It seems so fitting that our friend Angie organised tickets for the Adelaide Rolling Stones concert. We gathered with her and a few friends prior to the concert at Mother Vine so that a few cheeky white Burgs could start me up. We got plenty of satisfaction from the 2010 JP Fichet Monthelie with all of its generous sappy orchard fruits cut by a strong line of minerality. The bar was beginning to fill up with before concert punters and I thought our waiter was going to have his nineteenth nervous breakdown when we drank the last bottle of the Fichet off the list. We realsised we can’t always get what we want and moved onto the 2012 Patrick Piuze Chablis ‘Decouverte’. It was exactly what we needed with its classic oyster shell and sea spray traits and refreshing citrus twang. Rumour has it that Mick Jagger spent the day with Taras Ochota tasting wine in the Adelaide Hills during the week and we called up a bottle of 2014 Ochota Barrels The Green Room Grenache Syrah. It was quite light in colour and perhaps rather than leaving the juice on skins he let it bleed to produce a wine light on colour and phenolics. It was juicy, spicy and delicious. Mother Vine has a good selection of red Burgs and wild horses could not drag me away from there but we had to go and see the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band on earth so we left for 3 hours then came back and punched in a few post-concert treats. A 2011 Confuron Cotetidot Vosne-Romanee ‘Les Suchots’ 1er Cru was quite spicy, stalky and a little bit green. It was highly perfumed and had real mineral crunch. I nearly got my rocks off with the 2011 G.Roumier Chambolle-Musigny ‘Les Cras’ 1er Cru. What a wine. Deliciously creamy black cherry fruit, earth, spice and flora. Great structure and harmony. Any more booze and I may have turned into a street fighting man so I barely had a sip from a bottle of 2010 Domaine de Courcel Pommard ‘Grand Clos des Epenots’ 1er Cru that a mate had brought before heading home. It was very young, very tight, very deep and very good.
Now, onto the concert. The Stones were good. No in fact they were great. I saw them two decades ago and they were just going through the motions. Last night they were tight, perhaps not musically as there were a couple of dud notes hit, but the original band members were as harmonious as a young La Tache and they looked like they were loving being on stage together. The boys have surrounded themselves by some very decent musicians who help meld everything together and the resultant sound is still very much the Stones. It’s kind of like a museum release ex Domaine that has been topped up with young material. Sure you yearn for a perfect unadulterated bottle but the re-conditioned version is still special.
The Adelaide oval is now a world class venue and she pulsated as she was jam packed with 50k+ fans. We had terrific seats just in the front of the runway extension of the stage. Mick stormed towards us on many occasions, gesticulating and gyrating those skinny hips in trade mark style. He wouldn’t even be 60 kilograms wringing wet but is one of the true rock heavyweights, with the most commanding stage presence and able to fill a large stadium arena with his aura. Having spent the previous 10 days in Adelaide he had done his homework and brought out the local banter about our two footy teams. He let on that Keith had consumed the famous South Australian gastronomical delight that is the pie floater and even mentioned that they enjoyed Adelaide that much that they were considering buying a bungalow in Fullarton.
Jumping Jack Flash kicked off the first set and the band wasted little time in launching straight into Let’s Spend The Night Together straight after. At first I wondered if Keith was even plugged in but he certainly was wired. He got to sing the two worst songs of the night in Happy and I Can’t Be Seen With You and during the finale he dropped something and missed a few notes on Satisfaction. I shouldn’t hang too much shit on the old boy though as his universally adored riffs are the essence of the Stones and he looked like he was having a lot of fun and aside from the monumental f*ckup on the last song he really worked into the gig nicely.
Like A Rolling Stone was a cracking cover and Mick quipped that ‘Bob Dylan is such a sweetheart when you get to know him’. I checked the Guinness book of records and I reckon that we set the world record for the most people in Adelaide singing in falsetto at the same time during Miss You. Oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh, Oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh, Oooh oooh oooh reverberated around the stadium and across the famous pitch in perfect pitch.
I reckon the song of the night was Midnight Rambler. Mick Taylor joined his former band members on stage and played with passion and authority and really gelled with Jagger. Charlie Watts was workmanlike all evening with his metronomic beat and kept the timing change ups together whilst the three guitarists had a playful jam session. The crowd loved it. Most of the rest of the crowd thought Gimmie Shelter was the song of the night but it wasn’t it was the second best. Lisa Fischer’s vocals sent a shiver down our collective spines and her harmonies with Jagger were bang on.
Let me tell you, Start Me Up does not go long enough to allow one to leave seat 24, row B in section C4 to go and have a ‘snake’s hiss’ pick up a tray of beers from the bar on the western side of the oval and get back to one’s seat. I missed the start of Sympathy For The Devil. The middle and end of Sympathy For The Devil was scintillating however. Brown Sugar is a relatively simple Stones song but it works well live and was a fitting end to the first set.
As the lights came on for the encore the positioning of a local choir on either side of the stage signaled the start of You Can’t Always Get What You Want. There was a priceless moment when Mick was singing just in front of one of the young choir members. Footage was up on the big screen and she just looked so star struck, I think she even forgot to sing.
The Rolling Stones have created quite a buzz through our city during their stay and there was so much energy and such a good vibe through Adelaide last night. The show lived up to all expectations as they confirmed that they are indeed the most enduring and the greatest rock band on the planet. 99 points
