Last year’s Adelaide Guitar Festival featured an excellent tribute to the incomparable Jeff Beck. This time around it is the pre-eminent rock ’n’ roll guitar band The Rolling Stones. Sixty years on, and they are still out there on the (gold-paved) road, filling stadiums like there is no tomorrow. Mick is now 81 and Keith (a medical miracle in his own lifetime) is not far behind.
Headlined by Adalita (formerly of Magic Dirt), Sarah McLeod (from SA’s own Superjesus), Tex Perkins (The Cruel Sea and much more) and Steve Kilbey (stepping out of The Church to visit the Gilded Palace of Sin), Rolling Stones Revue has been touring the country and landed at Her Majesty’s on Saturday night.
The show is in two sections. The first, a full performance of the 1971 Sticky Fingers album, and the second, a sampling of hits from the mid-’60s onwards.
Regarded by many as one of their best albums Sticky Fingers was the Stones’ ninth studio album, some of it recorded at the famous Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama, the rest in London. It was their first recording without founding member Brian Jones and the debut for guitar wizard Mick Taylor.
First up is “Brown Sugar”, a song quietly dropped from the band’s setlist because of calls for its cancellation for its many perceived cultural transgressions. Launched in full vocal roar by McLeod, with some hyperactive dance moves, the song is much altered by the female gaze, its lascivious lyrics now more playful than predatory.
The band gets into stride – Jak Housden on lead guitar sharing those irresistibly descending chord chops with fellow strummer James Christowski. Drummer Gordon Rytmeister sets the rock-steady tempo in tandem with bassist Dario Bortolin – Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman are being well represented. The sax solo by Winston Smith is the excellent first of many.
Tex Perkins in Rolling Stones Revue. Photo: Kyahm Ross
Perkins enters to take the mic for “Sway”. His delivery is a Tex drawl not a strangulated Mick, but it captures the feel of the original and this initial restraint gives him space to ramp it up later in the show.
For “Wild Horses” (the songs are in strict album order) he is joined by Adalita for the first of a series of duets which are a strength in the show. The familiar country rock lament, with its keening refrain, reminds us that this is one of Jagger/Richards’ finest songwriting efforts. Housden and Christowski’s guitars, standing in for the slide and 12-string in the original, capture the tender yearning in the song all the same.
McLeod returns to lead the charge with “Can You Hear Me Knocking”, her stage moves perhaps over-frenetic (especially as the many and varied stage back projections feature too many Jagger swaggerisms to invite comparison). The extended instrumental section gives us more of Smith’s reed playing – Bobby Keys would be well pleased with its grainy expressive timbre, and Housden again excels.
When assembling the album, The Stones were worried there were too many “slow” songs and the mood too downbeat. In fact, it this decision to trust the listener to pay closer attention that marks Sticky Fingers as a mature and enduring work. This is evident in the performance when Perkins and Kilbey share vocals on “You Gotta Move” with pensive slide guitar from Christowski and lock-step slow march rhythm from bass and drums. This is repeated by Perkins, braced at the mic as though in a force-nine gale singing “I Got The Blues”, with keyboard player Rob Woolfe supplying excellent lashings of Hammond.
Having already acquitted well with “Bitch”, Kilbey delivers a poignant low-key reading of “Sister Morphine” with its grimly confessional lyric by Marianne Faithfull. The guitarists supply acoustic and slow, melancholic slide embellishment, the bass and drum are a dull heartbeat gradually building to agitation, and Kilbey’s measured vocal captures the quiet desperation of Faithfull’s own stark, world-weary rendition.
Adalita’s terrific “Dead Flowers”, with its country lilt and ragged company piano from Woolfe, is another highlight. As is the final song “Moonlight Mile”. From the haunting guitar intro – Housden coaxing sweet sad melodies from his red Gibson – to Perkins’ and Adalita’s almost ethereal vocals, plus the thrumming bass and soft cymbal percussion, it is a mordant serenade to the end of the album. The tenth sticky finger (if you count thumbs) is also the conclusion to a memorable first set.
The second half is the fun bit. McLeod lifts the pace with “Start Me Up”, Perkins puts on a coloured shirt for “Honky Tonk Women”, Adalita wears a tinsel-fringed jacket for “Tumbling Dice”, and Kilbey a psychedelic shirt for “2000 Light Years from Home”. Her Majesty’s is turning satanic with portentous piano chords from Woolfe.
“Get Off My Cloud” is a singalong led by Adalita – many of those joining in very likely bought the Decca single in 1965. It is definitely a seniors crowd. The band hits another high with the downcast “Paint it Black”, sung by Perkins and spiralling into a dervish dance with Housden’s hypnotic, extended guitar solo.
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After Kilbey leads the audience choir in “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, Perkins releases his inner Mick with some cockerel strutting on “Miss You” and spreads some lyric sheets on the floor to help navigate a chilling version of “Sympathy for the Devil”. And, for The Big Chill moment, the show closes with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.
For encores, Perkins morphs into “Jumping Jack Flash” and the whole company of top-rate musicians converge – just a shout away – with a terrific performance of “Gimme Shelter”. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” seemed an unlikely closer – given that the crowd was on its feet, singing and going bonkers. As was I. But, for me, the first set – the 1971 album in its entirety – was the real triumph. By a moonlight mile.
Rolling Stones Revue was performed for at Her Majesty’s Theatre on September 14 as part of the 2024 Adelaide Guitar Festival, which continues until September 29.
Read more Guitar Festival stories and reviews here.
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