Next weekend China makes yet another spectacular pirouette on the international stage of the 21st century as the world's greatest rock band, the Rolling Stones, play their first Chinese mainland concert.

The band's inimitable front man Mick "The Lips" Jagger and original axe man Keith "I'm Still Alive" Richards took time out just ahead of their Tokyo Dome concert to talk with Shanghai Daily.

So the phone goes and it's Cheryl who's working with the Stones in Tokyo, and she says: "Right, are you ready? I'm going to hand you over to Mick."

I say "yes" and the next thing it's: "Awight?" Textbook, trademark Jagger - the man who for more than four decades has fronted the Rolling Stones the band which right from the get go, and all the way ever since, has been one of the biggest on the planet.

Official figures for 2005 have them once again crowned as the biggest grossing band of the year with ticket sales in North America alone worth a staggering US$162 million.

So how is the man, for whom the adjective swagger was invented, feeling about coming to Shanghai?

"I'm really excited. We all know that Shanghai is a big important city so we wanted to make sure it's on our itinerary. We don't want to leave it out," says Jagger. "Although China as an economic force has been around ... well forever really ... as a place for us to play it's not really been on the map for that long."

Speaking to "Keef" Richards a little later he says: "Shanghai? I've always wanted to get there. We're very grateful for being allowed in, we'll stick our noses in and see what's happening."

What does he want to do whilst in Shanghai?

"I want to buy some of my own bootlegs ... I just want to get a whiff of it and look around and see what's happening, it's all brand new to me ... China will be a bit of an adventure for us, we've never been there before, it's a first and by now we don't get many firsts," he says.

The band has been on the road since August with their Bigger Bang tour which ends at the Millennium Stadium in Wales on August 29 after 120 concerts.

That's a gig every three days for an entire year (the Tokyo Dome gig lasted a full two hours and included 21 songs) — the Rolling Stones are far from work shy.

I put it to Richards that they can hardly be doing it for the cash.

"You wouldn't get any of us doing it for the money, I'll tell you that," he says. Pressed as to why then, he offers: "There's a sense of mission. There are millions of people out there who want to see it. You know it takes a bit to put this stuff on, we come away with a bit and we give a lot away," he says in his home counties, eccentric and slightly squiffy uncle voice.

So how does Jagger explain the enduring appeal of the band that formed in 1963 and has just played to the biggest crowd in history, 1.2 million people on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?

"People have written essays trying to pinpoint our enduring appeal, it's very hard for me, I don't really know.

"A big part of it is basically our longevity, people like us because we are still around after all this time, we're still here so people like that -- we're kind of a connection with the past for them and yet we are still here in the present.

"We try to do our bit to avoid being just a nostalgia band. Of course part of our appeal is nostalgia, but not all of it. There's definitely longevity in our songs — people like to hear them over and over again."

Richards expounds: "What's nuts is that in those days (the 1960s) we wrote a song on Monday, on Friday we recorded it and by the next Wednesday it was in the shops. And there it is — it's stuck for all time and you realize that you hardly know the thing. It's like something that has just broken through the egg and you spend the next 40 years learning the thing you wrote.

"If I knew what our appeal was, I'd bottle it and I wouldn't tell you ... There's some sort of chemistry that goes on with this bunch, I don't know, maybe it's addictive, quite possibly knowing this bunch. At the same time it's one of those great imponderables. It's a suspension of disbelief," he adds.

On the Rio concert Jagger says: "I've been playing these kind of stadium things for a long time now and it takes a lot to faze me but at the end of that gig I bowed and I thought as I was doing it, 'mmm, I've never done that before, bowed in front of quite so many people,' that was an interesting one."

Richards puts it slightly more colorfully: "It was just as well we couldn't see all the crowd or we'd just have been running to the john, man!"

On the business of performing the famously athletic football and cricket nut, Jagger says: "It's a bit like going out to play in a cup final or something, you soak up the energy from the crowd."

As to how long they will continue playing, Richards is candid. "You can actually play this stuff until you croak and you can get better at it," he says. "We just love doing it."

Jonathan Krane, the tour promoter, says: "Tickets for this concert have sold not only to fans all over China but all around the world -- Italy, South America, Japan and the United States. This is a real international, historic, milestone event and people want to be able to say they were there when it happened."

A few tickets for the upcoming Shanghai concert are still available. The hot line is 6481-2938 or go to Emma Entertainment's office at the Shanghai Grand Stage, the venue, itself.

Date: April 8, 8 PM 
Address: 1111 Caoxi Rd N.
Tickets: 300-3,000 yuan
Tel: 6481-2938, 962-288 ext 2

(Shanghai Daily by Douglas Williams March 31, 2006)