The Fat Angel Sings

The Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” album was a long time coming. It started life in Muscle Shoals sound in Alabama in early December 1969 and after marathon recording sessions in London and at Mick’s house in the country during 1970 and mixing in early 1971 it was finally ready for release.

The Stones have always been different and rather than go on the road to support the album’s release after it came out they decided to tour the UK in March 1971, a full month before “Sticky Fingers” went on sale. This was not necessarily as they would have liked it, as for ‘tax reasons’ they had decided to move to France and needed to have left Britain before the new tax year began in the first week of April.

All this explains why on 4th March the band was in Newcastle City Hall for their opening night. This was the band’s first tour of the UK since the autumn of 1966 and apart from the famous Hyde Park concert in July 1969 they had only played at an NME Poll Winners’ Concert in 1968 – and then just a couple of songs – and so there was a lot of excitement among fans anxious to see the band.

The UK tour was a nine city, sixteen show, and to buy tickets for the first show in Newcastle fans waited overnight, some waiting 16 hours – a long time to wait outside during March in the North of England. The band travelled to Newcastle by train, at least most of them did; Keith missed both trains that took the other Stones north from London and so he was driven to Newcastle with Gram Parsons, arriving only minutes before the show.

Among the songs they played on their first show were ‘Dead Flowers’, ‘Bitch’, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’, ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘Brown Sugar’, all of which came from Sticky Fingers. However, for the remainder of the tour they dropped ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ and ‘Wild Horses’. The band were on exceptional form for these shows – Bobby Keys and Jim Price had become the group’s resident horn section, and Nicky Hopkins was playing piano with them onstage for the first time ever on an entire tour, with Stu still doing his boogie piano on numbers that had no minor chords.

Throughout the tour they played two shows each night, except in Brighton and Leeds and the ticket prices were £1, 85p, 75p, 65p, with 50p tickets available in some places. British Blues rock band, The Groundhogs were the principal support band on the tour but Noir, a little remembered band were on the Roundhouse show.

As usual the media had a field day in expressing their views on the band and we have a couple of favourites from the kind of august organs that you may not have expected to be reviewing the Stones back in 1971. According to the Financial Times, “Jagger might be the last of the great white pop entertainers. Those watery eyes stared out at the audience like a fish in an aquarium tank. What we will miss, particularly if the Stones do not tour here again is their showmanship. The Stones are a piece of top social history.”

Meanwhile The Spectator opined, “The band are playing with as much guts and excitement as they ever have done, and all of them with the exception of Mick Taylor are now pushing 30 (though Jagger at 50 is a curiously inconceivable image)”

The Record Mirror, a more likely place for a write up of the tour suggested, “The Rolling Stones proved once again that they are still the best little rock and roll band in the land.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6ugTf0QV3A

The Farewell UK Tour in 1971 was in fact a club tour, so the sound and atmosphere of its gigs were very different from the arena tours in 1969 and 1970. Here we have the famous Leeds University gig, in the best audio (mono soundboard) quality available.
1. 0:15 Dead Flowers; 2. 4:40 Stray Cat Blues; 3. 8:35 Love In Vain; 4. 14:50 Midnight Rambler; 5. 27:50Bitch; 6. 32:00 Introduction; 7. 33:00 Honky Tonk Women; 8. 36:15 (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction; 9.41:25 Little Queenie; 10. 46:05 Brown Sugar; 11. 50:20 Street Fighting Man; 12 54:40 Let It Rock (encore in stereo)