Rolling Stones Exhibitionism display opens at the Palazzo
As early as Sept. 20, curious fans of the Rolling Stones rock group tried for an advance look at the musician’s new “Exhibitionism” display at the Palazzo that opened Sept. 23 to crowds of fans at the Palazzo. It is a privileged look both in front of and behind-the-scenes of the band from its early days of near-starvation in a wretched dirty cramped London apartment to their record-setting success of today.
I won an advance tour with Vegas producer, Adam Steck, who helped bring the extraordinary exhibit to the Palazzo to the former sprawling Dal Toro exotic car showroom, which has been converted from part restaurant and bar to extraordinary event space.
I was bowled over by the re-creation of their dingy 1962 flat in the British capital city and the display of their progress — influence on music, fashion and style over the past 54 years. You might well raise your eyebrows at the white dress that Mick Jagger wore at the 1969 Hyde Park Concert venturing into gender-bender territory. But you will thrill going backstage with the boys standing less than 50 feet from their performance onstage re-created in 3-D film.
In all, there are more than 500 rare artifacts and memorabilia spanning the band’s continued influence on fashion, film and art. It’s the story of the most influential rock ‘n’ roll band in history, allowing visitors to experience firsthand the members’ incredible journey.
Mick Jagger once gave me a two-night tour backstage at their 2003 Australian concerts. We hung out for supper in the authentic British pub they had built backstage for each tour stop. He explained to me then that they couldn’t retire because their shows and tours financially supported so many crew members of the Stones family that people would be financially harmed and go jobless without their tour schedule.
Currently on tour in Europe this week, Mick commented about the Vegas exhibition: “We’ve been thinking about this for quite a long time but we wanted it to be just right and on a large scale. It’s not going to be like walking into a museum. It’s going to be an event, an experience. It’s about a sense of The Rolling Stones — it’s something we want people to go away talking about it.”
“While this is about The Rolling Stones, it’s not necessarily only just about us,” Keith said. “It’s also about all the paraphernalia and technology associated with a group like us, and it’s this, as well as the instruments that have passed through our hands over the years, that should make the exhibition unforgettable.”
Here are Mick and Keith talking about their time living in that first London apartment when they started out:
Inside word from the Vegas producers is that Jagger and his sidekick trio may well fly to Las Vegas before year-end to see the exhibit after their current “No Filter” European tour concludes in Paris at the new U Arena for six nights starting Oct. 19.
The first wall one sees entering “Exhibitionism” is an amazing moving map of the world showing their tours from 1962-1963 to the March 2016 historical open-air concert in Havana Cuba that wrapped the ground-breaking trip through South America.
Q: It seemed appropriate to ask Adam what made them so unique.
A: I think the Rolling Stones were unlike any other band in the world just because the effect they’ve had on so many people and the catalog of music that they had and continue to pump out all of the years and how many bands have been influenced by them. There’s no band that’s been around that long that still is relevant. You’ve got The Beatles, which are not together anymore. You’ve got Paul McCartney doing his thing, but the Stones are still together. I mean, the four main guys — Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie … And not only did they affect everybody musically, but also style-wise and culture-wise. I mean, Mick’s fashions really inspired so many people. So they’re just really important to me and at all levels.
Q: What did it take to win this exhibition for Las Vegas? And I’m curious that one does not think of the Palazzo as home to a raging group of British rockers.
A: The good news is Las Vegas is the exclusive West Coast venue for the show. It didn’t go to L.A. It didn’t go to San Francisco. I think what made Las Vegas win was because Las Vegas is cool. Now, we are the hippest place in the world. It’s truly the Entertainment Capital of the World. Everybody’s here now from Celine to Backstreet Boys to Britney to whomever, so it just made natural sense for them to want to be here as opposed to any place else on the West Coast.
Here’s the Backstage Pass to the exhibit with its curator, Ileen Gallagher:
They absolutely approved every nuance of everything having to do with this project including the location. They just thought it was a natural fit because it’s a tourist destination and, again, for the reasons I said before. Las Vegas is cool, where back in the day it was kind of looked at as being not too cool, but now it’s the absolutely bonafide coolest place to be. It’s the epicenter of where everybody wants to be, and they follow suit.
Q: Any talk of them coming here before it closes here on Jan. 30?
A: There’s always talk. They probably would have been here for the opening, but they’re on tour in Europe, as I’m sure you probably know, although their tour does end in Paris in October. We’re hoping that they make their way over here. Nothing’s in stone yet, nothing in stones — no pun intended. But we’re hopeful that they might make an appearance.
Q: As a fan rather than as the Vegas producer of this, what’s your favorite part of the exhibit that you go, “Wow, I didn’t know that” or “Wow, that brings back memories” or “Wow … we didn’t even expect that?”
A: There are several wow factors for me personally as a fan, but, keep in mind, too, I’m also a producer, so I’m looking at things from both angles. But when you walk around the corner and one part of the exhibit and you just see Mick Jagger’s outfits that he’s had over the years, it’s awe-inspiring. It’s amazing all the styles that he had from every single tour. It blows your mind. You literally look at each one of them, the nuances, how it fit, the colors he used. It’s unbelievable. So that’s one big wow factor.
The second one for me is the experience which you and I just had was walking backstage, which is the most coveted place that every fan wants to be; you want that backstage pass. So literally at the end of the tour, you’re standing backstage as if you are with Mick, Keith, Ronnie or Charlie just about to go on stage, and you see Keith’s guitars and Mick’s harmonicas and Charlie’s drumsticks. It’s very, very exciting.
Q: And within 50 feet of you there is a 3-D film playing of them onstage right beside you. It’s as if you are onstage with them.
A: That’s correct. That’s the last visual visitors will see. … They did a concert in Hyde Park about three or four years ago, and the finale song — “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” — is there in 3-D. You feel like you’re onstage with Mick Jagger. It’s incredible. It’s interesting because the show was not filmed in 3-D. As I said before, Mick and the boys were very integrally involved in every aspect of this project (as they have been throughout) their whole career. … When Mick saw the video (through Skype, by the way), he goes: “Hey, this should be in 3-D.” And the curators said, “Hey, it wasn’t filmed in 3-D.” Mick’s like: “Well, figure it out.” Six hundred thousand dollars later, frame-by-frame, they turned it into 3-D.
It’s incredible. … It’s a great ending to the experience because you get to feel that elation, like you’re onstage with Mick, like I said before. Keith is to the left, and Ronnie’s to the right and Charlie’s behind you, and you’ve got a 100,000-some-odd people in Hyde Park. You’re immersed in that. What a better feeling than that, huh?
Q: Now, the four boys never talk about retirement, and they say they’ll go out while they’re playing on stage. And yet, you look at an exhibition like this, and you sort of say to yourself, “This is the feather in the cap; they can’t do anything else. This ends the career.” But its just not true!
A: No, not true at all. Those guys keep going and going and going. Unfortunately, other icons have left us; they keep going and doing it better than anybody else … their predecessors. So, to me, they’ll be 280, as far as I’m concerned. They’re gonna kick off onstage.
Q: You think they will carry on into their eighties? I mean, they’re already into their seventies. Mick is 74!
A: You know what, Robin, anything’s possible. I don’t put anything past these guys — just go back and look at Mick Jagger at a Grammy performances four, five years ago. And, yeah, the Grammys were nice and great, and all of a sudden Mick comes on and just blows everybody out of the water. It just shows you, man, that there’s nobody like him, and I don’t think there’s anybody who’s going to be like him, and he still has the same energy as he did way back in the day as he does today. It’s absolutely mind-blowing to see. Keith Richards keeps on ticking along, and the rest of them, the same thing. So it’s pretty amazing to see.
Q: But there was a time at the very beginning when they nearly starved to death because nobody wanted them.
A: Of course. It’s like any band. They were struggling. There’s actually a very cool piece of the exhibit where we show their London flat, someplace outside of the city. They’ve had some old pictures up, and they duplicated it, and you see the way these guys started off: dingy beds and cigarette butts everywhere and dishes loaded up in the sink. It was quite disgusting. And, that’s how bands made it back in the day. They were hungry. They went from gig to gig to gig. Unlike today, where a lot of people go on “American Idol,” you add water, and boom, insta-star. These guys are the real deal.
Q: How much did they have to do with the actual exhibition in picking the 500 pieces they wanted the curators to put together?
A: They were very part of every nuance, every nook, every cranny, everything that was said, everything that was displayed, how it was displayed. … The amount of time it would take a person go through and experience it, to absorb it all. … Not to be overwhelming, but if someone really wanted to get into depth, they could stay longer. So to answer your question, extremely involved.
Q: There’s a montage of terrible Rolling Stone headlines on the British tabloids. … Nothing — however bad it was — could destroy these guys, whatever they did, right?
A: They were the ones that sort of, I think, invented “Hey, man, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” The more things they did bad, they were more appealing, right? The stories that were told. … Because The Beatles were sort of like the wholesome band, and the Stones are sort of the bad boys, and the bad boys always got the attention and always propelled because of it.
Q: This entry wall is a pretty powerful statement to make about the group and its history. What does it show us?
A: It’s really, really impactful. It’s the first thing you see when you walk into the exhibit. It basically encompasses the entire wall, and it starts off with where they did their first concert in London, obviously. Then it traces throughout the whole world … You can actually see the tracing going on with this red line, from city to city to city. … What year they toured in, what cities they toured in, how many countries they were in, and the average attendance for each one of the concerts. And it goes from 1962 to 2016. It’s mind-blowing. It really shows, at one glance, how impactful and how massive this band really is. I think the total audience number was more than 45 million people. It feels like it was in the billions though.
Q: Tell me why somebody who’s not a Rolling Stones fan should come and see this and why somebody who is a Rolling Stones fan should definitely not miss seeing this.
A: This exhibit is for anybody who loves rock ‘n’ roll because the Rolling Stones are rock ‘n’ roll. They invented rock ‘n’ roll, in my eyes, — modern rock and roll. Every single act that you see today, and the last 40 years that’s in rock ‘n’ roll, were inspired by this group, so even if you’re not into the Rolling Stones or don’t know too much about them, you need to come here and see the guys, the creators of what is rock ‘n’ roll. And if you’re a Stones fan, you cannot miss this. It’s Stones nirvana. It’s everything you want to know about the Stones and more. I’ve been here a dozen or so times, and I’m learning more stuff every day, as well. It’s absolutely a must for any Stones fan.
Q: And the bad boy of rock even met the queen of England?
A: Yes, they did. Sir Mick Jagger even got knighted. How cool is that? Despite the fact he’s supposed to be anti-establishment; next thing, he’s being knighted. So again, more controversy sells tickets, right?
Exhibitionism is open 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily through Jan. 31.
