Taming the (Touring) Beast of Burden

It’s three hours before the Rolling Stones’ “Bridges to Babylon” concert gets underway here, and Keith Richards and Ron Wood are already attracting attention.

Instead of prowling the giant stadium stage before 35,000 fans the way they will shortly, the guitarists are circling a bright green snooker table before a couple dozen friends and VIPs in the backstage Babylon Bar, a lavish lounge stocked with $50 bottles of wine to wash down the tempting Southwestern cuisine.

At first, the game looks like simply a way to kill time before the concert begins at 8:30 p.m. Yet there’s an intensity that suggests the whole thing isn’t just a casual diversion.

“This is definitely part of the tour therapy,” Wood explains later. “The concentration that the game requires helps us start focusing on the show itself. Sometimes we’ll have two or three games, but even one is enough to get our heads together. There’s also music playing, which, too, helps you get into the mood.”

While Richards and Wood are playing snooker, the parking lots around the University of New Mexico football stadium are starting to fill. Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts--the other famous faces in the legendary band--meanwhile are going through their own pre-show rituals.

Jagger is down the hall in his dressing room, conducting a series of meetings about band business matters. Drummer Watts is in his own dressing room, conserving energy for the show.

It’s all part of a preparation process that literally begins when the musicians wake up.

Back in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, when the Stones were defining the concept of “bad boys” in rock, it was easy to picture nonstop partying with the only preparation for the stage being a few shots of Jack Daniels--or something even more potent.

But touring, especially at a stadium level, is such a demanding process that you can see during a day backstage how they have to keep focused in order to survive. It’s a remarkable blend of glamour and tedium. The shows are invariably a rush, but the drain of travel can, after a few weeks, make hotel rooms feel like prison cells.

When Bill Wyman, the Stones’ bassist for three decades, left the group in 1993 (replaced by Darryl Jones), Jagger said he could understand the decision. “He doesn’t want to go through what I’m going to do for the next year . . . the pressures of being in a band at this level,” the singer said at the start of the group’s “Voodoo Lounge” tour in 1994.

Three years later, the music, the applause and the money are enough to keep Jagger and the other Stones rolling. This is the 17th stop on a yearlong tour that began in Chicago on Sept. 23 and includes shows Sunday and Monday at Dodger Stadium.

By the time the “Bridges” tour ends in September 1998 in Europe, it will have been seen by more than 3 million people and grossed more than $150 million.

“The secret is to keep focused at all times . . . to never lose track of the two hours you are on stage,” Jagger says, sitting on a sofa in his dressing room, which is a couple hundred feet down the hall from the Babylon Bar.

“It’s not like you have 22 ‘free’ hours and then you suddenly step on stage. Everything you do in the day should help you prepare for the show. You have to find a way to deal with the emotional and physical toll, or the road will destroy you and the show itself.”

For Jagger, the focusing includes immersing himself in work. Before taking time out for the interview, Jagger, whose body is so trim and toned that he would be an ideal subject for an ad campaign for the benefits of physical fitness, was poring over slides in a notebook. He was searching for images and color combinations for the band’s next video. Later, he would meet with Michael Cohl, the tour promoter, to begin working out the routing for the South American leg of the “Babylon” tour.

“You have to design the tour so that you don’t wear yourself down,” he says. “You need time off. For us, October was the hardest month because it had the most shows, the most traveling.

“There’s also [when you’re] past the strain of the opening weeks of the tour, where you are constantly rethinking everything. . . . Does the lighting work? . . . Do the songs we’ve chosen work right together? . . . What about the show’s length? November is easier. There’s less travel and the adjustments in the show are minor at this point. The pace is much more comfortable.

“But no matter what you do, there are times when you ask yourself, ‘Am I sure I want to keep doing this?’ That’s when you have to draw upon your reserves, and people have different ways of dealing with it. I like to get out of the hotel every day, either to a park or a museum or just a restaurant. You want to avoid being a captive of the hotel or the touring party. You want to feel you still have some control over your life.”

*

On this day, Jagger got up about 11. He’s big on exercise, especially jogging, but he has to conserve his energy on show days. “You can’t go hiking in the foothills here, for instance, because you’ll be tired when it comes to the show,” he says. “Even on off days, you can’t really play tennis hard because you might twist your ankle or something.”

Jagger will use the time at the hotel to read or work on some of the various film projects that he has in the works. Though he continues to act (he has a small part in the upcoming film version of “Bent,” an award-winning play about Nazi persecution of homosexuals), he seems chiefly interested in producing. He has several films in various stages of development, including a biography of Dylan Thomas. He’s also planning to write a script about 30 years in the life of some rock musicians (not the Stones, he points out) with director Martin Scorsese and journalist Rich Cohen.

Today, though, he took his wife, model Jerri Hall, and their children (ages 5 to 13) to lunch at a quiet Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of town. The other band members, too, are joined at various points on the tour by their families.

Ninety minutes before the show, Jagger will close himself off backstage to warm up his voice and go through a bit of dancing and stretching to get his body ready for the high-energy performance. But first, there’s more talk about the video and the meeting with Cohl.

*

It’s 6 p.m. now and you can sense the adrenaline starting to build. Outside, the crowd is taking its seats. Down the hall from Jagger, Watts is packing his bags for the band’s charter flight after the show to Dallas. At 56, Watts is the oldest of the remaining Stones, and life on the road seems to hit him the hardest. But it’s not the wear and tear of the constant travel so much as simply missing being home in England, where he and his wife raise horses.

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about it,” he says matter-of-factly, neatly folding a shirt before placing it into a suitcase. “You can’t bring your home with you. My ideal thing would be playing in my living room and putting the music out on the Internet or something.”

Unlike the other Stones, who tend to be animated and talkative during interviews, Watts is very low-key. He doesn’t seem comfortable in the spotlight.

“I don’t find anything about the road to be exciting or glamorous. I hate to shatter any illusions, but it’s just what you have to do to get to the next show.”

Consequently, Watts spends most of his time in the hotel room. He’s normally up around 10, has breakfast in the room and then watches television. If he’s in a city like Los Angeles or New York, where he has spent a lot of time, he’ll go out shopping with friends or perhaps visit a museum.

“Mostly, though, I’ll just stay in the room,” he says, glumly. “I can go days without seeing anybody except at the shows. I’m a bit of a hermit, I guess.”

Does he envision the time when he, like Wyman, will simply call it quits to touring?

“Well, I think about it, sure,” he says. “But Bill was a bit older [he’s 61] and he developed a fear of flying, which helped him make the decision. Besides, I just don’t feel like I’m ready to retire yet.”

Plus, he acknowledges, the money continues to be inviting.

Cracking a smile, he says, “What’s the old saying, ‘You’re never too rich or too thin.’ ”

*

Wood, who joined the Stones in 1975, replacing Mick Taylor, also spends much of the day in the room, but he’s not likely to be watching television.

“I love to sleep,” he says, with a bemused air, as he sits in a stadium office. It’s 6:30, and you can hear the roar of the crowd as Sheryl Crow, the evening’s opening act, takes the stage.

“It takes a long time to get to sleep after a show because of the adrenaline and all, but once I get there, I stay there until it’s time to go to the venue. I probably average about eight hours a night, but I’d prefer 15.”

What about days off?

“I love them,” he said, smiling broadly. “More sleep.”

Something else Wood enjoys is a few pints of Guinness before the show. But he laughs off a question about whether he and drinking buddy Richards are ever actually drunk on stage.

“Even if you’ve had one too many, you get sobered up very quickly when you hear that crowd,” says Wood, 50. “You hear that roar and you know you have to concentrate on what you’re doing. It’s like a slap in the face.”

With a mischievous grin, Wood holds up his hand and interrupts the next question.

“But there is a drawback to the Guinness,” he offers. “There’ll be nights late in the show when I start feeling the need to . . . to take a wee.

“I’ll try to think about other things to get my mind off of it, and it’ll work for a while. But it can be a struggle. I’ve never had to actually leave the stage, but there was a time when I made a mad dash to one of these portable jobs when we went off stage briefly before the encore. . . . And I made it back in time.”

*

Like Wood, Richards, who is married to model Patti Hansen, seems to have adjusted well to the road. He’s the modern-day blues man who would probably play clubs on his own if the Stones ever broke up.

“I’ve been doing this for so long that I find it hard to spend more than a few weeks at home between tours,” he says, leaning back on a backstage couch shortly before 7 p.m. “There’s a restlessness that is as much a part of me as the music. So, we kind of travel around a lot as a family whether I’m on tour or not. I’ve always loved traveling. . . . I wanted to travel even before I imagined it would be possible for me.

“When we are on the road, I try to bring my family along with me for two or three weeks, or I’ll go home if there are a few days off. During the ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour, we were in Australia, Africa and Japan and the kids [daughters, age 11 and 12] came with us all the way. It was a better geography lesson than they could ever get in school.”

Richards normally gets up around 2 p.m. and has breakfast. Unlike Jagger, Richards, 53, doesn’t like to be bothered with tour or business details.

“As much as possible I use the old ‘temperamental artist’ routine to keep people away on a show day,” he says, smiling. “Someone will bring up something and I’ll go, ‘Sorry, I can’t think about it right now. . . . Got to get ready for the show, you know.’ ”

At the hotel, Richards will check up on the news on TV, with a special eye to the weather, which is important when you are playing outdoors. “You never know what God’s up to for the day,” he says.

Once at the venue, Richards says, it’s like being on an emotional treadmill leading you to the stage. There’s the snooker match with Wood, then wardrobe and makeup and finally a few minutes of tuning up in the guitar room.

Then he’ll start getting calls from the tour crew, asking whether he’d like a sound check that day.

The various band members interact at different points during the long afternoon, but it’s not until shortly before 8:30 that they come together as a team. By now, each in his own way has prepared himself for what’s ahead.

*

During the two-hour-and-20-minute set, the Stones will do some songs from their new “Bridges to Babylon” album, but the emphasis is on the classic hits, from “Satisfaction” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” to “Tumbling Dice” and “Honky Tonk Women.”

By the time the band gets to the encore number, “Brown Sugar,” several vans are in place near the edge of the stage. Within a minute of the final notes, the band will be in the vans and en route to the airport for the chartered flight to Dallas.

They like to leave town right after the show because it’s less taxing not to have to worry about flying on the day of the show. At various points on the tour, in fact, the band will base out of one city and fly to the show and then back to the home base, which eliminates the packing.

“There was a time when the ‘lifestyle,’ if you will, was as important as the show itself,” Richards said before going on stage. “A time when it all seemed to be one blur. But eventually it’s the music that wins, and everything else becomes just a means to that end.

“The truth is the time on stage is the only time you can really relax, because no one is going to bother you. You have total freedom. You can just play. That’s what you live for.”

BE THERE

The Rolling Stones and the Wallflowers play Sunday and Monday at Dodger Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave., 7:30 p.m. $39.50 and $62.50. (213) 224-1400.