For a bunch of decrepit old men, The Rolling Stones are all over the place at the moment. After their Super Bowl halftime concert, the Stones are getting ready to play the biggest concert in history.
On Saturday, The Rolling Stones will play a free concert on the beach of Rio de Janeiro. And the Brazilian shindig looks set to be attended by up to two million Rolling Stones fans. Two million! That’s almost the combined age of the band members themselves.
The Rolling Stones seem to work on a weird sliding scale where each
tour they do takes more money than the last one, even if the new albums
they release each time tend to be a bunch of old cock. Their current
Bigger Bang world tour is already the largest-grossing tour in history
– in America alone, the Rolling Stones made £93 million and played to
1.2 million paying fans, not to mention the giant TV audience gained
from playing their censored, ageist Super Bowl halftime concert.
But The Rolling Stones (CDs) now look as if they’ll be able to play to at
least as many people as during their entire American tour at one single
event this weekend, as the band marks the halfway point of their world
tour with a free concert at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro.
There’ll be 10,000 policemen on patrol, and 900 security guards as
part of the £500,000 that the Rio de Janeiro authorities have spent on
the concert. There has also been a £250,000 bridge built just so that
The Rolling Stones can stroll to the beach directly from their hotel.
It’s thought that two million people will attend the concert – based
on a similar concert last year by Lenny Kravitz which drew an audience
of one million. And that’s just rubbish old Lenny Kravitz – imagine how
many more people want to see The Rolling Stones.
We have to say we’re sad that we’ll miss the Rolling Stones Rio de Janeiro concert. Standing uncomfortably in a tightly packed crowd watching five ancient dots on a stage two miles away for hours on end while being pick-pocketed by favela children has never sounded so fun.
Read more:
Stones rock Rio with gig for 2m fans – The Times
[story by Stuart Heritage]
hjf says
actually the biggest concert ever was in Rio too, in december 31, 1994, at copacabana beach. Rod Stewart played in front of 3,5 million people. damn!
http://www.askmen.com/toys/top_10_60/77c_top_10_list.html
Jade says
Actually the Rod Stuart Concert was played on New Years eve and they counted all the people who were just on the beach partying, thats still a shit load of party goers though!!
Lars says
Hey, hjf, looks like that list of highest attended concerts left one out: the Monsters of Rock concert in Moscow from 1991. No one knows how many people were there exactly, but they stopped counting at 500,000 so it should have had a spot in the list!
Btw, 2 million people?! That just had to be insane to witness. Thank God one of the Stones didn’t have a heart attack, so Keith could star in the new PotC movie. ;-)
shaun says
the largest concert ever was free and it was by Jean Michel Jarre. here’s a link!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Michel_Jarre
shaun says
On September 6, 1997, Jarre played in Moscow to celebrate the 850th anniversary of the city. The Moscow State University was used as the backdrop for a spectacular display of image projections, skytrackers and fireworks, with an audience of 3.5 million. This was Jarre’s fourth record and entry into the Guinness record book for the largest free concert audience ever. The concert was also the same day that the Princess Diana funeral took place. Jarre spoke of his friendship with her and requested a moment of silence and then dedicated a song in her memory called “Souvenirs”
Brian Quinn says
The largest Worldwide TV Audience for a one person concert still remains ‘Aloha From Hawaii’by Elvis Presley. This concert went out live on 14th january, 1973 to around 1 Billion people. Due to satellite restrictions it was later shown in the U.S.A. and elsewhere when another 500 million saw it.
Fernando says
The Rolling Stones concert was the biggest ever, I was there. There was 1,6 million people just to see the Stones, no New Years eve, no Princess death, no Satellite transmission, no other 10 bands playing, (besides the openning band) it was just the Rolling Stones.
So it was for sure the biggest ever! There was a lot of loud-speakers and big high definition screens all along the beach.
Search for the video on the internet.
Izzy says
actually James Brown held a concert in France in the 80’s that had a record 1.5 million
that for sure earns second place to Rod Stewart!
Matias says
All of you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. The largest concert BY FAR was by Elvis Presley in his Aloha Special which was viewed by around 1.5 BILLION people.
The rest of the concerts in the history of music could be put together and still not measure up to magnitude of this viewing.