The Rolling Stones are a band that, for all their apparently dissolute ways, put a great deal of time and attention into getting their shows right when they go on tour.
In between tours they go their own ways. It is how they have kept going for so many years. They have been together so long because they do not come together except when staging a tour. By their own account, however, they put a fair amount of time into rehearsal for a tour when they go on one. They stay at the top because they work at it.
They staged one of those tours around the world earlier this year and were booked here except that the Sars epidemic intruded. Tour over, they all went their separate ways once more.
And then along came someone to propose a one-off concert in Hong Kong to highlight the recovery from Sars.
I hear there was also a suggestion in this proposal that the concert would in a way be an act of charity and perhaps the Stones might want to take it into consideration in their fee. If I am wrong about this let the person who made the approach declare so.
Now look at it from the Stones' perspective. The proposal is that the band and its entire entourage, all engaged elsewhere, are to go to the considerable trouble of coming together again unexpectedly and rehearse a complete show to be performed only once at the behest of a wealthy foreign town that says it needs a helping hand to recover from a setback from which it has recovered anyway.
"Right," says Mick Jagger. "I'll talk to the other four lads but we start at a million apiece and that's not Hong Kong dollars."
My guess is that it was an offer made to be rejected but instead Hong Kong bit.
The word on this figure then got out and I imagine the other acts that had been approached then told themselves they would put a rocket under their own asking fees if the Stones could get away with doing it.
Result, another Mike Rowse special, big bucks scattered wide on a flashy show that will do more to give us a name for extravagance than boost the Hong Kong economy.
InvestHK has done it again, a bill for $130 million of which our government will guarantee $80 million to the putative organiser, the American Chamber of Commerce, which I gather is somewhat half-hearted about its sponsorship anyway.
As my wife said to me: "I won't go. With what they're being paid they'll just be laughing at us the whole way through and I'm not going to make a fool of myself like that."
Yes, dear, no argument from me this time. I had tickets to the cancelled Stones show earlier this year but that was a straight commercial proposition, not reckless government hoopla.
Legislator Emily Lau Wai-hing is absolutely right here. If people are willing to pull the price of a ticket from their own wallets then bring the Stones on. But if no private promoter can make it work at the fee the Stones want to charge then the show is not worth the cost.
Of course you then get the line from Mr Rowse and his InvestHK that the real purpose of this concert is to tell the world that Hong Kong is back and make people feel good about our town once more.
It is always the way with Mr Rowse's shows. We pay money and in return we get warm feelings. Tell you what, Mike. Next time let us do it the other way around. We pay warm feelings and you give us money for them. How about it?
And just how do shows by ageing rockers (Santana is getting on too) translate into foreign confidence that will bring investment into Hong Kong, the purpose for which InvestHK was established? I have asked a number of people but no one seems to have worked out the connection.
Do we really think that planeloads of bankers from London and New York will come to Hong Kong for the Stones when they could have had their fill of the band on the recent tour?
Do we really believe that their counterparts in Hong Kong and their rep offices have not kept them fully briefed on opportunities here? Have you ever heard of the telephone, the fax or e-mail, Mike?
And is it really foreign investment we need when Hong Kong is actually one of the world's biggest providers of foreign investment rather than a net taker of it?
For that matter is there really any sign of a crisis of confidence here now? Our economy has already come roaring back from Sars.
I think my wife has it right. If this promotes Hong Kong to the world it is likely to do so as an example of waste.
It says that we are happy to throw away sizeable sums of public money even while we run a big fiscal deficit. Yes, I do indeed expect a big laugh from Mick, Keith and company.
http://columns.scmp.com/colart/monitor/ZZZ71SGSHJD.html
