 Enmore Theatre, Sydney, Australia
on Tuesday February 18th. 2003. The grand opening show of the Australia tour
was a terrific show at the beautiful Enmore Theatre in Sydney. 2200 people
attended this long awaited show in Australia, after so many years of waiting.
Set list:
Midnight Rambler - Tumbling Dice - Live With Me - Dead Flowers - No
Expectations - Neighbours - I Can't Turn You Loose - Everybody Needs Somebody To
Love - That's How Strong My Love Is - Going To A Go Go - Slipping Away - Happy -
Start Me Up - Rock Me Baby - Honky Tonk Women - It's Only Rock'n'Roll - Brown
Sugar - Satisfaction.
Review from Jhabel:
Midnight Rambler Superb opener , such a treat
Tumbling Dice
Live with Me one of my favs so I was having
a great time
Dead Flowers another of my favs played to perfection
No Expectations Unexpected and warmly recieved by the
audience
Neighbours A dig at the Aussie show still playing on UK
TV
Can't Turn You Loose (Otis Redding) Had the
whole place jumping
Everybody Needs Somebody To Love Just kept
everyone on their feet
That's How Strong My Love Is - Mick sang this with so much heart
and soul that I had tears in my eyes
Going to A GoGo Many in the VIP area where I was did not know this
song, obviously not genuine fans he he he
Slipping Away I love this song and Keith sang it really well
Happy Keith is loved here in Sydney and during this song we
showed how much
Start Me Up Im sure the people outside the theatre
enjoyed this one too , everyone was singing along
Rock Me Baby ACDC's Angus and Malcolm Young jammed with the
Stones for this song. Ronnie followed Angus in his trademark hop across the
stage, very funny , Mick seemed happy to groove on the side while Keith Ronnie
and Angus jammed up a storm!
Honky Tonk Women } the classic set, all those VIP's
finally heard what they came for IORR } and the
band rocked,
Brown Sugar
Satisfaction encore Satisfaction was Guaranteed!!!!!!!!!
Cheers Jhabel
 Rolling
Stones still rock
By Iain Shedden, Music Writer
The Rolling Stones turned back the clock last night at the opening show of
their Australian tour.
When 59-year-old frontman Mick Jagger stepped on to the stage of the Enmore
Theatre in Sydney, it was to lead the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world
through a set steeped in the past, in a venue more suited to a 1960s heyday.
In front of just 2200 fanatical and fortunate fans, the Stones ran through a
set of classic songs such as Honky Tonk Woman, Satisfaction and Brown Sugar.
Jagger seemed to defy time, looking much younger than his years as he
strutted the stage, taunting the audience and dancing just as he did 30 years
ago. The show, the smallest of the tour, bodes well for the rest of what is
their fifth visit to Australia.
Stones fever came early to Enmore Road in inner-western Sydney. A mini-league
of nations – fans from Japan, the US, Europe and Australia – gathered on the
pavement outside the 2000-capacity theatre from early morning.
 The rare theatre show by the most enduring rock band in the world has sparked
a flurry of media and public attention. For the Stones, celebrating 40 years in
rock 'n' roll, the small theatre show is a one-off on the Australian leg of
their Licks World Tour. The other concerts are at arenas in Sydney, Brisbane and
Melbourne.
The fans who assembled early were mainly ticketholders for the
standing-room-only area at the front of the stage, who were hoping to get prime
position for the gig.
Craig Boyakovsky, 21, from Pymble in Sydney's north, arrived at 11am. He saw
the band on their most recent visit to Sydney in 1995 and since then has
developed what he calls "an unhealthy obsession" with the Stones.
"I got the day off work, I had a big pile of books and a lot of CDs and
I just sat in the Enmore sun for eight hours. I wouldn't have missed this for
quids," he said.
One couple, the Onos, travelled from Tokyo for the show and have tickets for
all of the Stones' performances in Australia.
Ben De Grood, from Amsterdam, has been travelling around Australia for two
months but was lucky enough to secure a ticket in the telephone-only sale for
the Enmore show. It was the highlight of his holiday, he said.
"The Kimberley was nice, but this is the top. The music they make, I
grew up with. It's just magic. But to see them in a venue like this is something
special. I'm lucky. It's a great opportunity."
Security was tight around the small theatre. Laneways were blocked off and
barriers erected to separate traffic from the crowd.
The Stones kept a low profile before the show, staying at their city hotel
until just before the performance, having rehearsed on Monday night. "It's
going to be loud, but it's going to be great," tour publicist David
Morrison said.
 Review from Herald Sun:
Plenty of moss left in Rolling Stones
The crowd was close enough to see every blemish, every wrinkle - but it didn't
matter.
The Rolling Stones, still billed as the greatest rock 'n roll band in the
world, opened their Australian tour last night in the intimate 2000-seat Enmore
Theatre in Sydney in typical flamboyant style.
From the opening bars of Midnight Rambler, the ageing rockers had the
mostly-over-40s crowd eating out of the palm of their hand.
The concert had sold out within half an hour of going on sale and such was
the interest in the band's first performance in Australia since 1995 that a
crowd of about 10-deep stood outside the theatre where police had to restrict
traffic on Enmore road.
One of the fans waiting outside, Geoff Hughes, 47, of Pyrmont, said he could
not bear to miss the occasion, even though he had not been lucky enough to get a
ticket.
"I wouldn't do this for any other band, but this is the Stones - it says
everything about who they are and what they represent," Mr Hughes said.
Inside the theatre, Steve Wickham, 41, said he felt privileged to see the
Stones in such an intimate atmosphere.
"It's a completely different angle on them. It gives you the experience
as if you're in a rehearsal and they're playing just for you," said the
diehard Stones fan.
The Australian leg is part of a worldwide Forty Licks Tour by the band which
began playing together in Britain more than 40 years ago, and has redefined the
meaning of rhythm and blues for a generation of white western kids.
The stones gave a typical high-energy performance from the opening bars of
Keith Richards' searing guitar and even though Jagger is nearing pension age, he
didn't show it on stage.
Supremely fit, he showed every sign that the band may prove wrong the critics
who have predicted this could be their last tour.
 The
Rolling Stones, Enmore Theatre
By Bernard Zuel
,
February 20 2003
Before the details, let's deal with the philosophy. I've spent a lot of time
in the past moaning about the fact that the Rolling Stones just didn't know when
to call it quits. I've hardly been on my own there and it has not just been a
post-boomer hissy fit about "protecting youth culture". I mean have
you heard their albums since, oh, 1981? Dire stuff.
In one sense nothing has changed. If you're wondering whether they're
relevant as recording artists, as new creative forces, then the answer is no,
not for a long time and they don't deserve much space. But as performers, as a
live act capable of exciting an audience and performing their songs better than
anyone else? Yes, absolutely.
Set aside for the moment the fact that they are all about to hit pensionable
age, that the songs that elicit the best responses are 30 to 40 years old, that
even talking about them here apparently is stopping you reading about the Vines
or Avril Lavigne. Let's just look at the concert itself. For 90 minutes they
played a high-energy, pulsating rock show that reeked of experience but never
fell into slickness; that was loud and dirty and funny and always had something
for you to sing with; that featured a lead singer who held you, toyed with you
and never stopped; that energised you and sent you out onto the street buzzing.
Buzzing not just because you were that close to one of the most famous bands of
all time but because the essence of any great rock show was there. This was fun.
The intent was clear from the get go with the opening double of Midnight
Rambler and Tumbling Dice and Keith Richards looking like either an
eccentric bohemian or an expensive wino (or maybe both), hunched over his guitar
and cranking out the riffs. We weren't going to get the stadium Stones - the
cash and flash merchants - but the bar-room Stones, the band that remembers what
it's like to play on a humid night, to packed theatres where sweat intermingles
and there is no big picture (or big picture screen), just right now, right here.
That became undeniable as they rolled out songs such as Neighbours (a
strutting beefy Jerry Lee Lewis-style rave-up from their last tolerable album, Tattoo
You), Rock Me Baby (a slowish blues augmented by AC/DC's Angus and
Malcolm Young exchanging licks on guitars with Richards and Ron Wood) and Honky
Tonk Women (done as lewd and as grimy as the best illicit sex).
 And
then there was the five- song soul covers bracket, all pumping, limber and sexy
stuff with Jagger putting some authentic growl into I Can't Turn You Loose
and That's How Strong My Love Is, playfully handling Going To a Go Go
and going some way to wiping away the memory of his senseless murder of Dancing
in the Street nearly 20 years ago.
Sure they did Start Me Up (an empty box of a song still living off its
diverting wrapping - not that anybody else objected) but the compensations came
in two unexpected ways. Firstly, a country rock double of Dead Flowers
and No Expectations was a charming picking-out-a-tune-on-the-back-porch
change of tempo. Then they played a messy, very loose Brown Sugar that
threatened to fall apart several times but also showed they weren't just slick
veterans picking up a pay cheque, but a proper band with fallible, searching
musicians.
Naturally they finished with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. No
surprises there. But it was done in a way that sent us all out feeling like we
were cock o' the walk, at least for now. And that's not a bad compliment for any
band, of any age.
 A night of the honky tonk blues
Enmore Theatre, Sydney, February 18
Review by Patrick Donovan
How d'ya get your ticket?" was the most commonly asked question at
Sydney's Enmore Theatre on Tuesday night. Many of the lucky 2200 fans who
managed to snare the most sought-after ticket since Bob Dylan's Mercury Lounge
show in Melbourne in 1998 were members of the Stones fan club.
Some won the random lottery by being selected out of the thousands who phoned
through, and some were paying up to $1500 on Enmore Road an hour before the show
started.
For those that got in, there was almost the feeling that this was too good to
be true; it was all a hoax. But the Stones are using this tour to repay the fans
who are more interested in the albums than singles, and to the blues and soul
music that inspired them to pick up instruments in the first place.
So on the 30th anniversary of the Stones' legendary show at Kooyong (the
bootleg of which was dubbed Temperature Rising because of sweltering
conditions), Howlin' Wolf and Bo Diddley groaned over the speakers before they
came on, with at least one fan fainting from heat exhaustion. After an
incredible opening which included a 10-minute Midnight Rambler, Tumblin'
Dice, Live with Me, No Expectations and Dead Flowers
(with Jagger strumming an acoustic guitar), the band launched into a four-song
soul tribute.
It was a great way to show off the band's four-piece horn section (including
original Stones tenor sax man Bobby Keys) and four back-up singers as they
launched into Otis Redding's Can't Turn Me Loose and Solomon Burke's Everybody
Needs Somebody to Love - two songs performed in The Blues Brothers
film. And we could have been in Chicago as the crowd chanted "I need you,
you, you".
Then during That's How Strong My Love Is, Jagger quietened the band to
a hush before unleashing a frenzied preacher-like finale. Forget the dinosaur
jibes, Jagger was in ridiculously good health, matching Iggy Pop's muscle tone
and energy. Rather than the two-hour aerobics workout he usually undertakes in
vast stadiums, he was confined to the length of the 20-metre stage as he
unleashed his bottled-up energy, shimmying, strutting, pouting and camping about,
shoving the mike down his pants and firing up the mosh pit with frenzied hand
claps. After 40 years, the band's old material flows as naturally as mother's
milk. For Jagger, it surges through him in waves; for Keith Richards, it comes
on like thunderbolts of riffs.
Ronnie Wood - now off the grog - was tighter than he was in his first shows
here. Charlie Watts looked disinterested as he kept time; but as he says, he's
not bored, he just has a boring face.
Richards, the heart and soul of the band, slowed down the tempo with gritty
versions of Slippin' Away and Happy, and plucked away the opening
riffs to Honky Tonk Women with one hand, snarling and scratching his bum
and under his armpit with the other.
Jagger returned rejuvenated with a singlet bearing Andy Warhol's iconic
tongue emblazoned with "Sydney" for Start Me Up, and then
Sydney's favourite guitar siblings,
AC/DC's Angus and Malcolm Young, joined the band for a four-pronged blues guitar
jam for Rock Me Baby.
They rounded off with It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, Brown Sugar and Satisfaction,
and while the lucky crowd expected a few more surprises (Sympathy for the
Devil? Loving Cup? Shattered? Can't You Hear Me Knocking),
everyone left knowing that they had experienced the gig of a lifetime. When they
sang "It's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it", no one questioned their
conviction.
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