Stones Rock And Roll In Shanghai
The Rolling Stones opened their first ever concert in mainland China on Saturday with the classic hit, "Start Me Up."
The veteran rockers played to a packed house at Shanghai's 8,000 seat indoor stadium, where the audience was overwhelmingly foreign.
There was little sign of the fan frenzy that has followed the band on other stops on their current "A Bigger Bang" tour, however, demand for tickets had driven up the price to 5,000 yuan (US$624) on the black market.
Chinese rock pioneer Cui Jian who was to perform with the band said before the concert the show was a "milestone" for him and all rock fans in China.
"It is a big moment, I will never forget this," said Cui, who's songs were anthems for student protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
In a reminder of the authoritarian communist government's cautious attitude toward the influence of western pop culture, The Stones were told not to perform five of their biggest hits because of suggestive lyrics.
"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 (SARS). 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.
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.