By Bernard Zuel
You won't get a classic album in full, a four-hour show or unlikely covers of Australian classics, but it looks like you'll be getting the hits and then more hits when the Rolling Stones play Australia in March.
Early set lists for what may or may not be the farewell tour for the group which began as “Thames delta” bluesmen more than 50 years ago, are not short of the known, the loved and the revered. This past week in both rock'n'roll hubs Abu Dhabi and Tokyo, it was hard to move without running in to a standard of radio classic hits; from Start Me Up and Honky Tonk Women to the bracketed pair of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and It's Only Rock'n'Roll (But I like It) and on to Brown Sugar, Emotional Rescue and Jumpin' Jack Flash.
The Rolling Stones perform in Japan for the first time in eight years, during their concert at Tokyo Dome in Tokyo on Wednesday.Credit: KYODO
Of course, unlike the just departed Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Stones rarely do surprises and have for several decades now wisely stuck to a template of 80-90 per cent material from the '60s and '70s, with a smattering of later songs (often described as the “chance to go to the toilet/bar numbers” by audience members) to remind us they have put out albums since 1981's Tattoo You.
The speculation comes therefore from which branch of their incredibly thick repertoire will they pluck. Will it be a country rock-leaning night? Will it be the heroin years or the pop years or the brash stadium years? Or — dream on kids! — could they offer us the bar-band par excellence a small audience revelled in more than a decade ago when the Stones broke from the stadiums and played one-off shows in tiny (for them) rooms such as Sydney's 1700-capacity Enmore Theatre?
Mick Jagger plays up to the crowd during the Rolling Stones' performance at Tokyo Domeion Wednesday.Credit: Shizuo Kambayashi
What this tour will have, on top of the chance that when they sing “this could be the last time” it really might be, is the opportunity to see three of the four guitarists who have defined the band alongside Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts (original bass player Bill Wyman hasn't been a regular part of the band since the 1990s).
Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood are being joined by the man widely seen as the best foil Richards had, Mick Taylor, who replaced Brian Jones in the late '60s and was in turn replaced by Wood in the mid '60s. That's a lot of history and songs right there.
The Rolling Stones 14 On Fire Tour:
Wednesday, March 19 – Perth Arena
Saturday, March 22 – Adelaide Oval
Tuesday, March 25 – Allphones Arena, Sydney
Friday, March 28 – Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Sunday, March 30 – Hanging Rock, Macedon Ranges
Wednesday, April 2 – Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Saturday, April 5 — Mount Smart Stadium, Auckland