Fact #165709
When:
Short story:
Keyboardist Ian Stewart, known as The Sixth Stone, plays his last gig with the Rolling Stones at Roundhay Park, Leeds, England, UK, Europe. Full article:
Andrew Loog Oldham (manager, Rolling Stones) : I did not fire Stu (Ian Stewart), that was not within my power to do. I just told the Stones that I did not think the English public, because that's all we were dealing with at the time, were capable of being sold an image factor that contained six people. If the band had said, "Andrew, you can't do that," then Stu would have stayed in the band.
Andy Kershaw (Entertainments Secretary, Leeds University) : The Stones was such a big deal that Harvey Goldsmith and Paul Crockford of another company, Outlaw with Paul King, had come together to pool their resources and manpower for it.
Andrew Zweck, who I'd first met around 1980, was still fairly new at Harvey Goldsmith's. I was the entertainments secretary at Leeds University, and usually I bought bands direct from an agent but very often if, for example, Goldsmith had bought a tour on somebody, because the university hall was the only venue of that optimum size, 2-3000 capacity in Leeds, if he was taking that act round The Rainbow in London, the Apollo in Glasgow, Birmingham Odeon and so on, he'd want to do a gig with us in Leeds, England, UK, Europe. Essentially he and I would co-promote. He would route the tour into Leeds and I'd run the gig for him.
Then he'd send someone up, usually Andrew Zweck, as his earthly representative. Compared to most of the people I dealt with on that basis, Andrew was a very rare gentleman, firm but not arrogant. What he had that set him apart from most of the others was a lack of their pomposity and self-importance. He also managed to maintain a sense of humour. A lot of those qualities, I think, had been eroded in the others, by the prevalent use of cocaine in the industry at the time. You were always dealing with very hyped-up self-important little shits with no sense of humour.
I could actually run those gigs myself and all too often the promoters reps who were sent along just made my life more difficult. Andrew, however, would basically let me run the gig but he'd be there if I did need any help. Andrew never lost his sense of rock'n'roll's essential absurdity.
That was never more firmly underlined than when we worked together on the Rolling Stones at Roundhay Park in 1982 in Leeds, England, UK, Europe. I was 21 years old, and found myself given this rather grand title of Backstage Labour Co-ordinator by Goldsmith. So they brought me and my regular student stage crew of about 35 lads in to do all the backstage stuff for them. Our job was to lay on everything that The Rolling Stones needed for their brief occupancy of the backstage area at Roundhay Park. That turned into a two-week job and, clearly, the same thing was happening at all the other gigs. It was massive, on an unprecedented scale.
So I found myself, for a fortnight, sitting in a Portakabin backstage at Roundhay Park behind a stage the size of a battleship with Harvey Goldsmith, who was fairly charmless, Paul Crockford, Andrew Zweck and Bill Graham who, already, was something of a legend to me. Needless to say, the atmosphere was fairly explosive at times.
At times it was literally madness, like Igor's gone mad. Crockford, Andrew and myself were already pals, through the stuff we'd done at Leeds University, and those two brought some sanity to the proceedings.
There were a couple of members of The Stones production crew who I would have happily strangled over the course of those two weeks, because of their attitudes and the demands they made of us. Nobody said please or thank you. They came in and made these outrageous demands. To a large extent, that office kept going, kept its sanity, because of Andrew's good humour, charm, good manners, leadership qualities and lack of self-importance. All around us was self-importance and pomposity on an epic scale. We'd just look along the Portakabin at each other and grin.
I had to deal with The Stones' people over this fucking perimeter fence which they said was the wrong colour so it had to be painted green. So we re-painted it green, but then it was the wrong shade of green, so we had to do it again. Then, at 48 hours notice I had to create a Japanese water garden in the backstage area.
The prevailing British attitude is to look for reasons why you can't do something, or why it can't be done. Perhaps because he's Australian, Andrew had a very 'can do' attitude.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, February 2010)
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Andy Kershaw (Entertainments Secretary, Leeds University) : The Stones was such a big deal that Harvey Goldsmith and Paul Crockford of another company, Outlaw with Paul King, had come together to pool their resources and manpower for it.
Andrew Zweck, who I'd first met around 1980, was still fairly new at Harvey Goldsmith's. I was the entertainments secretary at Leeds University, and usually I bought bands direct from an agent but very often if, for example, Goldsmith had bought a tour on somebody, because the university hall was the only venue of that optimum size, 2-3000 capacity in Leeds, if he was taking that act round The Rainbow in London, the Apollo in Glasgow, Birmingham Odeon and so on, he'd want to do a gig with us in Leeds, England, UK, Europe. Essentially he and I would co-promote. He would route the tour into Leeds and I'd run the gig for him.
Then he'd send someone up, usually Andrew Zweck, as his earthly representative. Compared to most of the people I dealt with on that basis, Andrew was a very rare gentleman, firm but not arrogant. What he had that set him apart from most of the others was a lack of their pomposity and self-importance. He also managed to maintain a sense of humour. A lot of those qualities, I think, had been eroded in the others, by the prevalent use of cocaine in the industry at the time. You were always dealing with very hyped-up self-important little shits with no sense of humour.
I could actually run those gigs myself and all too often the promoters reps who were sent along just made my life more difficult. Andrew, however, would basically let me run the gig but he'd be there if I did need any help. Andrew never lost his sense of rock'n'roll's essential absurdity.
That was never more firmly underlined than when we worked together on the Rolling Stones at Roundhay Park in 1982 in Leeds, England, UK, Europe. I was 21 years old, and found myself given this rather grand title of Backstage Labour Co-ordinator by Goldsmith. So they brought me and my regular student stage crew of about 35 lads in to do all the backstage stuff for them. Our job was to lay on everything that The Rolling Stones needed for their brief occupancy of the backstage area at Roundhay Park. That turned into a two-week job and, clearly, the same thing was happening at all the other gigs. It was massive, on an unprecedented scale.
So I found myself, for a fortnight, sitting in a Portakabin backstage at Roundhay Park behind a stage the size of a battleship with Harvey Goldsmith, who was fairly charmless, Paul Crockford, Andrew Zweck and Bill Graham who, already, was something of a legend to me. Needless to say, the atmosphere was fairly explosive at times.
At times it was literally madness, like Igor's gone mad. Crockford, Andrew and myself were already pals, through the stuff we'd done at Leeds University, and those two brought some sanity to the proceedings.
There were a couple of members of The Stones production crew who I would have happily strangled over the course of those two weeks, because of their attitudes and the demands they made of us. Nobody said please or thank you. They came in and made these outrageous demands. To a large extent, that office kept going, kept its sanity, because of Andrew's good humour, charm, good manners, leadership qualities and lack of self-importance. All around us was self-importance and pomposity on an epic scale. We'd just look along the Portakabin at each other and grin.
I had to deal with The Stones' people over this fucking perimeter fence which they said was the wrong colour so it had to be painted green. So we re-painted it green, but then it was the wrong shade of green, so we had to do it again. Then, at 48 hours notice I had to create a Japanese water garden in the backstage area.
The prevailing British attitude is to look for reasons why you can't do something, or why it can't be done. Perhaps because he's Australian, Andrew had a very 'can do' attitude.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, February 2010)