Rolling Stones playing Regina on Oct. 8
It’s a go!
The Rolling Stones, the world’s greatest rock and roll band, will play Regina’s Mosaic Stadium on Oct. 8, sources have confirmed with the Leader-Post.
After months of speculation and a rumour mill that would not stop, the worst-kept secret on the Prairies of Western Canada will come to fruition for not only the biggest concert event in our city’s history, but perhaps the single greatest event Regina has ever hosted.
Yes, this could be bigger than the two Grey Cups played in our fair city.
At a combined age of 248 years, there is still no one in rock and roll that can do it better than Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood and when they set foot on their massive stage in Regina’s football stadium, it will be an historic moment.
The official word will come down early next week, at a press conference in Germany, where the band is currently in the middle of the European leg of its A Bigger Bang stadium tour.
Tickets for the Regina concert go on sale at 10 a.m., on Monday, July 31, sources close to the show say. Tickets will range from about $100 (the cheap seats) and about $300 (the very best ducats). Our sources say many of the tickets will go for the average price of $200.
Following a six-week delay in which guitarist Keith Richards recovered from a tree fall in Fiji, while guitarist Ronnie Wood spent a one-month stint in a London rehab centre for alcohol abuse, the group resumed its tour on July 11 at Milan’s San Siro Stadium in front of 60,000 rabid supporters.
To date, the group’s current tour has played on three continents in front of 4.5 million fans. Set lists have been varied on the group’s current European leg, but all dates thus far have opened with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “It’s Only Rock And Roll” and ended with “Brown Sugar,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Satisfaction.”
The show at Mosaic Stadium will be the group’s only Prairie appearance on a Canadian leg that will also include concerts in Windsor, Halifax and Vancouver.
The massive stadium production is the group’s most ambitious to date and it requires about 80 tractor-trailers to transport.
Mosaic Stadium will be bursting at the seams, but it seems clear that the venue can accommodate 45,000 fans for this rock show of a lifetime.
Organizers are hopeful the show will sell out quickly. Because it’s the only
Prairie date, folks in Regina will have to compete with fans from around the province as well as Manitoba, Alberta, Montana and North Dakota for tickets. We’re told box offices here have already fielded calls from fans in the U.S. and Western Canada, some of whom have wanted to leave credit card numbers.
Only a Stones show, it seems, can create such hysteria.
If Oct. 8 seems a little late in the year for an outdoor concert, consider that the group played at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton on Oct. 4, 1998 during its Bridges To Babylon stadium tour.
So the Regina show will go ahead rain or shine (and hopefully not snow). Of course, when the lights go down and the band hits the stage and launches into “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” chances are things will get very hot, very quickly.
Time is finally on our side and this will be a Thanksgiving weekend like no other.
Believe it, Regina. Like we first told you in this space on June 10, it is going to happen!
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