Our Rolling love affair
THE day Rolling Stones fans have been anticipating for over ten years is almost here. On Thursday, Croke Park will play host to the the rocking legends as they perform the first date of their No Filter tour. It will be the first time in 11 years that the quartet will play on Irish soil, after wowing Slane crowds back in 2007 — and given the band members respective ages, it is likely to be their last world tour together.
Getting the Stones to Ireland for their last big show here has been quite a feat.
Croke Park residents objections aside, the band’s respective lawyers and managers have been attempting to put a tour together for some time, but feuds between band members — most notably, between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — had previously put paid to the idea.
But now, the four have cast their alleged differences to one side and regrouped for a tour that will see them go out with a bang. There’s even more cause for celebration, as it will be the Stones’ first world tour since Ronnie Wood ended his treatment for lung cancer late last year.
They may not have played here very often, but the Rolling Stones have long enjoyed a close connection with Ireland. Their first encounter with the country took place way back in 1965.
At that time, of course, they were the young, preening pin-ups of rock; the slightly rebellious and smouldering yin to the yang of their greatest rivals, The Beatles. When they arrived here, their breakout hit, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction was still weeks away from release.
Ireland was also still in thrall to the showband troubadours like Dickie Rock and Brendan Boyer, oblivious to what was about to hit them. The band played matinee and evening concerts at the Belfast ABC Theatre, Dublin’s Adelphi and Cork’s Savoy, for two dates in January.
According to lore, the Stones made a quick pit-stop in Castlemartyr, where Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman repaired for Mrs Farrell’s Eating House. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones, meanwhile, took in a few pints at Barry’s Bar.
OF THE Cork concert, Paddy Ryan, part of the Old Head Golf Club management team, remembered: ‘My girlfriend, Anne, and I were always divided on the Stones and The Beatles. Most guys loved the edginess of the Stones, they had a kind of danger The Beatles just didn’t have.
‘I remember that Brian Jones was the real hero of the group — as soon as he came on stage, the girls just went wild. His long blond hair and good looks had girls going mad everywhere he went.
Jagger, at that time, was definitely in second place. The music was the thing that got you — it was so exciting, so visceral. You could get right up to the stage. We had never seen anything like this before. It was mind-blowing.’
The Stones, by then a band of no small repute, returned to Ireland for another short tour in September 1966.
These gigs were filmed for a live documentary, Charlie Is My Darling. As one might imagine, screaming girls, electric live audiences and scenes of heady debauchery all featured on the eventual showreel.
As the band grew in popularity and influence in the 1960s and 1970s, Jagger was said to be a regular at Desmond Guinness’s Leixlip Castle. In fact, a painting of him, thengirlfriend Marianne Faithfull and Guinness, by Slim Aarons, is reportedly for sale via the Staley-Wise Gallery in New York.
Later, Jagger and Faithfull would retreat from fame regularly at Bermingham House near Tuam in Galway, which is owned by Oonagh Mary Hyland.
By the time the Stones returned in 1982, they were playing one of the biggest concerts the island had ever seen and became the second band, after Thin Lizzy, to headline at Slane Castle.
Support acts for their first Slane outing — priced at a rather pocketfriendly £12 — were The J Geils Band, The Chieftains, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers.
On a gloriously sunny afternoon, hundreds of balloons were released into the air two days before Mick’s 39th birthday as the band opened with Under My Thumb.
By now, the line-up had shapeshifted since their Irish debut, in part due to Brian Jones’s death: the Stones were now Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.
Speaking about the 1982 concert, Slane Castle owner Lord Henry Mountcharles said Irish fans had never seen anything like it before. Owing either to the incendiary show, or the unseasonably balmy weather, the first ten rows of fans had to be sprayed down with water regularly. It might be 11 years since they took to an Irish stage, but from recording to living
‘Mick came down the Thursday before the show and had dinner in the castle and the production crew slept in the drawing room of the castle the night before the show,’ Mountcharles said.
‘It had an almost gypsy-like quality about it.’
By then, Ronnie Wood had been living in Naas, Co Kildare.
Jagger introduced the guitarist as ‘a man from Naas’, while Wood reportedly grabbed the microphone and bellowed ‘come on the Royals’ — a reference, presumably, to the Royal County.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a number of tales of Ronnie-related lore have emerged from Naas. One delicious rumour abounds that publican Tommy Fletcher had barred Wood and Jagger from strumming the guitar in his Main Road establishment.
‘I don’t care if he is Red Hurley himself, he’s not playing any music here,’ came the alleged riposte.
THESE days, Ronnie likes to divide his time between Kildare and London, where he lives with his wife Sally and toddler twins Gracie and Alice. Yet Sandymount House, near Clane, has long been described as Ronnie’s spiritual home; the one place he can indulge his passions of racing, art and fishing.
Despite his down-to-earth hobbies, the palatial pile has all the markings of a rockstar owner: a statue of Elvis Presley once took pride of place in the courtyard, while a mock Irish pub and stateof-the-art recording studio are just two of the megabucks features inside.
It was here Ronnie reportedly brought his former girlfriend Ekaterine Ivanova for illicit trysts during the early stages of their affair, before he split with former wife Jo. Wood reportedly brought Ekaterina to his Clane home during the summer of 2008 for a ‘painting holiday’ where he sketched her naked.
A year previously, Wood had enjoyed exhibiting his artworks at the Project Office in Temple Bar.
That same year, the Rolling Stones returned to Slane Castle for another juggernaut gig. The weather wasn’t nearly as kind as it had been some years previously, and the rain pelted the 68,000-strong crowd.
Support came from Frankie Gavin, Tinariwen, The Hold Steady and The Charlatans. This time around, that privilege goes to up-and-coming Irish band The Academic, a decision which has been met with mixed reaction by fans.
While the Stones’ live appearances on Irish soil have been sporadic, the respective members have popped in and out of the country, both for work and play, countless times.
The now-derelict Windmill Lane Studios at 20 Ringsend Road in Dublin were used by the band to record part of Voodoo Lounge in 1993.
By all accounts, they ran back into their one time Slane support, The Chieftains, and bonded over pints in Studio 1. The band also took up residence at the Shelbourne Hotel for six months while recording was being completed — it was also their hotel of choice during their 2007 tour.
The smart money says that the foursome will likely descend on their one-time home from home again when they arrive here next week. And it’s safe to assume that, despite their advancing years, a level of revelling across the capital will be involved.