Mick Jagger performing on stage circa 1969.
LOS ANGELES—The Rolling Stones have returned to the United States
for their first tour in more than three years.
It begins with two evening shows at the Forum in Los Angeles November
8th, with tickets priced from $5.50 to $8.50. (This compares to a $7.50
top price for a Blind Faith concert in the same arena, a $6.50 top for the
Doors. And in both those concerts, tickets started at $3.50.) In arranging
this show, a previously-set hockey game between the Los Angeles Kings
and the New York Rangers was rescheduled – at the request of the man
who owns both the Forum and the Kings.
Acts appearing at the concerts here will include Terry Reid, who will
appear on all the dates, and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Negotiations
were continuing to have Ike and Tina, B. B. King and Chuck Berry join
the Stones in several other cities.
Promoters of the L.A. concerts said the gross for the evening would exceed
$275,000 if the Stones filled the 18,000 seats in the Forum both shows.
Similar grosses, on a per show basis, were expected throughout the tour,
with the Stones getting guarantees of $25,000 a concert and up, against
take home percentages running close to $60,000.
Although figures such as these are not unusual for tours by groups of
this magnitude, they did bring strong criticism from, among others, Ralph
Gleason in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Can the Rolling Stones actually need all that money?” Gleason asked.
“If they really dig the black musicians as much as every note they play
and every syllable they utter indicates, is it possible to take out a show
with, say, Ike and Tina and some of the older men like Howlin’ Wolf and
let them share in the loot? How much can the Stones take back to Merrie
England after taxes, anyway? How much must the British manager and
the American manager and the agency rake off the top?”
“Paying five, six and seven dollars for a Stones concert at the Oakland
Coliseum for, say, an hour of the Stones seen a quarter of a mile away
because the artists demand such outrageous fees that they can only be
obtained under these circumstances, says a very bad thing to me about
the artists’ attitude towards the public. It says they despise their own
audience.”
When Mick Jagger was confronted by this criticism at a press conference
at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, he left the door slightly open to giving a free
concert sometime during the 13-city, 18-concert tour, but his tone didn’t
seem too promising.
“There has been talk of that,” he said. “I should think toward the end.
We’ll have to see how things go. I don’t want to plan that right now, ‘cause
we’re gonna be here some while. We’ve got time for all that. I don’t want
to say that’s what we want to do or not do. I’m leaving it rather blurry. I’m
not committing myself.”
And about the ticket cost, he strongly indicated that if some people thought
prices were high, they might have been a lot worse.
“We were offered a lot of money to do some very good dates – money
in front in Europe, before we left, really a lot of bread. We didn’t accept
because we thought they’d be too expensive on the basis of the money
we’d get. We didn’t say that unless we walk out of America with X dollars,
we ain’t gonna come. We’re really not into that sort of economic scene.
Either you’re gonna sing and all that crap, or you’re gonna be an economist.
I really don’t know whether this is more expensive than recent tours by
local bands. I don’t know how much people can afford. I’ve no idea. Is
that a lot? You’ll have to tell me.”
www.rollingstone.com
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