On July 12, 1962, The Rolling (then Rollin’) Stones played their first show at the famed Marquee Club in London. By the fall of 1963 they were on the road in Europe, on the low end of a package with the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Bo Diddley and more. Flash forward 60-plus years, and they’re filling the world’s biggest stadiums — as they have been since the mid-’70s — with the current North American leg of their Hackney Diamonds Tour.
Few acts boast the kind of road resume the Stones have built over the decades. Conservative estimates put the group’s tally at more than 2,000 concerts for more than 45 million people — including an estimated 1.5 million alone on Feb.
18, 2006 at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And sometimes it seems like Mick Jagger has worn precisely that same number of outfits during all those years of performing. Two of the Stones’ treks — A Bigger Bang from 2005-2007 and No Filter from 2017-2021 — are among the top 10 grossing tours of all time, according to Billboard Boxscore .
The group’s two ’90s tours, Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 for that decade, and A Bigger Bang topped the 2000s.
Clearly, we like it when the Stones come to town — yes we do. Why? So many reasons — not the least of which is a wealth of rock anthems the Stones dependably deliver most every time they hit the stage. There’s also staging, which is just as dependably awesome, and a sense of seeing bona fide his.
