No 'Brown Sugar' In China
Mick Jagger says he isn't worried about Chinese censorship of the Rolling Stones' set list for their first concert in China: The band has 400 more songs it can play.
Authorities cut four songs from the band's 2002 greatest hits collection, "40 Licks," and Jagger said officials have asked them not to play the songs at Saturday's concert in Shanghai, along with one new one he didn't name.
"We kind of expected that. We didn't expect to come to China and not be censored," Jagger said at a news conference Friday marking the band's appearance in the mainland, the first in their 40-year career.
An original request to alter the song list was made ahead of the band's planned 2003 China concerts, but the concerts were canceled due to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Jagger said he'd hoped the request would be dropped, but "then it came back."
"Fortunately, we have 400 more songs that we can play so it's not really an issue," Jagger said.
Then he added with his trademark sarcasm: "I'm pleased that the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of the expat bankers and their girlfriends that are going to be coming," a reference to the largely foreign, upper-class audience expected for the concert.
The original four songs cut were "Brown Sugar," "Honky Tonk Woman," "Beast of Burden," and "Let's Spend the Night Together." All were apparently banned due to their suggestive lyrics.
Jagger didn't say what the new addition was, but it was believed to be "Rough Justice," the opening track of their new album, "A Bigger Bang." The song's lyrics include a word that is a synonym for rooster.
Censorship is nothing new to the Stones, dating back to their 1967 television appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," when the host demanded the band change the lyrics to "Let's Spend the Night Together." As ordered, Jagger sang "let's spend some time together," but he rolled his eyes for effect.
More recently, the National Football League silenced Jagger's microphone during sexually suggestive passages of two of the three songs the band performed before an audience of 90 million television viewers at the Super Bowl halftime show in February.
"I don't have to tell you censorship exists in China as in other places," Jagger said.
Though visiting for the first time as a band, the Stones' presence has aroused none of the fan frenzy that has greeted them at other locations on their worldwide "A Bigger Bang" tour.
The Stones are relatively unknown in China, which was mired in communist isolation at the height of the band's fame in the 1960s and 1970s.
While rock has gained an audience here, with music by bands such as Nirvana and Pink Floyd widely available on pirated DVDs, the airwaves tend to be dominated by saccharine Chinese pop tunes. Last year's biggest musical event was a televised "American Idol"-style song contest to choose the Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl.
However, Jagger said he hoped a planned nationwide television broadcast of the concert by the government's China Central Television would boost exposure for the music.
And he said Cui Jian, known widely as the father of Chinese rock, would join the Stones on stage during the concert for a duet before 8,000 fans at the Shanghai Grand Stage. The expected audience is roughly 1.2 million smaller than the one that witnessed their free concert last year in Rio de Janeiro.
Most of the Shanghai tickets have been sold to non-Chinese, according to the local press. With prices between 300 yuan to 3,000 yuan ($37 to $370), tickets cost more than the monthly wage of most Chinese.
The newspaper Shanghai Morning Post also complained in an article that only one Chinese media outlet had been allowed to cover the band's arrival on Thursday.
"The Rolling Stones come to Shanghai, but they're only performing for foreigners," read the headline on the front page of the paper's entertainment section.