“No one wants to come out with me anymore down here, because it’s always such a palaver,” says Mick Jagger apologetically when I arrive at the restaurant. He’s referring to the large security contingent that he has to travel with here in Rio de Janeiro. He’s completely relaxed with the company tonight and is simply another face at the table, but when it’s time to leave he suddenly notices the crowd of paparazzi outside.
“Can’t lead a civilized life with this lot around,” he grumbles, but then he becomes very focused, working out how to avoid the crush of photographers and get into his car with the least possible fuss. It makes you realize just how professionally renowned Mick is, that for him his stardom seems to be neither a burden nor a blessing but simply a fact of life that has to be dealt with, using a set of unusual skills that he has acquired and honed from the age of 17.
I’ve worked with Mick since 1982 as the lighting designer and creative director for the Rolling Stones’ live shows, but few were as complex or historic as the production we had planned for the following night. The largest audience ever assembled for a rock concert was converging on Copacabana Beach—1.5 million people.
Got Live if You Want It!
It’s show day, and I wake up late, still fuzzy from last night’s caipirinhas and the remains of a week-old jet lag. Pulling back the curtains in my hotel room, I see Copacabana Beach reaching out in an elegant arc, stretching in perfect symmetry from Sugarloaf Mountain, at one end, to the old fort that looks down over the beaches of Ipanema and Leblon, at the other. The paint-box-blue sky above and the soft, yellow-white sand below frame the scene like a picture postcard of one of the great cities of the world.
Large gatherings at public events can often be alarming, as individuals come together in small groups, and the groups in turn combine to become a crowd. When that happens the common sense of personal responsibility is easily replaced by a different sensibility—a wilder one—where anything can happen. But today, as I leave the hotel at lunchtime, the atmosphere on the Avenida Atlântica feels comfortable and safe.
The wide, six-lane road that follows the sweep of the ocean has already been closed to traffic, and thousands of people are steadily making their way down the side streets from the city toward the beach. Hustlers and hawkers are everywhere. Some are selling single cans of cold beer and bottles of water out of shabby polystyrene coolers, while others make caipirinhas with the local cachaça, working from little tables set up on the black-and-white-patterned sidewalk.
Smoke rises from a hundred tiny grills on which vegetables and sweet-smelling meats are being cooked and sold for a few reais, and the sellers of bootleg T-shirts are doing a thriving business with their cheaply printed takes on the Stones’ tongue-and-lips logo. Drums play everywhere, the unscripted soundtrack a beautifully mixed constant to which people cannot help but dance.
The air is thick with the smell of marijuana. My old friend Césio Lima, who runs the lighting company we are using here, explains that Rio’s chief of police has sent a secret message to the gangs in the favelas. His men will allow the dealers to sell drugs tonight at the beach as long as there are no robberies and no violence. The arrangement seems to be working well.
As it gets closer to showtime and the sun sets behind the outstretched arms of Christ the Redeemer on the Corcovado, high above us, the tension ratchets up a notch, both out on the street and at the Copacabana Palace hotel, where the Stones’ entourage is staying and which has been our base for the past two weeks.
The band’s American security team has now gone into full SWAT mode, wearing black regalia with peaked caps on their heads and noise-canceling headphones tied to their waists. One of them presses against me in the elevator, and I can feel he’s wearing a bulletproof vest.
The police chief’s men will allow the dealers to sell drugs tonight as long as there are no robberies and no violence.
In his dressing room at the hotel, Mick is putting on his socks. The prosaic nature of this part of his preparation is in striking contrast to the drama and energy of the performance he will give in less than an hour, but this is a job as much as anything, and Mick is simply getting dressed for work.
We go over all the things that I know are important to him for a big show like this—where the extra cameras and lights have been placed for the TV broadcast tonight, the things that he might say to the audience in Portuguese, a reminder to pace himself during the show because of the heat—but the exercise is one of habit as much as anything.
Tonight the job of controlling the vast crowd will be his alone, but the sense that this huge responsibility is understood and shared by others around him is important for his confidence, too. “Is everyone O.K. down there?” he asks, querying the condition of the crews who have been working all night to finish the stage. “Did they get any sleep?” It’s a generous sentiment but pragmatic too—he has to know that all the technical aspects of the show are in place before he can fully concentrate on his performance.
In the room next door, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood are going through their own pre-show routine. Drinks in hand, loud blues on the boom box, laughing and carrying on with the side musicians in the band, many of whom have played with the Stones for years. Michael Cohl, their longtime promoter and tour director, comes in to show them a video clip that one of his people has just shot from the roof of the hotel, and which gives a clear indication of the size of the crowd that now stretches back along the beach for nearly a mile. “That’s quite a meet and greet,” says Keith with a throaty chuckle, raising his plastic beaker of vodka and fizzy orange soda in salute.
Ronnie is constantly on the move, laughing, buzzing, riffing on anything with those around him—he is the unifying distributor of positive vibrations. Outside in the corridor, Charlie Watts stands by himself, carefully picking a piece of lint off his neatly pressed jacket. His stony face breaks into a wide smile. “Bit of a zoo up here, isn’t it?” he says as a crowd of beautiful and well-dressed Brazilians press past on their way to the hospitality suite without recognizing him.
Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!
Out on the beach, and in total contrast to our slick Men in Black security team, I find Bob Wein, a stocky guy from Boston who is in charge of venue security. His job is to ensure the safety of the audience rather than the band, a rather less glamorous job and that much further from the epicenter of the circus, but in many ways more challenging. As usual he is in shorts and an old AC/DC T-shirt as he organizes his local security crew. He hasn’t bothered with the bulletproof vest. “I don’t need that stuff,” he says wryly. “I’m more old-school, you know, Pat.”
It takes him 15 minutes to help me get through the mass of people pressed up against the barricades and then to make our way out to my control position, 200 feet from the stage. The crowd is packed shoulder to shoulder, and the people are dripping with sweat and with the water that the local bombeiros (firemen) are spraying over them to keep them cool. The temperature is in the high 80s.
Bob wishes me well, but when I get to the base of the lighting tower, two uniformed men wearing shades block my way. They look tough and unsmiling. My magic pass lets me in, and I mime to them, “Are you firemen [hose-spraying motion] or cops [gun-firing motion]?” They pat their holsters—cops. Then, moments later, one of the policemen comes over to explain through an interpreter, “Please don’t be worried about the guns,” he tells me. “They are not for you. They are for the public.”
In the control area, my team is going through their last-minute checks. I go around the positions, having a last word with the board operators, who are getting ready to run the various sections of the lighting system. Although I am ultimately responsible for how the show will look, for both the live audience here on the beach and for the tens of millions of people watching on television, they are the artists who will play their control desks like musicians, and as the baton-less conductor I am completely reliant on their performance.
I call up on the intercom system to check in with the Brazilian television director, who is managing the 30 cameras that will capture the performance tonight. Apart from the usual setup one might find at an event of this scale—close-up cameras for the stage and wide-shot cameras further out in the house—there is also a helicopter that constantly sweeps up and down the beach, taking shots from above to show the size of the audience. Joining it in the night sky are the news choppers, which come and go, and then two police helicopters—all of them making constant circuits in a pattern above the site. Most impressive are the police choppers, which stay lower than the others, their powerful, cold white searchlights stuttering menacingly over the crowd.
High above them, a giant blimp with an animated electronic Rolling Stones logo flashing from the side panels floats serenely around Sugarloaf Mountain like something out of a Flash Gordon comic, providing the ultimate wide shot of the city below and the silhouetted mountains beyond.
“Please don’t be worried about the guns,” he tells me. “They are not for you. They are for the public.”
There’s a crackle on the walkie-talkies we have been monitoring for the last half-hour. “Arnold to Opie—we’re walking. On our way to you now,” radios the band’s tour manager as he gathers the musicians over at the hotel to start the walk to the stage. “Thanks, Arnold. Everyone to 16,” orders Opie Skjerseth, our stoic and reliable production director, the signal for all of the 50 concert technicians to move over to the common radio channel designated just for the running of the show.
Opie makes a last call to each of the different departments—lighting, sound, video, pyrotechnics, and stage management—and each responds, “Yup,” “You got it, Ope,” “Ready to go.” It’s a public line over the airways, but his simple “You O.K., Patrick?,” just before we start, hides a quiet recognition of what he and I have achieved together over the last few months of planning as we’ve tried to marry the expectations of art and Mammon and reach this moment. When he’s sure that everything is set, Opie gives the final commands that will get the concert rolling: “O.K.,” he says with authority. “Kill the houselights. Roll video. Cue the band.”
I nod to our longtime lighting director, Ethan Weber, to dim the audience lights and give the first cue, and four spots hit the instantly recognizable figure of Keith Richards as he appears at the front of the stage. He rips out the opening chords to “Start Me Up,” and with a deep-throated, visceral roar, the crowd around us comes to life.
After the first song or two, it is obvious that, a few tweaks and adjustments notwithstanding, the show looks great, both for the live audience and the millions watching on television all over South America. The most impressive shot is from the helicopter, which tracks up from the end of the beach and then zooms right in to the stage. Below the chopper, the crowd is one huge, amorphous creature that glistens and writhes under the lights, while the spots on the scaffolding towers create a sparkling garland of diamond reflections scattered along the length of the beach.
From the boat cam, a gyrostabilized camera operated by a crew in a speedboat, we are amazed to see the sight of hundreds of people swimming in the sea. Beyond them, the fleet of ships that started to arrive in the late afternoon is now anchored a hundred yards off the beach. I count more than a hundred different vessels—catamarans, speedboats, elegant schooners, rowboats, dirty work tugs, and just behind them, a large, gray naval ship that’s lit from stem to stern. Every now and again there is a whoosh as someone lets off a firework, and at one point a huge volley of rockets launches from one of the boats. They explode high in the night sky, and for a second a million pairs of eyes all turn upward, and a massive cheer erupts.
Césio has invited lots of our Brazilian friends to the tower but has kept them behind the road boxes at the back of the mixer platform to try and keep some calm while the operators are working, so when “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” begins, and we are sure that we have the show in the bag, I signal to Césio, and everyone comes to the front to gather around the lighting consoles and the TV monitors for a better view of the finale.
The local crew mixes caipirinhas, and the last two numbers are spent with all of us dancing and singing and carrying on, while Ethan tries to run the lighting board. He turns and catches my eye as a beautiful Brazilian girl with dark hair and flashing eyes presses up against him, drink in hand, while he hits the cues to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” It’s a gas!
Patrick Woodroffe is a partner in the international lighting-design group Woodroffe Bassett Design
The Rolling Stones begin their next U.S. tour in Houston on April 28
