 Skydome Stadium, Toronto
Around 60.000 Canadians and many US
citizens came to this huge show. Among people their former manager Andrew Loog
Oldham were seen, popular with his new book. Review in Stones Planet No. 10 out
next week.
Set list:
Brown Sugar - It's Only Rock'n'Roll - Start Me Up - Don't Stop - Tumbling Dice -
Shattered - Angie - You Can't Always Get What You Want - Midnight Rambler - Love
Train - Slipping Away - You Don't Have To Mean It - Sympathy For The Devil -
When The Whip Comes Down - Little Red Rooster - You Got Me Rocking - Gimme
Shelter -
HonkyTonk Women - Street Fighting Men - Jumping Jack Flash -
Satisfaction
Back to the ...
STONE AGE
T.O. gets another dose of classics
by Jane Stevenson
Call it Rolling Stones Redux. After wowing 18,000 fans at the Air Canada
Centre on Wednesday night, the veteran British rock band returned to the SkyDome
last night for a larger and louder second sold-out show in front of some 45,000
people.
Playing in two dramatically different sized venues is part of the Stones' agenda
this time on their so-called Licks tour -- named for their recently released
double CD retrospective, Forty Licks -- as they've tackled stadiums, arena and
clubs, sometimes all three in the same city.
Toronto was already treated to a club show back in mid-August when the band --
frontman Mick Jagger, guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood and drummer Charlie
Watts -- staged a surprise gig at the lakeside Palais Royale after they'd
arrived in the city a month earlier to rehearse.
Naturally, last night's show had way more bells and whistles than both the club
and arena gigs including an impressively enormous lighting rig, a giant
motorized backdrop, moving video screens, and even flames which shot up during
one of the evening's highlights, Sympathy For The Devil.
And there I was in the twelfth row on the floor drinking it all in.
In fact, despite the spectacle unfolding in front of me, I was able to take in
the little things like Richards, performing his usual Chuck Berry-like kicks,
continually cracking up Watts, or playfully reaching over and strumming the neck
of Wood's guitar mid-song.
For his part, Richards acknowledged his wipe-out upon immediately coming on
stage on Wednesday night at the ACC.
"I won't fall over this time!" he said last night before handling lead
vocals on two songs, Slipping Away and You Don't Have To Mean It.
"It's a big room and there's a lot of ya!" he added afterwards.
Richards and Wood were in particularly good form and, frankly, made it look like
they had the best jobs in the world.
The group -- rounded out by bassist Darryl Jones, keyboardist Chuck Leavell,
three back-up singers and a four-man horn section, led by sax player Bobby Keys
-- started off the evening with Brown Sugar.
Jagger, looking resplendent initially in a gold ensemble of satin jacket and
matching scarf, never really stopped moving over the course of two hours and
professed his undying affection for our town: "I tell you, we love it here!"
Other tricks last night included a tiny camera mounted on Wood's guitar, an
animated topless woman riding a large tongue during Honky Tonk Woman and red
confetti raining down on the audience near the end of the show.
All of the above were also utilized in the arena setting, along with the now
familiar smaller stage on the floor which the band accessed via a long catwalk,
hi-fiving fans as they made their way down.
And let's not forget backup singer Lisa Fischer's micro-mini red dress, which
she used to great writhing effect during another highlight of the night -- Gimme
Shelter.
Other standouts were, once again, more obscure numbers, some of which the Stones
have been playing at their previous stadium shows -- Shattered, Angie and You
Can't Always Get What You Want.
Luckily, for most Stones fans, they got want they wanted. And more.
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