It looks as is if one of music’s longest running institutions may finally be returning to tour Australia as part of their 50 year celebrations.
Following persistent rumours since they began touring again for their 50th Anniversary last year, it now looks like The Rolling Stones will be returning to Australia.
Last month, rumours began circulating that the legendary quartet of Mick, ‘Keef’, Ronnie, and Charlie would be accepting a multi-million dollar offer to head Down Under for the first time since their 2006 A Bigger Bang World Tour.
According to a report from Adelaide’s The Advertiser, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill had claimed that “two of Australia’s biggest concert promoters” were pitching offers to The Rolling Stones to perform live as the christening of the redeveloped Adelaide Oval.
This morning, the Herald Sun is reporting the deal as inked and the date set with the official confirmation to come from the band and the yet-to-be identified promoter later today, the paper writing that the upgraded stadium will host the Stones “for a blockbuster concert in front of up to 70,000 people during a festival season set to be the city’s biggest.”
The concert is touted to be held on Saturday 22nd March, at the “tail-end” of Adelaide’s busy festival season which includes the Fringe and Adelaide Festivals, the Clipsal 500 V8 Race and Womadelaide – just a week after the state election. “This time tomorrow we’ll be announcing some exciting news!”
Herald Sun says that Premier Jay Weatherill’s office refuses to comment on the Rolling Stones show, branding the rumours of an Adelaide concert gig as “just speculation,” in response to claims that the SA Government had used less than $500,000 of taxpayer money to help lure the band to play Adelaide, a city they’ve skipped over on their two previous Australian tours.
Previous industry figures however have put the offers at “at least several million dollars” to get the Stones to perform at the $500 million dollar renovated venue in the band’s first South Australian show in nearly two decades.
Adding credence to the Australian tour rumours is a post on the official Rolling Stones Facebook page teasing an announcement for later today that reads: “This time tomorrow we’ll be announcing some exciting news!”
The Rolling Stones were last in Australia for a world tour in support of 2005 album A Bigger Bang (that eventually earned US$ 550 million) checking into Melbourne and Sydney, but the band’s last visit to the City of Churches was back in 1995 at the Adelaide Football Park.1
The band have been back on the touring trail over the last year, headlining Glastonbury – a historic first – in June, following on from English summer Hyde Park shows (with support from The Temper Trap); part of the Rolling Stones’ 50 & Counting Tour, which has tallied up to 30 shows in Europe and North America, with thanks to the newly forged promoters Virgin Music – a partnership between Richard Branson and Paul Dainty Group.
The promotional team however eventually lost on the multi-million dollar opportunity to present the band internationally to AEG Live after dropping the ball on negotiations; it is unknown at this stage if either AEG Live or Virgin Music are involved as one of the two Aussie promoters rumoured as headhunting the band.
Michael Gudinski’s Frontier Touring were namechecked, but there is little mention or hint of a Stones tour from the promoters on their social media.
Frontier likely already have their hands full in presenting some of the biggest Aussie tours of 2014, including Bruce Springsteen’s return tour for February – with two shows already set for the Adelaide Entertainment Centre next February – and the massive co-headline tour from Queens Of The Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails in March.
There’s been rumours that Gudinski was also negotiating to bring Foo Fighters out for an Australian stadium run in 2014; “Oh look, dreams come true, don’t they?” Gudinski told The Advertiser about the rumoured tours earlier this year.
