''Rolling Stones: Live at the Max'' (also known as ''Stones at the Max'') is a concert film by

the Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, rhythmically d ...

released in 1991. It was specially filmed in

IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (approximately either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1) and steep stadium seating. Graeme F ...

during the

Urban Jungle Tour The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels Tour was a concert tour which was launched in North America in August 1989 to promote the band's album '' Steel Wheels''; it continued to Japan in February 1990, with ten shows at the Tokyo Dome. The European leg ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

in 1990. It was the first concert movie shot in the IMAX format. ''Rolling Stones: Live at the Max'' premiered 25 October 1991 in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

at the

California Museum of Science and Industry The California Science Center (sometimes spelled California ScienCenter) is a state agency and museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, next to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the University of Southern California. Bi ...

. In the UK it was shown at the

National Museum of Photography, Film and Television National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1992. The tagline was "Larger than life".

Production

''Rolling Stones: Live at the Max'' was the first feature-length film ever to be filmed in

format. Imaging fed to the jumbotrons at concerts came from trucks where switching equipment was used to control live feeds from an army of video cameras. Midway through post-production, the request came to use some of this video that had been recorded on 3/4" tape in the final IMAX film. This required a series of tests to improve the fidelity of this video footage so that it could be mixed in with the footage captured on IMAX 70 mm film without a significant drop in quality. Test negatives were processed in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and prints were returned to Toronto for screening at the IMAX theatre at

Ontario Place Ontario Place is an entertainment venue, event venue, and park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The venue is located on three artificial landscaped islands just off-shore in Lake Ontario, south of Exhibition Place, and southwest of Downtown Toronto. ...

. After many tries, a process was created to improve the video enough to be used. The final release included approximately 6 minutes of this footage. Originally shot with 8 IMAX cameras outfitted with the first long load film magazines, 5 concerts were recorded in 3 cities. The magazines were so huge and the logistics of the loading so unpredictable, there was no guarantee of complete coverage of any song in any single concert. Trying to cut the film on a traditional flatbed editor proved impossible, so an

EditDroid The EditDroid is a computerized analog non-linear editing Non-linear editing is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear ...

, an early digital non-linear editing system developed, and custom configured by

Lucasfilm Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company and a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is a business segment of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is best known for creating and producing the ''Star Wars'' and ' ...

, was used. 35mm workprints were assembled, transferred to video, and recorded to laser videodiscs that the EditDroid could work from. The 8-headed Droid could load all databases and imaging for a single song in all concert locations. The editors could jump to any point in a song, see what was available (or not), then jump to the same spot in all subsequent concerts.

Home video

VHS,

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

versions were released under the title ''Rolling Stones: Live at the Max''. See also the live album '' Flashpoint'', released in 1991, from the same tour.

Track listing

All tracks by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. # "Continental Drift" # "Start Me Up" # "Sad Sad Sad" # "Tumbling Dice" # "Ruby Tuesday" # "Rock and a Hard Place" # "Honky Tonk Women" # "You Can't Always Get What You Want" # "Happy" # "Paint It Black" # "2000 Light Years from Home" # "Sympathy for the Devil" # "Street Fighting Man" # "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" # "Brown Sugar" # "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"

Stadium venues and dates

The list below reflects the sound recording dates. The video is a mix of the listed shows, plus footage from 29 July 1990.

Personnel

The Rolling Stones *

Mick Jagger Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English singer and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the lead vocalist and one of the founder members of the rock band the Rolling Stones. His ongoing songwriting partnershi ...

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of t ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

s, percussion *

Keith Richards Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943), often referred to during the 1960s and 1970s as "Keith Richard", is an English musician and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the co-founder, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-princi ...

– vocals, guitars *

Ronnie Wood Ronald David Wood (born 1 June 1947) is an English rock musician, best known as an official member of the Rolling Stones since 1975, as well as a member of Faces and the Jeff Beck Group. Wood began his career in 1964, playing guitar with a nu ...

– guitars *

Bill Wyman William George Wyman (né Perks; born 24 October 1936) is an English musician who achieved international fame as the bassist for the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1993. In 1989, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member ...

–

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

Charlie Watts Charles Robert Watts (2 June 1941 – 24 August 2021) was an English musician who achieved international fame as the drummer of the Rolling Stones from 1963 until his death in 2021. Originally trained as a graphic artist, Watts developed an i ...

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

Additional personnel *Matt Clifford –

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

, backing vocals,

French horn The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most ...

, percussion *

Chuck Leavell Charles Alfred Leavell (born April 28, 1952) is an American musician. A member of the Allman Brothers Band throughout their commercial zenith in the 1970s, he subsequently became a founding member of the band Sea Level. He has served as the pri ...

– keyboards, backing vocals, percussion *

Bobby Keys Robert Henry Keys (December 18, 1943 – December 2, 2014) was an American saxophonist who performed with other musicians as a member of several horn sections of the 1970s. He appears on albums by the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Harry Ni ...

–

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

Horns Horns or The Horns may refer to: * Plural of Horn (instrument), a group of musical instruments all with a horn-shaped bells * The Horns (Colorado), a summit on Cheyenne Mountain * ''Horns'' (novel), a dark fantasy novel written in 2010 by Joe Hill ...

by The Uptown Horns – Arno Hecht, Paul Litteral, Bob Funk, Crispen Cloe *

Bernard Fowler Bernard Fowler (born January 2, 1960) is an American musician. He is known for a long association with The Rolling Stones, providing backing vocals since 1989 and on their studio recordings and live tours. Fowler has been a featured guest vocal ...

–

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...

, percussion *Sophia Jones – backing vocals *Lorelei McBroom – backing vocals

Certifications

References

External links

* {{Julien Temple 1991 films 1994 video albums Concert films Films directed by David Douglas (director) Films directed by Julien Temple Films directed by Roman Kroitor IMAX films Live video albums The Rolling Stones films The Rolling Stones video albums 1990s English-language films 1990s British films