Since 1982, when the Rolling Stones started a European branch Get your tattoo done tour, lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe has taken both a front row seat and a behind-the-scenes look at how Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and the rest of the band work on the road.
“The real privilege is seeing them in rehearsal,” he says Rolling rock on a Zoom in early May from Arizona, the day before a Stones concert. “It's still exciting, even after all this time. They always get together for at least three or four weeks to rehearse a leg of the tour. No costumes, no scenery, no smoke and mirrors, no audience of course. They arrive separately in their own cars… They say hello and pick up their instruments, and just like that, they just start playing.”
And they play and play and play, rehearsing decades of concert staples like “Satisfaction” and “Gimme Shelter,” as well as songs they can swap in and out of set lists on the fly. For the team Hackney Diamonds tourwhich began in Houston in April, the band spent a month practicing 60 to 70 songs in Los Angeles.
“It's crazy, isn't it?” says Woodroffe, who is creative director and lighting designer at Woodroffe Bassett Design. “They've always had really high standards, particularly when it comes to rehearsals, even in some of the most chaotic times of their careers. I see them in rehearsal as a small group of players who just want to make their music.”
Woodroffe's view of the Stones, of course, is quite different from how the rest of the world views the group. For Hackney Diamonds running, concertgoers will watch Jagger on the production's nearly 46-foot-tall digital screens as he and his bandmates cross a stage roughly 180 feet wide and 65 feet deep. In total, there are nearly 2,300 square feet of high-resolution LED displays.
The stage itself, designed by Stufish Entertainment Architects, weighs 485,072 pounds — about the same weight as 71 of these angular, Tron-like Tesla Cybertrucks, to pick a comparison. The tour requires 200 touring people, 14 of whom are on the video crew, including six camera operators who make the Stones appear literally larger than life.
The production concept for Hackney Diamonds was to create a “virtual stage” that can be adjusted as the show progresses. Where the appearance of the band in the late 80s Steel wheels The tour was meant to evoke a mid-90s dystopia as well Voodoo Lounge the tour reflected internet culture for the entirety of the concert, Hackney Diamonds it changes from song to song, almost like sliding TikToks. Each song has its own custom look, from graphics to lighting.
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“We refreshed everything,” says Ray Winkler, CEO and design director of Stufish Entertainment Architects. “The stage is decorated by all the digital media around them and that, by default, makes it very contemporary. It is very clean. It's not about the physical presence of a set, it's about the ongoing, evolving and evolving image you see on the screens.”
“In a minute, it's a very simple, geometric building. Nature takes over next. and then it's kind of a Jasper Johns American Flagsays Woodroffe. “We can change the way the scene looks in a virtual way.” However, Woodroffe says he worked with the band to tie everything together into a cohesive statement.
During their month of rehearsals, the band shot about half of the 12 tracks Hackney Diamonds; they've played four of them in concert so far. By preparing for more, the crew could be ready for the band to surprise them at a moment's notice and keep the production running smoothly.
The songs on this tour are arranged into separate acts: openers, Richards songs, the “home run” (as Woodroffe calls the main-set closers), and then the encore. “The thing is structured well enough that you can change a song – if it's got the same feel, the same beat – and not lose the flow or the way the set works,” says Woodroffe.
“It's a team effort,” says Winkler. “It is a huge effort to make such a project a reality from an idea on paper. There are many unsung heroes who contribute to its success.”
Traditionally, Woodroffe worked closely on the look and feel of a tour starting about half a year before the first show with Jagger and drummer Charlie Watts, who died in 2021, as well as Stufish founder Mark Fisher, the who died in 2013. This time, after starting with Jagger and Winkler in the fall, Woodruff ran the idea from Richards and Wood, who provided input. From there, they designed the sets, worked with costume designers, and commissioned videos from a studio called Treatment to play along with the songs. Eventually, they teamed up for rehearsals and managed to make it all work together.
For Hackney Diamonds, the look of the tour kicked off with the album launch last September in London and went on to test-drive some of the looks at the band's pop-up gig in New York in October. There was still no firm commitment to tour dates at that point, but Woodroffe and the creative team knew it was coming, so they began formulating what a stadium tour might look like. At that time, they started working with Winkler and Stufish and the company that makes the films for them. From there, it was only a few months into production. The announcement of the tour came in November, giving them time to refine its appearance.
“I never want it to look too slick,” says Woodroffe. “This band is really authentic. The audience will always be able to detect whether a show is real or not. It may be the soundtrack to the lives of people in the audience, but it's also the soundtrack to the Stones' lives. They give us their music and that's the real hug. This is the real thing.”
Winkler makes a similar note. “At the end of the day, you want everything we do to come together,” he says. “You want this to be a catalyst to improve the Stones' performance in front of a very large crowd.”
Woodroffe planned the lighting for the tour in Chicago and met with the band in Houston for five days of rehearsals. “It was very exciting to see it all in Houston for the first time and feel like we kind of got it right,” says Woodroffe. “Once you get past that first hurdle of actually making it work, then the fun part is refining it and marrying it with the music and visuals to make something special.” After overseeing the opening show, Woodroffe traveled with the band to their special appearance at Jazz Fest in New Orleans and made sure everything was running smoothly at the Glendale, Arizona gig before flying home to England.
If and when the band is ready to plan another tour after this one, Woodroffe says he's ready, because he never knows when the call will come. “You'll never know when the Stones will play their last show,” he says. “None of us will. And not because there's any mystery about it, it's just the way they work. They finish a tour and go on holiday and the tour promoters will offer them some new dates, they'll go 'Yes' and we'll go.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/rolling-stones-hackney-diamonds-tour-production-1235019822/