1994
Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot
1994
Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot
January 9, 1994: Mick Jagger leaves Mustique for Los Angeles.
January 10, 1994: Keith Richards returns to New York from Jamaica.
January 14, 1994: Keith Richards leaves New York for Los Angeles.
January 15, 1994: Mick Jagger
and Keith Richards, with Don Was, start overdubbing & mixing sessions
for the Rolling
Stones' next album at Was' private studio in Los Angeles.
January 17, 1994: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are in Los Angeles when
an earthquake hits.
Mid-to-late January 1994: In Los Angeles, Mick Jagger records a cover of
Angie
with the London Symphony
Orchestra.
January 30, 1994: Ron Wood arrives
in Los Angeles and joins in on the overdubbing & mixing sessions
for Voodoo
Lounge.
February 6, 1994: Mick Jagger joins Jimmy Rip onstage at the Viper Room
in Los Angeles.
February 8, 1994: Ron Wood hangs out with Slash of Guns 'N Roses.
February 13, 1994: Charlie Watts
joins the other Rolling Stones in Los Angeles for overdubbing & mixing
of the new
album.
February 16, 1994: Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ron Wood and Darryl Jones
catch a concert by Bernard Fowler at
the Viper Room in Los Angeles.
February 21-22, 1994: Keith Richards takes time out of the Rolling Stones'
sessions to record a duet with George
Jones in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
Late February 1994: Charlie Watts and Ron Wood return home to England.
Early March 1994: In Los Angeles,
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards move the mixing sessions to A&M
Recording
Studios.
March 1994: Ron Wood spends time at his home in Ireland working on his
art.
March 27, 1994: Mick Jagger throws an album-end party at his rented home
in Los Angeles, attended by Keith
Richards, Don Was, Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson and others.
March 28, 1994: Mick Jagger finishes
his part on the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge album, leaving the
final details
to Keith Richards.
March 29, 1994: Mick Jagger leaves Los Angeles for his home in France.
March 31, 1994: Keith Richards returns to New York from Los Angeles for
the Easter holiday.
April 10, 1994: Keith Richards
returns to Los Angeles to work some more on mixing for Voodoo Lounge.
| Keith Richards
(June 1994): State of the relationship with Mick in 1994
Songs induce friendship, because when you're working on something, you're just into that. And that bings you closer together. Mick and I are still getting used to actually enjoying working together again. It's been very fruitful, this last year. Mick goes through his things. But to me Mick seems to be ten times happier than I've seen him, and comfortable within the band and what he's doing and really into it. You know, he's lost some of that star-trip thing that was pissing me off during the '80s. He's starting to appreciate the basic comforts of comradeship again, and that's great. I mean, it's a good feeling right now. |
April 22, 1994: Keith Richards attends an Aerosmith concert at the opening
of the House of Blues in Los Angeles.
April 24, 1994: Keith Richards
completes work on the Stones' album and returns to New York.
| Keith Richards
(June 1994): The Rolling Stones II
Keeping a band together this long, it was bound to hit a rock patch somewhere. And when that happens to most bands, that's usually it. The ship founders on that rock forever. The strength of the Stones is that they didn't. We went through it all, Mick and I went through whatever we went through, and put it all back together. And now we've got it on a very interesting track again. To us, it's like the Rolling Stones II. We're almost like starting agin, you know. |
April 25, 1994: Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood arrive in New York.
April 26-29, 1994: The Rolling
Stones hold two photo shoots in New York. Mixing of I Go Wild takes
place at Right
Track Studios by Bob Clearmountain.
May 1, 1994: In New York, Mick Jagger attends author Terry Southern's 70th
birthday party at Elaine's.
May 2, 1994: Keith Richards and Ron Wood share dinner at a restaurant in
New York and share words with Steven
Spielberg.
May 3, 1994: The Rolling Stones
arrive by presidential yacht to Pier 60 in New York City, where they
hold a press
conference announcing their 1994-95 Voodoo Lounge World Tour. They
then hold
another photo
shoot. It is confirmed Darryl Jones and Chuck Leavell will join the Stones
onstage.
| Mick Jagger
(May 3, 1994): The Voodoo Lounge tour
We've done it by land and we've done it by train... I hate that thing where you say it's the last tour and beg for sympathy, (like) if you don't come, you never see them again. I'm not going to say it's the last tour. I think it's a mistake to say that. (Asked if they're just doing it for the money...) What about all the beer you can drink and all the girls down in front? I mean, there's other things than money. |
| Darryl
Jones (May 1994): Getting the job
I tried not to get too attached to the outcome. After we did the record, Mick said he thought I did a good job, and Keith said he'd like to have me hang around again. But I didn't really get the word, officially, on the tour until a couple of months ago. |
May 4, 1994: Charlie Watts returns home to England from New York.
May 6, 1994: Ron Wood returns to England from New York.
May 7, 1994: Mick Jagger returns to Europe from New York.
May 16, 1994: Keith Richards attends the funeral for his wife Patti's mother
at Staten Island, New York.
June 5, 1994: Ron Wood celebrates his birthday four days late at a club
in London, attended by Mick Jagger, Bill
Wyman and Eric Clapton.
June 7, 1994: Mick Jagger flies back in to New York from England.
June 12-14, 1994: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood
all arrive in Toronto, Canada.
June 14-July 18, 1994: The Rolling
Stones start tour rehearsals at Crescent Private School in Toronto,
Canada.
| Ron Wood
& Keith Richards (June 1994): Rehearsing in infamous Toronto
Ron: It's OK us being in Toronto. We've only had huge problems here before. Keith: I feel fine being here. If I held grudges against every place I've been busted, there would be few places left for me on this planet. |
| Keith Richards
(June 1994): Back in school
The guys are probably in better shape now then they've ever been. Really. First off, you've got to be even to contemplate doing this, you kow. When you're rehearsing, you're working maybe 10, 12 hours a day with the guitar around your neck. So by the time you get onstage and do two hours - although obviously doing a show, the lights and adrenalin, you put a lot more in there - it's kind of nothing after 12 hours a day. So in a lot of ways rehearsing is like the real training ground, because that's where you really do work. You get home at four or five in the morning from these sessions here at the school. Night school! |
| Mick Jagger
& Keith Richards (June 1994): Finding the show
Mick: I've just been putting together a list of what songs we might do on the tour. People always ask you that. I don't fucking know. So I got all the old albums and got all the songs in alphabetical order. There's bleeding loads of them. Keith: We'll spend two months uncovering the show. It's all there, we just need to find it. We're getting familiar with playing some of the newer songs and stretching our memories for some of the older ones. The way those shows usually shake down - it's kind of like picking tracks for an album. We start playing everything, and you don't pressure or guide it too much. Some songs kind of leap out and say, Yeah, me this time. It always comes out all right. |
| Darryl
Jones (June 1994): Playing with the Stones
I had a few different ideas about how to learn the music... I dicided it was best to just get on the vibe. You know, Mick moves THAT way or there's an expression on his face when something is about to happen, or Keith does THIS. There's usually some kind of body language. For instance, a couple of days ago we were in the vamp of a song, and Keith went to a change and I went with him, like I'm going to do onstage. If Mick is standing out there and I realize he's not going to go where we practiced going, I'm going to go with Mick. To me THAT'S music. (Laughs) (Keith) can be really loud. If you're passing in that path, it will perk your ears up, so to speak. In fact, Charley Drayton once described it as that deer in the headlights kind of syndrome. (Laughs) It's something like that. Yeah, Keith plays at a very POWERFUL level. |
| Charlie
Watts (June 1994): Proving yourself again
People say we risk nothing going back out on the road. But we risk reputation, and that's everything... You miss the road when you're not on it. Then you get back, and you're fed up right away. This is the worst bit. Rehearsal. You never know if the band still clicks until you get before a crowd. |
June 16-19, 1994: The Rolling
Stones take an early break from rehearsals to shoot a videoclip for Love
Is Strong
at Harbourside Studios in Toronto.
June 17, 1994: Charlie Watts attends a Phil Collins concert at Toronto's
SkyDome.
July
4, 1994: The Rolling Stones' lead single off their next album, Love
Is Strong, is released.
July
11, 1994: The Rolling Stones' 22nd U.S. and 20th UK studio album -
and first in nearly five years - , Voodoo Lounge,
is released.
July 19, 1994: Nearly four years
since their last concert, the Rolling Stones take the stage at RPM Club
in Toronto,
Canada, for a surprise, informal warmup show. It is their first ever public
performance
with Darryl
Jones and without Bill Wyman.
| Chuck Leavell
(July 1994): The best club gig
The RPM show was the best club gig I've ever done with a band, and I've done a few!... I guess the thing that made it a stand-out was that it was Darryl Jones' first gig. |
| Mick Jagger
& Keith Richards (May 1994): One more time
Mick: You can't get off on it the whole time. It's like you can't be fucking the whole time. Because it spoils it for the times when you REALLY want to do it. You have to work yourself up to the moment when you really give yourself up to the feeling. That's what being in a band is all about, whether it's been together 30 years or three weeks. Keith: We're out on a limb all on our own - nobody's kept it together this long. It's like one of those old maps where there are dragons, and it says END OF THE WORLD. Where is it? You don't know. You're supposed to fall off here. We have no road maps, no way of knowing how to deal with this. But everyone wanted to do it. We can still show 'em a trick or two. And learn a trick or two in the process. I'm very proud of the career, as long as it's gone. Still, it's the old story - who's going to get off of this bus while you're still feeling good about it? |
| Keith Richards
(June 1994): Unkillable
On any given night, we're still a damn good band. And on some nights, maybe even the best band in the world. So screw the press and their slagging about the Geritol Tour. You assholes. Wait until you get our age and see how you run. I got news for you, we're still a bunch of tough bastards. Strings us up and we still won't die. |
July 20-23, 1994: The Rolling
Stones resume their rehearsals in Toronto.
| Mick Jagger
(July 1994): Spending time in the Toronto area
It's very nice because it's not a hotel, which the next year is going to be. I enjoyed the countryside - I a saw a bald eagle. |
| Keith Richards
& Chuck Leavell (June 1994): Opening up the set list
Keith: I'm looking to balance it up. As you can imagine, the show will kind of change and incorporate more of the newer numbers after the record comes out and we get some feedback. I'd like to do as many of them as we can. First off, the songs are made for the stage - they're dying to be played live. Also for this show, I'm not trying to get too stuck to a set list. In the past we've had one song changing here, one song changing there, which is almost the same. But it's difficult to change a lot on these great big tours, with everyone locked into their computerized lights. We try to rehearse far more stuff than we actually need so we can vary the show from night to night if we want to. On the last tour it seemed to become a major thing to change one song, and two was out of the question. I have a feeling this time that we have more experience. Of course, then you have things to deal with, like the lights and the staging point of it and say, Well, what's the angle on this? And then you say, Oh, then you need a song like Monkey Man if you want to do this Voodoo Lounge. It may be the right kind of song for that. So you pick certain songs for the way they're going to be presented from a visual point of view as well. It's not just ears, you know. Chuck: The last tour was so strong, and thre were so many well-known songs on the set list, the challenge this time is to not repeat ourselves and find other songs that are interesting and that the band hasn't done ina long time. Songs like Rocks Off, All Down the Line, Memory Motel, Heartbreaker, Sweet Virginia, Faraway Eyes... It's important that they're crowd-pleasers and fun to play. |
July 25-31, 1994: The Rolling
Stones hold their final tour rehearsals at RFK Stadium in Washington D.C.
| Keith Richards
& Chuck Leavell (June-July 1994): Leaner, meaner Stones
Keith: The other thing is I don't want to repeat the big band revue sort of feel of Steel Wheels. I want to strip it down a bit. I want to discard that revue feel, the give Stones and 11 other people. We, the band, can do a lot more within ourselves. Chuck: Something else that I'll mention about th(e RPM club) gig is that this particular line-up really is a leaner, meaner, tougher Rolilng Stones. Steel Wheels was great, but this has a few less people, there's a little more room for everything to breathe, and it's tighter because of that. |
July 26, 1994: Mick Jagger celebrates his birthday with a restaurant dinner
with Jerry Hall and Charlie Watts in
Washington.
August 1-3, 1994: The Rolling
Stones kick off their 1994 Voodoo Lounge North American Tour with two
concerts at
RFK Stadium in Washington D.C. The near-stadium-only tour will be the biggest
of their
career, and
features an even more imposing stage than Steel Wheels. Darryl Jones,
Chuck Leavell,
Bobby Keys
and the Uptown Horns, and singers Bernard Fowler and Lisa Fischer join
the Stones
onstage. During
this tour, the Rolling Stones perform many songs never performed before
or
performed
long ago, such as Memory Motel, Rocks Off, Doo Doo Doo
Doo Doo, It's All Over Now, No
Expectations,
Not
Fade Away Monkey Man and Live with Me, and vary their setlist
more than on
previous tours
in their history.
August 6-10, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform stadium concerts in Birmingham, Alabama and
Indianapolis.
August 11, 1994: Ron Wood spends the day with Keith Richards at the latter's
home in Connecticut.
August 12-17, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform four shows at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New
Jersey.
| Lighting
designer Patrick Woodruff & tour cooordinator Alan Dunn (1994): The
disposable corporation
Woodruff: This is a disposable corporation. The Company will run for a year and a half and have an income of hundreds of millions of dollars and employ doctors and travel agents and accountants. And then we'll throw it all away. Dunn: (The break-even point) should come in February. I watch it carefully and hope it doesn't move. Everyone is much happier on that day. |
August 19-23, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform two concerts at Toronto's C.N.E. Stadium, followed by
their first
concert in Winnipeg, Canada, since 1966.
| Mick Jagger
(1995): Breaking it in
(You're a)pprehensive (at first). We don't have two weeks to break in out of town. So the first time in a big place like Washington, it's very nerve-racking. But it settled down pretty quickly. After seven performances, it more or less got into a very good groove. |
August 26, 1994: The Rolling Stones
perform for the first time in Madison, Wisconsin, at Camp Randall
Stadium.
| Keith Richards
(1994): Is that all there is?
Sometimes when you're in the dressing room before going on, you look around and think, There's Mick, there's Charlie, Ron? All right? There's me. And you suddenly think, Is that all there is? Where's the one that knows everything? |
| Keith Richards
(1994): A cure-all
You might feel like dog shit two minutes before a show, but the minute you hit the crowd, you feel great. It's a cure for everything, and I recommend it for everybody. |
August 27-30, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform concerts in Cleveland and Cincinnati and shoot a
videoclip
for Out of Tears in the streets of Cleveland. Lenny Kravitz joins
the Stones onstage in
Cleveland
for No Expectations.
August 31, 1994: Keith Richards returns home to Connecticut for the Labor
Day weekend, while Mick Jagger hangs
out in Long Island, New York.
September 2, 1994: Mick Jagger attends a Peter Wolf concert in Amagansett,
Long Island.
September 4, 1994: Bill Wyman's new wife Suzanna Accosta gives birth to
their first child together, Katharine, Bill's
first child in 32 years.
September 4-5, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform two concerts at Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro, near
Boston.
September 6, 1994: Nicky Hopkins, pianist for many of the Rolling Stones'
recordings in the late 1960s and 1970s,
dies at age 50 of health problems in Nashville.
September 7, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform at Raleigh, North Carolina's Carter-Finlay Stadium.
| Keith Richards
(September 7, 1994): In the van leaving the show
The minute I come off, I lose all the air in my body. During the last bit of Jumpin' Jack Flash, I give it all away. And then I stumble off, and then I'm Jake LaMotta saying, Put my robe on right! Hey, Tony, put on my robe! |
| Mick Jagger
(September 1994): Answering the question
There were lots of hacks out there who said we couldn't do it anymore. But maybe what they meant was THEY couldn't do it anymore. Anyway, once we started playing, all that died down. You can talk about it and talk about it, but once we're onstage, the question is answered. |
September 8, 1994: The Rolling
Stones receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and perform two songs
on the televised
MTV
Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
September 9-12, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform a concert in East Lansing, Michigan, and two shows
at Soldier
Field in Chicago.
September 15, 1994: The Rolling
Stones head for Colorado where they perform a concert at Denver's
Mile High
Stadium.
September 17, 1994: Mick Jagger attends a political-business meeting at
Colorado Governor Roy Romer's mansion
with British business people.
September 18, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform for the first time in Columbia, Missouri.
| Keith Richards
(September 1994): Heading for the perfect show
Each show is better than the one before. And we're heading for that perfect show, and the last date we play will be the closest we get. |
September 21, 1994: The Rolling
Stones hold rehearsals in Philadelphia, practising new numbers to
add to the
setlist.
September 22-23, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform two concerts at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.
September 26, 1994: Keith Richards and Ron Wood join Little Jimmy King
onstage at B. B. King's in Memphis,
Tennessee.
September 27-29, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform in Memphis and Pittsburgh.
October 1, 1994: The Rolling Stones
perform at Ames, Iowa's Cyclone Field.
October 4-5, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform for the first time of their career in the Canadian province
of Alberta,
giving two concerts at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium.
October 10, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform at New Orleans' Superdome. The group is also
interviewed
by Ed Bradley for a November appearance on U.S. TV's 60 Minutes.
October 14-15, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform for the first time ever in Las Vegas, giving two
concerts at
the MGM Grand Garden.
October 16, 1994: Mick Jagger catches the Sigfried & Roy show in Las
Vegas.
October 17-21, 1994: The Rolling
Stones begin a swing through the American west coast with a concert
in San Diego
and two shows at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, near Los Angeles.
October 22, 1994: The Rolling Stones' record producer between 1968 and
1973, Jimmy Miller, dies in Denver of
liver failure at age 52.
October 23, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform at Salt Lake City's Rice Stadium.
| Mick Jagger
(2003): The Voodoo Lounge stage
On the Voodoo Lounge tour we had this huge lamp-post structure stuck in the middle of the stage. It was very good-looking, but by the time we got 25 minutes into the show, and then an hour, the lamp-post was still standing there doing nothing. We had to invent a whole feature with these Mexican inflatables, which were interesting, although slightly odd. They were done in a way tha made them look as though they were dolls in some strange kind of religious shrine... (Stage designer Mark Fisher and I) always feel that the shows must make some sort of sense to us intellectually. We don't care if nobody else ever gets the concept, but it has to work for us. |
October 26-31, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform four concerts at Oakland, California's Alameda County
Coliseum.
October 29, 1994: Following the third concert in Oakland, Mick Jagger,
Keith Richards and Ron Wood take part in
the band's Halloween party at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre, where the
two guitarists jam with the other
musicians.
October 30, 1994: Mick Jagger, Ron Wood and other members of the Stones'
extended tour band take a cruise
around San Francisco Bay.
November 3-5, 1994: The Rolling
Stones start off a swing through the American South with concerts in
El Paso and
San Antonio, Texas, the former their first ever in the Western part of
the state.
| Mick Jagger
(1994-95): The Voodoo Lounge show
You open it with this big, grand gesture, an explosion of fire and with a drumbeat going. The first number's (Not Fade Away) really simple as far as the musicians are concerned. Then we have fireworks going, which changes the light on the sides. It's rather eerie and smoky. It's supposed to be a dark beginnning, a bit dark and slightly foreboding, not a big, happy, fun beginning. And then we cut to the beginning of the first rock section, which is Tumbling Dice... There's quite a big move at the end of Satisfaction that becomes the high point of that set; then we start to slow it down. It changes mood again going into Beast of Burden or whatever ballad we do. When we constructed the set musically, I had in mind that it was in these sections - like breaking down a screenplay or, very simply, a plot. It starts off with this moody thing, goes into this rock section, breaks down into this power section, then we have what we used to call the grab bag section. Then it goes into Keith's two songs, it goes up at the end of that into this more audience-participation thing - Honky Tonk Women. Then it goes into the Voodoo Lounge section, where we change the set. Then it goes into the end, the rock & roll run-out section. |
November 11-13, 1994: The Rolling
Stones continue their southern swing with their first ever concert in
Arkansas,
at Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium, and a show at Houston's Astrodome.
November 15-18, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform two shows at Atlanta's Georgia Dome, then return
to Texas for
a concert at Dallas' Cotton Bowl. Part of the Dallas show is broadcast
live over the
Internet.
November 22, 1994: The Rolling
Stones start a run through Florida with a concert at Tampa Stadium.
| Charlie
Watts (2003): Where's Mick?
On the Voodoo Lounge tour, where we had huge wings, I never saw Mick half the time, he was always off round the corner. |
November 24, 1994: The Rolling
Stones rehearse for the next day's special concert at Miami's Joe
Robbie Stadium.
November 25, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform a telecast concert at Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium,
which includes
a special acoustic section and guest stars Bo Diddley, Sheryl Crow and
Robert Cray.
The concert
is eventually made available in video format.
November 27, 1994: The Rolling
Stones conclude their Florida trip with their first ever concert in
Gainesville.
November 28, 1994: The Rolling
Stones hold a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Palm
Beach, Florida,
to announce concert dates outside North America for 1995, including their
first
ever Latin
American shows.
December 1, 1994: The Rolling
Stones return to the northeast to open the fifth and final month of their
North American
tour, performing at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.
December 2, 1994: Ron Wood joins the Black Crowes onstage in Toronto.
December 3-6, 1994: The Rolling
Stones return to Toronto to perform at the SkyDome and then on to
Montreal to
play two concerts at the Stade Olympique.
December 8-11, 1994: The Rolling
Stones perform at Syracuse's Carrier Dome and the Metrodome in
Minneapolis.
December 15, 1994: The Rolling
Stones are back out west, performing at Seattle's Kingdome.
December 17-18, 1994: The Rolling
Stones complete their 1994 Voodoo Lounge North American Tour,
the longest
and biggest of their career, and still highest grossing in rock history
to this day (2006),
with two concerts
at Vancouver's B.C. Place Stadium.
Late December 1994: Charlie Watts returns to England, Ron Wood to Ireland,
Mick Jagger takes a holiday in the
Caribbean and Keith Richards flies to Mexico.