Accessing Universal Intelligence.
Human Ingenuity and Creativity. Our Cultural Heritage.
Favourite things. Music and Movies. Nature. Items that interest me on any topic.
An image of one of the world’s
most iconic buildings.
The design was way ahead of its time and it still looks
amazing!
“The Sydney Opera House
Project is an exploration of the history of Australia's most famous
structure, including how it was designed, constructed and altered throughout its
life. We spoke to Sam Doust, Writer and Director of the Sydney Opera House
Project about this epic project that employed a variety of old media and new
technology including photos and film , recorded oral histories, and a 3D
reconstruction that explores the inside and outside of the building; to tell
this magnificent story.”
THE Sydney Opera House yesterday
celebrated it's 40th birthday in grand style.
Four thousand people crammed the
forecourt to watch the Sydney Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven Symphony No.
9 - the classical piece which opened the venue 40 years ago - along with the
Sydney Philharmonia choir and Opera Australia soloists.
Chef Matt Moran marked the
occasion by unveiling an enormous cupcake, while Jimmy Barnes led a rousing
happy birthday singalong.
Its hard to believe that in 1966
the Opera House was embroiled in scandal.
As well as a cost blowout, the
criticism of the structure was so harsh, architect Jorn Utzon submit his
resignation as designer of the Opera House - yet it went on to land a world
heritage listing in 2007.
Some of the world's biggest names
have taken to its many stages, among them Joan Sutherland, Oprah Winfrey, Hugh
Jackman, Luciano Pavarotti and Sammy Davis Jr.
I watched the video clip and listened to the commentary which
accompanied this article online.
The clip above is not it, thankfully.
I am glad I wasn’t able to use it. The art critic who narrated it seems to be totally ignorant of anything the Stones have done. He seems
to think Ronnie Wood took up painting after he joined the Stones – not true,
see below.
He comments on the depiction of horses in one painting is derogatory.
I had the pleasure of seeing a Ronnie Wood Art Exhibition
in San Francisco.
I have to say I thought it was great!
Ronnie Wood is a very
talented artist and musician and it makes a lot of sense to me that he is painting pictures of The Rolling Stones - it is a big part of his life after all, and The Stones are a big part of our culture.
RONNIE Wood is the work-experience Stone.
He joined the band in 1975; the three
others are all founder members, going all the way back to '62. He didn't become
a full partner, in the business sense, until 1990, which meant that in the 1980s
he sometimes found himself (amazingly, for a Stone) needing money, which is why
he started doing more painting, but more of that in a moment.
All his life he has been the junior
partner. He was eight and 10 years younger than his two brothers, both now dead,
and he is between three and six years younger than the other Stones. "It's
followed me all through my life. I've always been the
youngest."
He wears the years well, though
strangely.
Rakes would look obese in his presence.
He's 1.75m tall and has never weighed more than 63kg. He claims to eat, though
there is no evidence of it. His hair is thickish and darkly dyed, and his
face... well, where to begin? Think architecture. The high cheekbones are
cantilevered out below the eyes and are supported by two columns running up from
his chin which each splay out into angled shores, forming the striking Y shapes
which are one's first impression of the man. "Gaunt" would not be the right word
as the skin is very smoothly and finely (possibly artificially) tanned. He
looks, in short, outrageously well, considering the life he has led. But he
seems a touch deaf - no wonder - and he is very fidgety which, perhaps unfairly,
suggests to me he could easily fidget his way into more bad
behaviour.
Being the latecomer to the band has at
least meant that he has often been able to play the role of Ban Ki-moon to the
warring nation states of Mick, Keith and Charlie. "Oh yeah, especially in
the'80s, that was a really bad period, we were about to fold a few times. I like
to think I got them talking again. That was the big problem: they refused to
talk."
Ronnie is now the artist-in-residence at
the Castle Fine Art gallery in London's swanky Mayfair. He has a big exhibition
called Raw Instinct there at the moment and they've handed over a whole floor to
him where he can chill, paint, sleep, whatever. There are pictures everywhere,
hanging or leaning on the walls. On one table is a glass vase full of big,
unwrapped brushes. These, it turns out, were part of a giant package given to
him in 2007 by artist Damien Hirst, in an attempt to get Ronnie to paint rather
than drink.
"He just had an interest in keeping me
alive. He saw I was wasting myself and said, 'Do you want to get better, to stop
drinking?'" Ronnie had just come out of one of his many rehabs when Hirst
shipped in enough equipment to fit out an art college and told him, "You've no
excuse now." Has Hirst been an influence? "I admire his art machine and the way
he puts it into action. He doesn't give much away, but I learnt quite a lot from
going round to his office, seeing how the wheels turned over."
Ronnie was not new to art, far from it.
He'd been an art star as far back as
primary school and had even appeared as a competition winner on TV art
shows.
In fact, for he and his brothers, art and
music ran side by side. They were from a family of "water gypsies" who worked on
the Thames out west near Heathrow. They drank and sang at the pub, then drank
and sang at home - this was Ronnie's first experience of "after-parties",
dangerous, life-threatening events, as he was to learn.
"When I was growing up everybody drank,
it's just what they did."
BRYAN
APPLEYARD
By Bryan Appleyard
Story and images with many thanks to The
Australian. (Pay Wall)
Note: "Wild Horses" has been covered by several artists, including Gram Parsons and Melanie Safka. I have other posts on The Rolling Stones on this blog - please use the search function.
Tour dates and venues for the Rolling Stones in Australia -
21014
THE Rolling Stones will take their rock
'n' roll juggernaut to Hanging Rock in Victoria's Macedon Ranges next March.
Following their announcement of a show at
Adelaide Oval on March 22, the world's most enduringly successful rock band have
released plans for an Australian tour that will take them to Hanging Rock and to
Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland.
Promoter Michael Gudinski revealed that
the band, which was here last in 2006 on the Bigger Bang tour, would be playing
material such as Gimme Shelter, Jumping Jack Flash and Tumbling Dice as well as
a few covers.
This will be the Stones' seventh tour of
Australia. Dates (excluding Adelaide) are Perth Arena March 19, Sydney Allphones
Arena March 25, Melbourne Rod Laver Arena March 28, Hanging Rock, Victoria March
30, Brisbane Entertainment Centre April 2 and Auckland Mt Smart Stadium April
5.
Pre sale tickets available Monday December
9 and Tuesday December 10. Official on sale tickets 9am local times December
16. See the interview about this tour below.
Sadly the Australian Tour has been cancelled due to the tragic death of Mick Jagger's partner, L'Wren Scott. I'm sure all Rolling Stones' fans are deeply saddened by this and our hearts go out to Mick. More here.
THE Rolling Stones have postponed the rest
of their tour of Australasia following L'Wren Scott's suicide. "All I can tell
you is that Mick is absolutely devastated and that everyone from the band
members to the sound engineers are being hugely supportive," a spokesman for the
Rolling Stones said yesterday. "He's in such a state. I was with L'Wren a lot,
and anyone who met her will tell you what an amazing person she was."
The official line is that the band plans
to reschedule the postponed shows. "A new schedule of dates is presently being
worked and will be advised as soon as possible," said a statement. The world
tour is then scheduled to resume in the Netherlands in June.
So will the biggest rock'n'roll band on
the planet really get back on the road so soon? It's a similar dilemma to the
one faced by Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey in 2002 when John Entwistle died
in a Las Vegas hotel room on the eve of The Who's world tour. The tour was
cancelled immediately on the news of Entwistle's death, but after taking advice
from members of Entwistle's family, Townshend and Daltrey decided to continue,
Townshend going on to explain that to cancel the tour meant putting the small
army of people employed to keep a major rock show on the road out of
work.
"My immediate mission is to complete this
tour in good heart and to remember John in my quiet and private times," said
Townshend at the time. Entwistle's son Christopher said of his father: "He lived
for music ... This is what he would have wished."
With their 50 And Counting tour of 2012-13
limited to 30 dates, the Stones' last massive-scale outing was the Bigger Bang
tour of 2005-07, which sold 4.5 million tickets over 147 concerts, second only
to U2's 360 tour of 2009-11. Cancelling a tour of this size is not easy. When
Lady Gaga was forced to end the sold-out North American leg of her Born This Way
tour because of a hip injury last year, 200,000 tickets, were
refunded.
In his incredibly energetic fronting of
Rolling Stones shows, Mick Jagger seems to defy the laws of science, ageing and
exhaustion, but there's too strong a disconnect between the good times Jagger
brings to audiences and the deeply personal tragedy of Scott's suicide for him
to jump straight back into his Jumping Jack Flash persona.
If the dates aren't rescheduled, press
releases will be written, promoters notified and the process of moving about 150
musicians, backing singers, lawyers, travelling accountants and road crew back
to their respective homes will get under way.
The financial implications are not as dire
as they at first seem. Myriad forms of insurance cover a tour of this size,
including the expenses involved in ending the tour, lost revenues for performers
and promoters and advertising costs. And for a band with the Stones' pull,
rescheduled concerts are more likely than outright cancellations. When Bono's
back surgery forced the postponement of 16 of U2's stadium shows in 2010, the
dates were rescheduled for the following year and fans held on to 97 per cent of
tickets.
The Stones are, however, a large business.
They are global, they pay taxes, they employ many, and their biggest revenue
stream comes from touring. Since 1989 they have grossed more than $US1 billion
from concerts.
"When we first started out, there wasn't
really any money in rock'n'roll," Jagger told Fortune magazine in 2002.
"Obviously there was somebody maybe who made money, but it certainly wasn't the
act."
The big change came after the disaster at
Altamont Speedway in 1969, when a free gig led to the death of a young fan at
the hands of the Hell's Angels hired as security.(See post below on Twenty Feet From Stardom).
After Altamont the band hired
a tour director, frequently the late Bill Graham, to cut deals with local
promoters, who would take 10 to 15 per cent of ticket sales after the cost of
the show. Then, coming in to manage the band's 1989 Steel Wheels tour, a
Canadian promoter called Michael Cohl revolutionised the
model.
Cohl offered the Stones' financial
adviser, the Bavarian aristocrat Prince Rupert Loewenstein, $US40 million for 40
shows, resolving to cut out local promoters and book the tour himself. Cohn
found new revenue streams in corporate sponsorship deals and merchandise. The
band members had to take physicals for Lloyds to insure the tour. (Even Keith
Richards passed.) Meanwhile, Jagger worked on revolutionising the stadium
concert experience.
Steel Wheels took in more than $US260
million worldwide, a record at the time for a rock act.
It's a decent bet that Jagger will take
time out but return to the tour eventually. It's possible that the band will
dedicate a rescheduled concert to Scott, as they did for founder member Brian
Jones in July 1969 with a free concert in Hyde Park. Planned as an introduction
for their new guitarist Mick Taylor, the concert became a tribute to Jones after
his death three days earlier.
"This whole thing runs on passion," said
Keith Richards in 2002, on why the Stones keep going against the odds. "Even
though we don't talk about it much ourselves, it's almost a sort of quest or
mission." That mission may prove to be Jagger’s saviour.
by Will
Hodgkinson
Picture of
the Stones in Japan, and story with thanks to The
Australian (pay-wall)
October slated for Rolling Stones tour to return to Australia
The Rolling Stones will return for a tour of Australia and New Zealand in
October, Frontier Touring has confirmed.
The 14
On Fire Tour of Australasia was postponed following the death in New York of
frontman Mick Jagger's partner of 13 years, fashion designer L'Wren
Scott.
Frontier Touring issued a statement today reassuring fans and ticket
holders the band will return in October and November, but exact dates are yet to
be finalised.
“If
the new dates are not suitable, rest assured you will be able to secure a
refund,” Frontier Touring said.
“While
we encourage fans to hold on to their tickets, the option to secure a refund is
now available to you via the official ticketing agency you purchased
from.”
Fans
can secure a refund for not just the value of the tickets, but also fees and
charges incurred in purchasing the ticket.
