This was a show I thought for sure I would never witness. For Christmas 2018 Alyssa surprised me with tickets to see the Rollings Stones in May and I was beyond thrilled. One of the founders of rock and roll (as I think of rock and roll) and I was going to get to see them?! The only way it could have been better would have been if they were tickets to see Led Zeppelin. I was ecstatic.
May came along and Mick Jagger suffered some heart trouble. They had to delay the show and I feared the worst. The same thing happened to my Ozzy Osbourne show and his was delayed a year. I ended up selling those tickets as I could use the cash (and to be fair I had already seen him with Black Sabbath at Tacoma Dome a couple years back).
Luckily for everyone involved it was delayed until August 14th and we got to keep our tickets. The price of the tickets were insane and we were relegated to the back section! The back section at a rolling stone show though is better than a front section at other shows as I came to find out.
I left work and came straight to Alyssa’s. It was a rough day so I wasn’t in the best mood but I was excited and wanted to get down to that area of town and have some drinks with my girlfriend and get into the show early. Our uber driver ended up being the worst driver ever and took us an extremely long way to the stadium. Me and Alyssa were flustered and walked 6 or 7 blocks to the Central to grab some pre show brews. I believe we grabbed a coors and a shot of tequila. It was pretty packed with other rolling stones fans so after the drinks we headed towards the stadium.
On the way in we spotted a merch booth and nabbed some shirts and merchandise. It was a relief that the line wasn’t too long. It also felt good to grab some tour merchandise on what could possibly be their last tour. We headed indoors with almost no line (unbelievably!) and grabbed some burgers, food, and drinks. Alyssa was treating me extra special as this was my Christmas present from 2018. We were having a great time after dealing with the stress of just getting there.
After sitting in our seats for a bit Willie Nelson’s son, Lukas Nelson kicked things off for the stones. He has a great voice and sounds very much like Willie. All things being said he put on a great show. I had listened to him before the show and wasn’t that impressed but live he really proved me wrong. That being said the music isn’t something I remember. I would describe it as your typical American folk rock music. Lots of C-D-G kinda chord music. But still a good time and Alyssa really liked it.
Next up was the Rolling Stones! They came out strong and played Street Fighting Man which was an unexpected start (I was gambling on Start Me Up) but it was the right call. From the moment they came out I was absolutely stunned at the sheer energy of Mick Jagger. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone work the stage like he did. Closest I can come up with is Adam Levine and he’s half Mick’s age.
We were towards the back so after a few songs I was really wanting to get better shots of them other than the big screen as they were just so far from me and hard to see. As if they knew (and only after 5 or so songs) they moved forward to the circular stage in the middle of the stadium. They played a couple of acoustic songs I didn’t recognize but I loved it.
After the acoustic break they played Sympathy for the Devil which was awesome. Mick Jagger had a glittery jacket on and a top hat and was spinning around in circles. It truly seemed like something out of the movies. After that Keith Richards sang a few songs. This was the low point of the concert for me. I was really excited to see Keith live but life been tough for him. He just doesn’t have the energy, although you could tell he was having fun.
They ended the show on a string of hits which I remember as start me up and brown sugar. They then had an encore and came out to play two more (which were Gimme Shelter and Satisfaction.) It was the perfect end to a pretty perfect night and Christmas present. I would normally take this time to recommend a song and tell you to check out the band but everyone knows the Rolling Stones. Before the Show I had been jamming the song “She’s A Rainbow” non-stop but they never got around to playing it. Anyways.