These days, a massive concert tour with a mind-bogglingly high production value is par for the course in the mainstream music industry. But when The Rolling Stones first made what rock promoter Bill Graham would later call a “deal with the devil” in 1989, such a theatrical, lucrative feat was unheard of. Where would the stage go? How could it possibly be financially viable? And anyway, weren’t The Stones about to break up?
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All fair and valid questions in the final year of the leather-clad 80s. However, just like The Stones had done time and time again by their nearly third decade in the business, the British rock ‘n’ rollers paved a new path for the rest of the industry to follow.
Narrowly Avoiding a Split, the Rolling Stones Embarked on a Massive Tour
The Rolling Stones were already veterans of the music business—for better or worse—by the time 1989 rolled around. With that experience came a fair bit of tension, whether due to drugs or legal issues or interpersonal conflict or all three. The dynamic between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had become so dire, in fact, that the band was on the verge of breaking up. A reunion in Barbados helped smooth things over, and the “Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle” Tour made it worth smoothing.
Having not toured since 1982, The Rolling Stones made quite the splash with their 1989 comeback. The 300-feet-wide “Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle” stage was the largest ever constructed at that point. Two hundred crew members and 80 semi-trailers were responsible for the stage’s safe construction and transport. They set off $40,000 worth of fireworks every night. Additional corporate sponsorship and new venue deals via the band’s new promoter, Michael Cohl, meant that The Stones were also making more money from their gargantuan tour than they ever had before.
Cohl’s involvement inevitably led to Graham’s departure, who couldn’t promise The Stones as much money as Cohl was promising. (This was largely due to the fact that Cohl was willing to use frowned-upon money-making techniques, like the aforementioned sponsorship and sky-high ticket prices, and Graham wasn’t.) That’s why Graham called the tour “a deal with the devil.” That’s also why the iconic promoter felt incredibly depressed after getting shafted. “Losing the Stones was like watching my favorite lover become a w****,” he wrote in his autobiography.
The “Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle” Revenue Wasn’t the Only Historic Feature
The Rolling Stones (and Michael Cohl) set a new standard for concert production moving forward. With corporate sponsorship, band-to-venue deals, and capless ticket prices, the industry suddenly transformed from “doing okay” to “raking in millions.” Interestingly, this wasn’t the only historic feature about The Rolling Stones’ 1989 “Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle” tour. The international spectacle was also the first concert series to be filmed in the IMAX format, another future industry standard.
Speaking to The Telegraph in 2025, documentarian Julien Temple recalled that the new IMAX cameras were the “size of a baby rhino.” Moreover, because of the internal motors of the huge pieces of equipment, “lots of the IMAX technicians had lost bits of their fingers.” All eight IMAX cameras could only store eight minutes’ worth of footage. This meant that the crew had to piecemeal footage together to create a montage. Temple remembered breaking an IMAX protocol by taking close-up shots of the musicians’ faces, which apparently freaked guitarist Ronnie Wood out so badly that he ran out of the room during the first early screening of the concert footage.
We’re guessing the multi-million-dollar payday made it easier to come back.
Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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