Rolling Stones Steel Wheels World Tour 1989, 1990, 1991

Performed by the Rolling Stones
Production design:  Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Patrick Woodroffe, Mark Fisher
Stage Design:  Mark Fisher, Jonathan Park
Lighting Design:  Patrick Woodroffe
Graphic Design:  4I Limited
Production Manager:  Michael Ahern
Scaffolding stage structure by Mike Brown Grandstands (USA) and ESS (Europe & Japan)
Some scenery by:  Tait Towers Inc
Inflatables by:  Air Artists
The ‘Steel Wheels’ stage set toured in the USA from September to December 1989.  It played for two weeks in Tokyo in the spring of 1990.  The show was replaced by ‘Urban Jungle’ for the European tour in the summer of 1990, but resurrected for dates in selected venues in Europe and Wembley Stadium in 1991 where it was filmed for the Imax movie ‘Stones at the Max’.

Mark Fisher writes:
In 1989 the Rolling Stones decided to perform in public for the first time in eight years.  They were determined to create a show that looked quite unlike anything that they, or anyone else, had toured before. The project covered all possible aspects of the production, from the form and decoration of the stage to the logo imprinted on the press-studs of the leather biker jackets sold on the souvenir stalls. The design discussions reflected contemporary preoccupations with the transition from the machine age to the information age.  Stylistic references included films like ‘Blade Runner’ and the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson.  In these dystopian visions the functional architectures of industrial megastructures are subverted into bizarre forms of habitation and post-industrial workspace.

The Steel Wheels stage design rejected the proscenium-box format of outdoor shows and explored a more narrative approach to the architecture of the structure.  The underlying architectural organization of a rock concert stage - the technical requirements of sound, lighting and weather protection, and the circulation program of backstage, stage and audience - could not be changed.  But the finished appearance of the stage was very different from anything that had been built, let alone toured, before. The proscenium-box was reduced to a catalogue of elements that were then reorganized into an expressive form.   The performance area of the stage was flanked on each side by towers of scaffolding over 80 feet high, erected by crews of up to 100 men at a time. The top levels of the towers supported aluminium ‘pulley beams’ – lightweight cantilever beams containing chain-pulleys that could be manhandled up the structure and manoeuvred into place without the use of cranes.   (Where scaffolding towers are used to support a roof, these beams are used as part of the system to lift stage roofs into place.  They allow chain-hoists to be attached to the foundations of the structure at ground level, with the chains rigged over the pulleys so that the hooks hang above the load.)  On the Steel Wheels stage set the pulley beams were used to lift the asymmetric decoration of orange girders, the lighting modules and the 30-foot long cantilever tubes supporting the follow-spots, into place on the façade of the structure.

The bases of the scaffolding towers extended outwards in a cascade of balconies, terraces and stairs.  These provided decoration at the sides of the stage, and allowed the band to perform across the whole width of a stadium on different levels.  Exaggerated handrail units that fixed directly to the underlying scaffolding structure defined the balconies.  They were modular, allowing the balconies to be extended until the steel erectors hit the sides of the stadium or ran out of material.  The stage was designed to stretch the full width of any stadium it encountered – a distance, in both Shea Stadium and the LA Coliseum, of over 300 feet.

A low roof stood between the towers.  The roof was visually separated from them, and it cantilevered forwards over the performance area to give efficient weather protection to the band.  This reversal of the conventional form, with a low freestanding roof set between high towers, was the most recognisable statement of the design.  It located the band on the dynamic central axis of a composition, rather than concealing them inside a negative space.

The sprawling composition of the Steel Wheels stage looked like a derelict steel mill.  It seemed to be the antithesis of portability; an alien ruin abandoned in the triumphant sporting environment of a stadium.  Its desolate form was a comment on the future of heavy industry, its seeming permanence an ironic comment on the nature of temporary architecture.  It remains the largest stage ever taken on a world tour.

It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll
The Steel Wheels North American Tour

The opening concert of the Rolling Stones’ eighth US tour in September 1989 marked a high point in the development of the art of outdoor rock performance.  The stage set was the largest ever built for a rock concert.  It was erected in 33 cities in 15 weeks.  The project required a travelling crew of 200 people, 86 trucks of equipment and local crews of 150 stagehands in each city.  Mounting such a tour would have been impossible without the resources and expertise that have been built up in the rock business since the Beatles played the first outdoor rock concert in Shea Stadium in 1965.

The concerts were seen by more than three million people in the USA, generating revenues exceeding $100m.  The ability of bands like the Rolling Stones to mount such ambitious tours comes from the commercial power of what was once the rock counterculture.  The invention and manufacture of this equipment has happened in parallel with the emergence of rock music as a major cultural force during the last 20 years.

The managers of performers like the Beatles and Elvis Presley were quick to realise that they could command audiences equal in size to the audiences for sports like baseball, ice hockey and football.  The 60s saw massive investment in new covered arenas and outdoor stadia to add to and replace pre-war facilities.  It was natural for managers and concert promoters to experiment with presenting bands in these buildings.  The rebellious nature of rock music and the excitement of the audiences meant that the genteel attributes of conventional concert or dance-hall venues were inappropriate.  At the same time, the music was based on the use of electronically amplified instruments, which allowed the bands to play in larger venues.  Rock concerts were organised in sports arenas in the early 60s, and bands were soon playing to audiences of more than 8,000 on tours of the USA.

Whether any of the audiences actually heard much music at these concerts is open to doubt, for the technology of sound reinforcement was in its infancy.  However, the presentation of large-scale concerts in venues that were not designed for that purpose was shown to be possible, and profitable.  Sports buildings had no stage lighting systems, and if public address (PS) systems were installed they were unsuitable for music reproduction.  Outdoor stadia had no stages at all.  Either the bands or the concert promoters were forced to buy the equipment they needed to present the shows, and to carry it with them on tour.

Easily portable lighting and PA systems did not exist in the early 60s.  The large buildings required powerful PA systems, and the novel application meant that there was no established industry making them.  The first systems were assembled from industrial amplifiers and hi-fi components.  Conventional theatrical lamps were heavy and tended to fall apart when transported from venue to venue, so lightweight lamps were developed to replace them.  As touring in sports buildings became commonplace, a new service industry grew up to supply the necessary equipment.  By the mid-70s, a network of hire and trucking companies had become established in the USA and Europe, mostly founded on the original investments by the first bands to tour, or by the promoters who organised the concerts.

Because bands were now playing in very large buildings, or in the open air, they were forced into a relationship with their audience which was quite different from the intimacy of a club or a theatre.  In a theatre, the audience are relatively close to the stage, and the movements of the performers have a large effect on the scenic composition.  In a stadium the audience have little choice of where they sit and cannot move around to experience a different viewpoint.  This is sufficient for sports, where the action spreads out across the playing area in dynamic patterns.  But at a rock concert, the limited viewpoint and the great distances can make an orthodox stage performance very dull.  As a result rock concerts became increasingly spectacular as the 70s progressed.

The stadia used for outdoor rock concerts are anonymous, remarkable only for their size.  The most uncommon aspect of their interior spaces is the experience of sharing them with so many people, tiered up until the inner surfaces turn into mountainsides of human faces.  When 60,000 people pay good money to assemble in conditions of discomfort and inconvenience their meeting is a demonstration of something which is important to them.  The band is the focus of their shared identity; the stadium becomes a temporary but tangible monument to these ideas, the background to a tribal rite.  Rock stage design sets out to transform these inexpressive buildings into opera houses in which the performers establish an emotional relationship with their audience.

For their 1989 tour, the Rolling Stones wanted a stage which would reinforce their image as a tough, long-lived band still writing songs relevant to their audience.  The early discussions about the design reflected contemporary preoccupations with the transition from the machine age to the information age.  Stylistic references included the apocalyptic views of the future presented in films like ‘Brazil’, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Black Rain’, and in the novels of William Gibson.  These pieces all share an extreme view of the built environment.  The heroes inhabit cities in which the decaying slums of past cultures are overlaid with new monuments.  Old buildings are too valuable, or too expensive, to demolish.  Instead, they are ‘retro-fitted’ with the technology of the future, a romantic visual vocabulary in which high-tech overlays Victoriana, enjoying the visual delights of both.  The novels of Gibson are more extreme than the visions in the films.  The architecture is extended to include factories, Fuller domes and megastructures.  These constructivist forms have lost any semblance of their original use; they are turned instead into bizarre forms of habitation and workspace.  The power of imagery lies in the contradictions of scale that come from their reuse.

From the oil refineries of Yokohama to the shuttle launch platforms at the Kennedy Space Center, the forms of obsolete industry are part of the Rolling Stones’ audience’s everyday lives.  They are already monuments to dead technology; precursors of Gibson’s world.  The stage design places the band in a structure of ambiguous purpose created from these forms.  It looks permanent even though it is a temporary and alien ruin in the stadium.  The industrial elements from which it is made are plainly non-functional.  Their abandoned condition is a comment on the future; their portability an ironic aside.

The elements are realistic in modelling and scale, and unified by a patina of dereliction and decay which is visible by day, but lost under theatrical lighting.  The baroque decorations on the balcony and the stage canopy are juxtaposed against them.  They turn the composition into a fantasy, a monument to an industry which does not belong in the present, the future or the past.  Under theatrical lighting the monument evokes quite different moods, from post-holocaust cities to romantic bordellos.  The decorations include a graphic identity which explored the imagery suggested by ‘Steel Wheels’ the title of the album which was released shortly before the tour.  It was derived from a motif created from broken compact discs, circular saw blades and perforated metal, and was developed in parallel with the stage design.

The organization of the stage derives from the choreography of the band’s performance and the theatrical requirements of the lighting and sound systems.  The main performance area is an open plaza between two scaffolding towers.  The 500Kw PA forms two large masses which punch through the centres of the towers with the topmost speakers 20m above the ground.  Panels decorated with Steel Wheels supergraphics hang inside the PA towers on different planes and video screens for closed-circuit TV are built into the scaffolding at different heights.  The bases of the towers are extended into balconies, terraces and stairs which allow the band to perform across the whole width of the stadium on different levels.  The articulation of the balcony is reinforced by balustrading of swagged chain-mail and oversized balusters.  The balusters are decorated with the Steel Wheels motif.  The balcony makes a strong horizontal statement which finishes the base of the towers and allows the more articulated vertical forms to rise off a solid visual support.  The Steel Wheels motif is also applied to the finials of the canopy which cantilevers over the performance area.

Girders and ducts are hung off the scaffolding.  These elements are functional, containing lights which illuminate the structure and the band, and symbolic, copying industrial forms.  Because the stage set has no moving scenery, most changes of mood in the visual presentation are achieved by lighting.  The lights are placed to take advantage of the strongly articulated structure.  The main mass is defined by bulkhead fittings of various colours which are placed on the girders and walkways.  Eighty computer controlled moving lights and 100 fixed lights, all with colour changers, are built into the girders, the handrails, and the finials of the canopy.  Eight 2.4m square frames, each containing 50Kw of lights and fitted with colour changers, are mounted on girders above the performance area.  The movements of the musicians are tracked by ten follow spots on stage and twelve in the stadium.

The itinerary for the Steel Wheels tour evolved in response to the availability of stadia in the cities where it was to play.  Once the itinerary was fixed, the production coordinator organised the complex logistics which were necessary to get the crews and equipment to each venue and ensure that construction was completed by showtime.  The work of the crews was so time sensitive that it became an extension of the performance by the band.  Each concert really began with the arrival of the first truck of scaffolding, reached a climax as the band arrived, and ended when the last truck left.  The construction program required four separate crews to build the scaffolding sub-structure eight or nine times during the 15 weeks.  Each crew of 14 worked with about 70 crew hired locally in each city.  The scaffolding was fitted out with one of two sets of scenery, PA and lights.  This equipment arrived 36 hours before the concert, accompanied by its own supervising crew of 40 and 80 local stagehands.  Twenty-four hours before the show the band gear, video equipment and instruments arrived, also accompanied by a separate crew of 40.  The band, with their entourage of make-up, wardrobe and security, arrived on the afternoon of the show.

The concert opened with an explosion of flame projectors across the 100m wide frontage of the stage.  The spectacle that followed was punctuated by a series of dramatic moments which reinforced the music.  Some were created by lighting and others by special effects.  7Kw slide projectors were used to camouflage the structure with Steel Wheels supergraphics during several songs.  Instant inflatables accompaned ‘Honky Tonk Women’, and Jagger appeared on top of a PA tower for the opening of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ with the whole structure bursting into flames beneath him.  At the climax of the last song a coruscating pyrotechnic display started at the base of the structure and finished in the sky overhead.

The Steel Wheels tour delivered a major piece of live music and theatre to over three million people in 15 weeks.  The concerts were produced in outdoor stadia which had not been designed for the presentation of live music.  The shows transformed these barren sports fields into fantastic landscapes using the most sophisticated technology available today, most of it purpose-built for the rock business.  But the technology was only a background for the band.  The paradox is that in the end the shows came down to the Rolling Stones, their music and their audience.

Mark Fisher 1989
‘New Architecture’ Architectural Design profile 84, 1990
Part of Architectural Design Vol 60 pp 44-61