Rolling Stones Tour of the Americas '75

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Rolling Stones Tour of the Americas '75
Tour by The Rolling Stones
Start date 1 June 1975
End date 8 August 1975
Legs 1
Shows 46
The Rolling Stones tour chronology
European Tour 1973 Tour of the Americas '75 Tour of Europe '76

The Rolling Stones' Tour of the Americas '75 was a concert tour, intended for North and South America, that took place during 1975.

Contents

[edit] History

This was the Stones first tour with new guitarist Ron Wood, after Mick Taylor left the band. (A 14 April announcement merely said he would be playing on the tour; he was not officially named a Stone until 19 December.) Photographs published at the time showed guitarist Keith Richards standing behind or next to Wood, demonstrating to him the fingering positions for various Stones songs, as Wood had to come up to speed on the group's repertoire in a hurry.

Tour of the Americas '75 was not tied to support of any newly released material, as it began more than 7 months after the release of their last studio album at the time, It's Only Rock'n Roll; therefore the compilation album Made in the Shade was released to capitalise on the tour's publicity.

The announcement of the tour became famous in itself. At a 1 May press conference in Manhattan, the band surprised the throng of waiting reporters by driving down Broadway, playing "Brown Sugar" on the back of a flatbed truck in the middle of New York traffic, a gimmick that groups such as AC/DC and U2 would emulate in years to come.

The mid-1970s were the era of extravagant stage shows, from the likes of Elton John, Alice Cooper and Queen - a new format for the Stones, with their usual act freshly aided by theatrical stage props and gimmicks, including a giant inflatable phallus - nicknamed 'Tired Grandfather' by the band, since it sometimes had erectile dysfunction. This represented a further breakdown in Jagger and Richards' relationship; the pragmatic Richards considering it entirely superfluous and distracting from the music. Once again, Jagger was, if nothing else, shrewdly interpreting market trends. In addition to proposing the tour announcement idea, based on the common way for New Orleans jazz bands to promote upcoming dates, Stones drummer Charlie Watts was responsible for the design of the lotus flower-shaped stage for the tour, facts that were touted at the time to help give visible importance to band members other than Jagger and Richards.

The tour officially began on 3 June 1975 at the Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas; however first the group played two warmup shows on 1 June at Dunkirk Hall on Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The tour continued, playing mostly arenas in the United States and Canada including six consecutive nights at New York's Madison Square Garden and five nights at The Forum in Los Angeles, through the scheduled final North American show 2 August at Gator Bowl Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. However a planned series of dates in Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela for the balance of August was cancelled in its entirety, due to some combination of currency flunctuations and security worries regarding both fans and outside forces. Four additional U.S. dates were then adding, concluding the tour on 8 August at Rich Stadium in Buffalo, New York. Thus when all was said and done, Tour of the "Americas" was a misnomer.

The 1977 live album Love You Live partly documents this tour. The epic song "Memory Motel" on the group's 1976 album Black and Blue also describes the tour in an emotional sense.

In November 2006, the band released an official diary of this tour known as T.O.T.A '75. It is a key chronicle of the Rolling Stones achievements and is already becoming a popular seller among fans.

[edit] Band members

[edit] Rolling Stones

[edit] Additional musicians

[edit] Set list

The most typical set list for the shows was:

Intro music: Fanfare for the Common Man

  1. Honky Tonk Women
  2. All Down The Line
  3. If You Can't Rock Me/Get Off Of My Cloud
  4. Star Star
  5. Gimme Shelter
  6. Ain't Too Proud to Beg
  7. You Gotta Move
  8. You Can't Always Get What You Want
  9. Happy
  10. Tumbling Dice
  11. It's Only Rock'n Roll (But I Like It)
  12. Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
  13. Fingerprint File
  14. Angie
  15. Wild Horses
  16. That's Life (sung by Billy Preston)
  17. Outa-Space (led by Billy Preston)
  18. Brown Sugar
  19. Midnight Rambler
  20. Rip This Joint
  21. Street Fighting Man
  22. Jumpin' Jack Flash
  23. Encore: sometimes none, sometimes Sympathy for the Devil

The set was longer than on previous tours, and set list variation was a bit more frequent, with seven or eight other tunes making sporadic appearances, perhaps most notably an a cappella "Lady Jane". Otherwise, as with their 1972 American Tour, the band's pre-1968 catalog was almost completely ignored, and their signature song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" absent.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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