Tour of Americas 75 June 1975 - August 1975

Tour of Americas 75 In Detail

The Tour of the Americas '75 had its uniqueness, just like every other tour. For a start, Mick Taylor was gone, never to return (or almost never anyway, see the 1981 Some Girls Tour for his one and only reunion gig) - and in his place, heeeeeeere’s Ronnie!

A tough ask, as has been noted, to step into the shoes of Mick Taylor, and before him Brian Jones, but it was always going to be third time lucky with Ronnie Wood, and so it proved. The blues he brought with him was the blues of the rock ‘n’ roll band that The Stones had always been, and wanted to be, slide and shuffle, bump and grind, howl and wail – and never better expressed than live on stage, where, like fairy tale pumpkin coaches after midnight, real bluesmen and rock ‘n’ rollers come to life.

There wasn’t an album to tour, particularly, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll being a year behind them and Black and Blue lying in wait some eight months hence. Without a particular theme to inhabit or a record to plug, the band needed something a bit different to kick the thing off properly.

It was Charlie’s idea, nicked off the New Orleans jazzmen he admired so much, and a thing of beautiful simplicity, massive impact and just ever so slightly dubious legality. In a stunt suggested by Charlie, in tribute to the practise of New Orleans jazz musicians, The Rolling Stones kicked off their 1975 Tour of The Americas by playing Brown Sugar live on the back of a flatbed truck as it drove slowly down 5th Avenue in New York City.

They didn't play it that way though. To announce their forthcoming expedition around 29 American cities, everybody’s favourite rock and roll band invited a lot of music journalists to a nearby location Nothing unusual in that, of course – a press conference with relevant industry press in attendance, to announce a forthcoming tour - what could be more appropriate?

However, the band then climbed aboard a flat bed truck as it rolled slowly down Lower Fifth Avenue, blasting Brown Sugar to the delight of the rapidly thronging New Yorkers as they went, Billy Preston in maniac form guesting on electric piano and Mick going pretty much berserk at the front, hurling tour flyers at the crowd, who were rapidly joined by a bunch of disgruntled muso hacks, who’d been fully duped.

The tour itself, after this spectacular start, was straightforward enough. The high, wild excess of 1972 and the STP were gone now, or at least took place behind closed doors; and, along with the new line-up and the stronger, earthier blues Ronnie had brought with him, the music was the story, not the band. A quick look at a typical set list explains why – the upside of a tour without a new album being that the crowd know all the tunes and in the case of The Stones, pretty much all of them were classics, including Sympathy For The Devil, the encore they didn’t always play.

This doesn’t mean that the band just shuffled on, played their numbers and slunk off, of course. There was a stage show, lights, props, a crew of 12 to rig and break the set night after night for 6 long weeks. There was the 40 foot inflatable phallus, Tired Grandfather. And disruptions to the tour included cancellation of the Central and South American gigs due to political tension and collapsing economies.

Just another Rolling stones tour? Not on the band's watch.