Japan opens its arms to the Midnight Rambler

Press, 13 April 1988, Page 20

Japan opens its arms to the Midnight Rambler

By

SHIGEMI SATO

NZPA-AFP ! Tokyo As the last of the rock and roll superstars to tour Japan, Mick Jagger has come, seen and j conquered its lucrative music market, sending dark-suited businessmen and elderly! mothers dancing and singing in the aisles. It is a market which he failed to tap 15 years ago when he had to cancel a tour with the Rolling Stones after being barred from entering Japan for having been fined at home for possession of marijuana. ! ‘‘l’ye been looking forward to coming here for a long time,” Jagger shouted to 50,000 cheering fans at the new Tokyo Dome this month, half-way through an eight-concert Japan tour, his first solo engagement. All 160,000 tickets foi) the tour were sold within an hour after box' offices opened, concert organisers said. ) Jagger could rejoice at being' the highest paid rock singer ever) to perform in Japan, with earn-! ings estimated at $l6 million,! more than the several million 1 dollars earned by Madonna and,! Michael Jackson last year, show business people say. “Definitely, I’ll still [be wild,’’ quipped the English rocker, aged 44, j at a press conference in Tokyo several weeks ago when asked if he would remain an enfant terrible of rock and roll to the ! 19905. Jagger described his satanic stage pyrotechnics of the 19705: “For me, it was a very extended silly season.” ) • ( He said that he and the Rolling Stones were thinking of making a record together "perhaps next year.” “We will be together in the future," he said. Jagger and the other Stones have performed j separately for several• years, j Jagger belied his stage reputation as a fire-breathing prince of darkness with courtly; replies to | Japanese reporters’’questions. ) Asked how he evaluated himself as a father, Jagger replied with a smile, “You’d have to ask ) my children what they think of ) me as a father.” I | “They’d 'probably give you ; some good and some bad answers.” ; j) H Japanese radio networks had !

;i)<" ! . . ; marathon broadcasts of Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger numbers, with one Tokyo station calling its 12-hour show “Thank ) You Mick Day.” ' ! )A fellow Rolling Stone, Ron Wood, has recently been performing in Japan with the .veteran rock-and-roller, Bo Diddley. : Jagger, wearing a scarf down to) his knees, a blue vest, yellow )shirt and black pants, lived up to his promises on stage. [For more than two hours, he gyrated through 25 songs, running around a platform set up at thie baseball stadium where Mike Tyson knocked out Tony Tubbs i the day before to remain the undisputed world heavyweight ; champion. ) |“Oh, the man is milking it to the limit,” said an American reporter who was two years old a quarter century ago when' the ! Rolling Stones started on! the i 'road to fame.' ’ i I I Newspapers praised Jagger’s all-out performance with headlines applauding his "unfailing ) i wildness.” ), < Backed up by a five-piece band and a soulful female chorus, Jagger took the audience through different phases of his musical career, from “Satisfac- ) tion” to "Honky Tonk Woman” to the new hit [“War Baby,” ( while I j young security men tried hard to keep the crowd in place. ) Tsutomu Yamashita, a Japan- ! ese percussionist, aged) 40, helped him; on one of [three j encores, "Sympathy for) the ; Devil,” joined by some 50 line' dancers wearing traditional i Japanese masks of the devil.