Exhibitionism; The Rolling Stones at The Saatchi Gallery.

This is a non-review review because I won't be going to 'Exhibitionism' (sponsored by DHL, of course) The Rolling Stones exhibition which will be taking up two floors of The Saatchi Gallery until September.

It's going to be a collection of memorabilia, photos, diaries, instruments and videos - the kind of thing any fan would die for.

Luckily, it won't be necessary for any fans to make the ultimate sacrifice; you just have to pay a lot of money (with an extra booking fee on top).

Here's the pricelist although you can save £2 a ticket by going during the week;

Friday to Sunday and Bank HolidaysAdult: £21.00Junior: £15.00 (Children under 6 years are free)Concessions: £19.00 (valid for disabled visitors and their helpers, full time students and over 60's) Family Ticket: £55.00 (this comprises for either 2 adults + 2 children or one adult + 3 children)

There is a booking fee of £3.25 per ticket for phone and £3.00 for online orders. There is a £1.50 per ticket box office fee when buying in person at the box office. 

You have to pay an extra £1-50p a ticket if you turn up at the Box Office?

What's a Box Office for?

It's going to be a blockbuster and maybe it will travel the world for them too.

I think it will make them a fortune.

The thing is, Mick Jagger is estimated to be worth somewhere between £200 million and £300million and the canny Keith Richards is probably not very far behind.

Last year, one of Jaggers girlfriends committed suicide and she left him a further $9 million in her will, just in case he might get short of cash.

I would have thought they could have put on a simpler, cheaper exhibition as a 'thank you' to their loyal fans who have given them such a nice living over the years instead of screwing another payday out of them.

Their attitude to money is legendary and never more brazen than in the case of 'The Verve's' 1997 mega-hit 'Bittersweet Symphony' which is still constantly used as a theme tune for football games and advertisements.

It also won Richards and Jagger a Grammy nomination for 'Song of the year', and they had nothing to do with it.

The story behind this is that The Verve sampled an incidental riff from 'The Last Time', for their own song. They obtained permission beforehand and negotiated a suitable fee, acceptable to the industry, which would have gone to Richards and Jagger as composers.

The problem was that they had actually sampled an instrumental arrangement of the same riff from another album and the arranger David Whittaker had no composers rights himself. So despite the actual deal that had been made(and the agreed royalties) Jagger and the publishers could kill the record before it was released.

They had 'The Verve' over a barrel and forced the lyricist
Richard Ashcroft to sell his rights for a token amount with the result that the sole credits went to Richards and Jagger and the sole publishing rights to ABCKO, their publishing company.

Richards and Jagger got a massive pay out from a worldwide hit, and sold the rights to any advertiser they could find.

Whitaker (the actual arranger) got nothing while Ashcroft got a tiny token buyout so that it looked as though he was happy with the deal and couldn't sue afterwards.

And now they want their fans to pay a fortune to look at their memorabilia?

I was never a Stones fan although I like their early work when the brilliant Brian Jones was in the band and it was essentially a hard line Rhythm and Blues band.

After Jones died?

I think the heart went out of it and something nasty came in through the window. That would be personified in the form of Allen Klein, their manager in later years.

It gives me some comfort to think that before Johnny Rotten joined the Sex Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook used to finance their band 'The Swankers', by (allegedly) stealing musical instruments, speakers and amps from various west London music venues.

Unsubstantiated rumours (couldn't possibly be true) are that they made a couple of visits to substantial mansions in prosperous Richmond upon Thames, to lift a few choice items from Richards and Jagger.

So, indirectly, Richards and Jagger had a hand in the formation of The Sex Pistols.   

Whose the bigger thief?

Meanwhile there is a further irony that they have chosen the arch conservative Saatchi to host their little money spinner.

As we used to say; "Never trust a hippy".

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me; neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Charles Saatchi's padded room.

So I'm up in London, got myself soaking wet standing out in the street, it's cold and I'm tired out and my back hurt and we went to the Saatchi gallery on The King's Road, Chelsea.

The perfect place for me to get annoyed.

The road was once the most fashionable place in town - now? It's just for the rich.

And one of the richest is Charles Saatchi.

He's not my friend - he made his reputation (with his brother) when he was responsible for taking the old fashioned, bigoted and stupid Margaret Thatcher and making her appear something different to what she really was.

His advertising agency made bad seem good and we've been living with the consequences ever since.

Recently, he was photographed strangling his wife in a restaurant - he was lucky to get a Police Caution.

He is not a nice man.

But perhaps his greatest crime can be seen at his Art Gallery - he has distorted the art world in the same way that at the end of the 1970's he distorted the political world.

There is something poisonous about the man.

Once he'd made his millions, he started "Investing" in art - he literally trawled the world and sucked up huge quantities of works of art - if they seemed promising.

If they might 'appreciate'.

Like pork bellies or gold. Think 'Trading Places'.

Most famously, he bought up the 'Young British Artists', typified by Damian Hirst, and in buying their works he made them famous.

Sometimes he's wrong.

Sometimes he's right and if you walk around his gallery there is some good stuff.

I liked this series of pictures;



 

But he is quite sinister - he will go to a country and buy up everything he agrees with. So say he goes went to Cuba (I don't know that he has) his purchases bless the artists he wants to promote.

 

And he certainly isn't going to promote Cuba's socialism. His money falls on the opposition in a country like that.

 

In effect, his purchases are another arm of British foreign policy because artists matter - they are opinion makers.

 

It's just that their opinion has to match Charles Saatchi - if they want the money.

 

Having so much money and so much influence also distorts the art 'Market'. Actually, he is just the biggest, best financed and most determined art dealer there is.

 

And he does buy a lot of rubbish.

 

 

The main exhibition at the moment is 'Pangea II- new art from Latin America and Africa' and there are some gems.

 

Quite separate to that there is also 'Teamlabs' who describe themselves as 'Ultra-Technologists' and are a collective of computer programmers and a variety of technicians.

 

Their 'Flutter of Butterflies Beyond Borders' is an interesting use of new tech.

 

It's in a padded room (which may have caught Saatchi's eye) and is a swirl of evolving electronic images;

 



Robyn caught that image from the floor because my camera (or me) couldn't cope. The flowers grow and divide as you watch them.

It is hypnotising;

And calming as petals fall slowly and butterflies flutter around the room.

Screens morph continuously;

But it is just a computer programme......and Super Mario is clever too.

I liked this;

 

 

And for me, this series was the star of the show;

 

 

 

 

Just great;

 





The gallery is normally free - it can be good and/or bad depending on Saatchi's taste.

Take a look for yourself.

You'll probably be able to see it without the distorting glasses of someone like me who can only see unemployed miners, heroin ruined pit villages, unemployed steelworkers and printers and a generation whose life chances were destroyed by people like Thatcher and her image maker Charles Saatchi.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home; helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Meeting an old friend at the Saatchi Gallery.

You can have no idea what this is - I defy you to guess.

 









It's an old friend of mine and I used to visit it every year for a while. Then I got ill and things kind of fell in on me.

Any ideas?

Actually, you really can't have any idea because what is light is dark and what is dark is light; it's an amazing work of art in the basement of the Saatchi gallery just off The King's Road in Chelsea.

What you are looking at is called '20:50' by Richard Wilson who has lined the basement with steel to about waist height then filled the tank with used sump oil.

This week I got to see it again.

It's a deep, deep black and at the same time it's highly reflective so that the top half of the room is echoed back at you in a very confusing way.

When I was there it was leaking a bit which was a problem - there is walkway which goes straight into the middle of the room and normally you can walk into the middle of the lake of oil so that you are completely surrounded by it.

Now that is a really weird experience.

When you first go in your eyes are besieged by the look of it all, your brain struggles to understand what you are seeing.

As you get used to it your nose takes over and you enjoy the smell of the oil - then just when you get used to the attractive smell of the volatile oils you realise that it isn't a nice smell at all.

Used sump oil is really quite carcinogenic - if you come into contact with it.

It's completely still and silent and at the same time it's a constantly changing relationship and very, very strange.

Like finding yourself on a completely alien planet or in the middle of a surreal dream.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com