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I recently went through the whole Let's Spend the Night Together compilation from the 1981 tour again. I hadn't done so for about 20 years (had it on videotape), remembered it and found it on the net.
I had almost forgotten how masterful the show was. My first Stones album was Undercover and first live album was Still Life.
The behind the curtain moment and the very beginning of Under my Thumb are very impressive. They all look so laid down while a whole stadium is waiting for them to start, and the way they walk on stage as if they were rehearsing...
I had almost forgotten how masterful the show was. My first Stones album was Undercover and first live album was Still Life.
The behind the curtain moment and the very beginning of Under my Thumb are very impressive. They all look so laid down while a whole stadium is waiting for them to start, and the way they walk on stage as if they were rehearsing...
From what I can gather from what I've seen of the tours prior to the 1981 one, the Still Life/Tattoo You/20th Anniversary/Whatever The Hell Else One Wants To Call It tour was - in comparison to the other tours before - a very organized tour. Very organized in terms of how it was laid out beforehand regarding the logistics, lining up the promoters and the venues, the corporate sponsorship of the tour via Jovan fragrances. It was also very structured in terms of how the band band rehearsed for it, laid out the setlist and pretty much stuck to the plan night after night and show after show.
I'd say maybe a decade or so ago, before the band started releasing the 70s and 80s shows officially, when full setlist length video of 1981 US tour stadium shows from...where the fuck was it...Seattle, Dallas, Chicago and the like were being put out in bootleg form, it was interesting to compare it to the Let's Spend The Night Together footage of the first half of the movie that concentrated on the stadium show (vs. the 2nd half which was from the indoor arena)...and even comparing those various stadium gigs to one another...the setlist didn't vary much from night to night...nor the arrangements.
As has been said, the 1981 tour was the template for subsequent tours, and that streamlined, highly thought-out and professionally-executed series of gigs. The band were able to perform consistently throughout a tour. As opposed to the tours prior to 1981, which could be more hit-or-miss at times in terms of the quality of the performance...sometimes you'd get these spectacular shows, and other times the band as a whole would barely get through a gig by the seat of their pants and the strength of their name/legend rather than anything they were necessarily doing onstage on a particular night.
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