doherty winning hands down against Richards. Snorting human ashes? Wild stuff, man.

 

However, all wonder, disgust and/or amusement was brought to an abrupt end yesterday with Richards's unfortunate yet inevitable retraction. Naturally, all blame lay with the NME journalist who interviewed Richards, where the story was first reported. According to the guitarist, the account of his drug-taking was "lost in translation". You know how these things happen?

 

It was, of course, nothing to do with the adverse publicity to Disney, makers of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Richards has a much-anticipated cameo as Teague Sparrow, the father of pirate Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp.

 

In his statement Richards said: "The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English oak. I took the lid off the box of ashes and he is now growing oak trees and would love me for it. I was trying to say how tight Bert and I were. That tight." He adds: "I wouldn't take cocaine at this point in my life unless I wished to commit suicide."

 

Bert, incidentally, was Richards's father, who died in 2002 at the age of 84. Nevertheless, the NME stands by its story. Mark Beaumont, the journalist who interviewed Richards, insisted it had been no throwaway joke. Beaumont says: "He didn't offer the information; I had to ask him a couple of questions to get the information out of him. He didn't come straight out with that." In the interview, Richards is quoted as saying: "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

 

With such touching words about his late father, is it any wonder Richards's family are said to have been behind the musician's decision to backtrack on the story? It hardly paints any of them in a good light. I mean, leaving a box of powder with this guy? Get real.

 

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.1314669.0.0.php

[busybeeburns]

Stones 'saddened' by crew deaths

 

Fire crews were called to the scene of the tragic accident

 

Two workers were killed dismantling the stage after a Rolling Stones concert in Madrid, local police have confirmed.

 

Two other stage hands were injured in the accident at the Vicente Calderon stadium and are now in hospital.

 

A spokesman for the British rock group said they were "deeply saddened" to hear the news.

 

"Their heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery go out to the injured and their profound sympathies to the families of the deceased," he said.

 

The fatal accident occurred on Friday during the dismantling of the Rolling Stones stage, following a concert given by the group on Thursday night.

 

According to police, three of the workers fell 10m (33ft) from a metal structure and landed on a fourth.

 

The dead workers were later named as Benno Goldewijk, 44, from Holland, and Spaniard Alfredo Pecina Matias, 38.

 

The Rolling Stones, currently on the European leg of their A Bigger Band world tour, are due to play in El Eijido, Spain, this weekend.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6254462.stm

[busybeeburns]

Jagger: 'Performing is like sex'

 

Mick Jagger performs on stage during a concert in Lausanne, Switzerland last year.

 

As arguably the greatest living rock star in pop history, Mick Jagger has a thing or two to teach the Amy Winehouses and Pete Dohertys of today.

 

With a whole catalogue of debauched drug taking, wayward womanising and rebellious rock'n'roll antics to his name Jagger has been there, done it and probably smoked it too, and after four decades The Rolling Stones frontman is still going strong.

 

After bursting onto the music scene in the 60s with their raw rock sound, the Stones quickly became synonymous with everything their fans' mothers feared hence headlines proclaiming 'Lock Up Your Daughters'.

 

They were no charming foursome from Liverpool like The Beatles, they were dangerous guys from London, with a penchant for breaking the rules, a taste for women and a terrifying talent.

 

The following few years saw the group rise to the heady echelons of fame and fortune across the world, sticking two fingers up at the authorities on the ascent.

 

But in 1969, the untouchable Stones discovered they were mortal after all when guitarist Brian Jones, who many saw as their creative leader, was found at the bottom of his luxury swimming pool.

 

Later that year the Stones were at the centre of yet more controversy when an audience member was killed at their Altamont Speedway concert in California.

 

The group had controversially hired a notorious motorcycle gang The Hell's Angels to act as security at the show, a decision they would regret when some thuggish members of the gang stabbed and kicked to death an 18-year-old fan.

 

The Stones managed to emerge relatively unscathed from the flames and have carried on being a dominant force in the rock world either through their records or their spectacular tours, the latest being A Bigger Bang.

 

Throughout the band's astonishing journey Jagger has continued to amaze, astound and astonish audiences with his unrivalled stage presence and his raucous off-stage behaviour.

 

Over the years the five-foot eight inch superlothario with snake hips and a rubber lips has racked up more dalliances with various beauties than almost any other man on the planet.

 

His romantic CV reads like a Mills and Boon novel, with two failed marriages, the first to socialite Bianca Perez Morena de Macias and the second to model Jerry Hall, and numerous affairs with other glamorous women, including Marianne Faithful, Carla Bruni, Luciana Morad, and Janice Dickinson. His romances have resulted in seven children from four different women.

 

He may be a granddad rocker now, but Jagger still has what it takes to charm the younger ladies and he is currently setting tongues wagging about his impending engagement to his long-term love, former model L'Wren Scott, who at 40 is 24 years his junior as well as being eight inches taller.

 

A few brushes with the law have also added to his rock'n'roll legacy.

 

In 1967, Jagger was arrested on drug charges and given an unusually harsh sentence of three months for possession of four over-the-counter amphetamine pills he had purchased in Italy.

 

The sentence was later reduced, but if anything the episode just endeared the band to fans everywhere as they became an emblem of youth against a tired and cowardly establishment.

 

Over three decades on and the Stones have finally made their peace with the establishment, with Jagger being knighted in 2003.

 

For all his headline grabbing antics Sir Mick has remained notably coy throughout his career, rarely doing interviews and only sporadically speaking about his private life.

 

But in 2006 he finally let his guard down and gave legendary director Martin Scorsese rare access-all-areas to two Stones performances in New York.

 

The result is the much-anticipated performance movie Shine A Light which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival last month. It chronicles the band playing two concerts at the Beacon Theatre, intercut with interviews with the group, backstage footage and never-before-seen archive material.

 

They may have a combined age of 254, but this film proves once and for all frontman Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ronnie Wood, are still a rock force to be reckoned with and the band that all rock groups aspire to become.

 

Here Jagger talks about how performing is as addictive as sex, why he has no plans to retire, his favourite Rolling Stones myths and his everlasting energy.

 

Q: What defines the Rolling Stones?

 

A: I'd say the defining thing about the Rolling Stones is that we're very British. It's very British rock 'n' roll.

 

Q: What's the best myth you have ever heard about the Rolling Stones?

 

A: Myths, legends and the Rolling Stones. There are so many. The dangerous thing is if you start believing in them. That way lies madness.

 

My favourite myth and the greatest Stones myth is the one about Keith having his blood changed every year. I've always loved that because it's got that great dark vampire feel about it.

 

Q: You have had an enjoyed a long-lasting friendship with bandmate Keith Richards, but in the movie you both look almost awkward when you hug.

 

A: Yes. It is a very English moment isn't it? We're not good at showing our feelings but then that makes it more real.

 

Q: Going back to the Stones myths, is it true Tina Turner taught you to dance?

 

A: I don't dance like Tina because she's a woman and I'm a man. Maybe I'm the closest thing a man can get to Tina. And maybe she did show me a few moves.

 

Q: Being a Rolling Stone must be surreal at times, how do you keep sane?

 

A: I refer to the Rolling Stones in the third person. I think that keeps me a bit more sane.

 

Q: What keeps you touring and performing?

 

A: Performing is like sex. It is an addiction. It is why we are out there doing it. But you do have to be careful. To do it well, you can't do it all the time. It has to be the right time.

 

It's like when you are young you think you should be having sex all the time. If you're reading a book, all you are thinking about is "Why am I reading a book, why aren't I haven't sex. I'm wasting my time if I'm not having sex."

 

It is the most amazing feeling. But to do it right you have to prepare for it, you go up and perform and you get into this zone.

 

Q: What is the secret to your everlasting energy?

 

A: People go on about where does the energy come from but you get that energy on stage. I do a bit of training for a few months before we go on tour but nothing special. I think my fitness levels are down to being a war child. That diet was meant to be the best. Hardly any fat, hardly any sweets. That all stands you in good stead.

 

Q: Any other tips for keeping young?

 

A: Someone who is tired after a 48-hour week should move to France. They should work less. They should work maybe 30 hours and then get out more and go dancing with his daughters - that would do it.

 

Q: Have unkind remarks about your age ever made you think about retiring?

 

A: I never take any notice of what people write. For the band it's about the audience. If we go on tour and no-one buys our tickets then that says something. There's never been a time when people stopped coming to see us.

 

Q: Do you think any other bands will keep going like the Rolling Stones have?

 

A: No-one has done what we do. Maybe U2 will keep going. Coldplay possibly. I'd never say how long we'll keep going. It's not going to be forever. All things must come to an end, that's just a universal truth.

 

Q. One of the most spectacular concerts The Stones have ever played was the free show you did on Rio De Janeiro's Copacabana Beach. What was that like?

 

A: That was just amazing. But the hours leading up to it were very strange. Our hotel overlooked the beach and I remember looking at reports the day of the show and reading that thousands of fans were already on the beach in anticipation, but when I looked out of my hotel window I couldn't see anyone. Even at 6pm a couple of hours before the show there was no one there. I was getting worried. Usually before a big show fans get there really early. But I needn't have been concerned. Brazilians are really laid back and they just descended onto the beach at the last minute. We played to over one million fans that night. It was magical.

 

Q: You famously handed back 2 million advance for your autobiography. What do you think about stars who pour out their hearts?

 

A: I hate those confessionals. I never read autobiographies although I've just finished reading a book of Noel Coward's letters which was pretty interesting.

 

I hate the whole thing about looking back. It's just dull. I'd always rather look forward. What we are is what you see. We're here, we're doing it. It's not about why, it's about this is it.

 

Q: During the 60s and 70s the Stones have had numerous run-ins with the law, did you ever feel like the band were being made a scapegoat for a bigger problem?

 

A: The police used to plant you. They still do, I should think. It wasn't very good because it completely took over our lives creatively and we couldn't do this and couldn't do that.

 

Q: How did it hinder the band?

 

A: You had to spend all your time trying to deal with all the police and you didn't have time to do anything else. The same thing has happened to Amy Winehouse today. She couldn't go to the US to do the Grammys. That's the same problem we were having.

 

Q: What is your view on drug taking now?

 

A: I think drug taking is perhaps overrated as a creative help.

 

BANG! Showbiz

 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/music/jagger-performing-is-like-sex/2008/03/21/1205602627817.html?page=2

[winigwl]

cool for coldplay to be recognized by a legend. i hope they do go as long as the stones

[shipoffools]

I've really been getting into the Stones lately. :) I don't have all of the albums yet, so far I have:

 

A Bigger Bang

Bridges To Babylon

Let It Bleed

Live Licks

Out Of Our Heads

Sticky Fingers

Stripped

Undercover

No Security

Rareties

 

Out of all those, my favorites are A Bigger Bang, Let It Bleed, Undercover, and Sticky Fingers

 

I have a whole bunch on order. :D

[deaths_friend]

i absolutely LOVE the stones but at the moment i'm satisfied with just having Forty Licks. one of the best most solid compilations you will ever hear. 40 brilliant rock songs i cant think of any other band in history who could put together a compilation like that.

[bigbambo]

One of my favourite bands. I love 'You got the silver', 'Bitch', 'Sister Morpine', 'Brown Sugar', 'Live with me', 'You can't always get what you want' the most. I have only 3 LPs and 2 live album. But I'm comin from behind very quickly. Keith is hot haha <3 :p