The Rolling Stones Performing Stay in 1976 in Germany; Photograph: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns
The Rolling Stones’ tour of Europe in 1976 started on the finish of April in Frankfurt, West Germany, and completed within the third week of June in Vienna, Austria. On the 22 metropolis, nine-country tour, throughout which they performed in Yugoslavia and Spain for the primary time, over 550,000 followers got here to see them.
Two months later, on Saturday, August 21, after Mick celebrated his thirty third birthday with a celebration in Montauk, Lengthy Island with Andy Warhol, The Stones have been again on stage for what was their greatest present within the UK because the Hyde Park live performance of 1969, and it was in entrance of their greatest paying crowd ever…someplace between 150,000 and 200,000 folks.
The Glyndebourne of Rock
Followers paid $4.50 every for the live performance at Knebworth Park, in Hertfordshire, dubbed on the time as The Glyndebourne of Rock, the place The Stones have been supported by the Don Harrison Band, Scorching Tuna, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and 10cc. Skynyrd performed a blistering set with their traditional, “Free Bird” at its coronary heart. What’s lengthy been forgotten by many is that two members of Harrison’s band have been Doug “Cosmo” Clifford and Stu Cook dinner, two of the unique members of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Backstage, Moet and Chandon hosted a champagne celebration for company together with Jack Nicholson, Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour, Germaine Greer, Site visitors’s Jim Capaldi, John Paul Getty III, John Philips, Ian McLagan from The Faces, Van Morrison, and Paul & Linda McCartney. (The viewers needed to make do with tea or espresso at 12p a cup and a rooster curry that price 55p.)
The efficiency
Technical issues dogged a lot of the present, leading to The Stones occurring very late, however they nonetheless performed a particularly lengthy set that helped make up for some earlier unrest among the many crowd. They lastly hit the stage at 11.30pm, half-hour after the live performance was resulting from finish, and ended up taking part in till simply after 2am. Moreover, Mick, Keith, Ronnie, Charlie, and Invoice Wyman, the band was augmented by the sensible American keyboard participant Billy Preston and percussionist Ollie Brown.
The 30 songs set opened with “Satisfaction” and ran by means of nearly The Stones’s complete profession. It included “Little Red Rooster,” “Route 66,” and “Around and Around” from their earliest days, by means of traditional singles together with “Get Off Of My Cloud,” “Let’s Spend The Night Together,” “Honky Tonk Women,” and “Jumpin Jack Flash” in addition to a brief set inside the set by Billy Preston who performed, “Nothing From Nothing” and “Outta Space.”
Their set featured album tracks from Beggars Banquet (“Stray Cat Blues” and “Street Fighting Man,” their nearer), Let It Bleed (“You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Country Honk,” and “Midnight Rambler”), Sticky Fingers (“Brown Sugar”, “Wild Horses,” “You Gotta Move,” and “Dead Flowers”) and Exile On Essential St. (“Rip This Joint,” “Tumbling Dice,” and “Happy”), proper as much as their newest LP, Black and Blue, from which they performed “Hot Stuff,” “Hand Of Fate,” “Hey Negrita,” and “Fool To Cry.” There have been additionally tracks from their earlier two albums, Goats Head Soup (“Star Star”) and It’s Solely Rock ‘N Roll (the title track, “If You Can’t Rock Me,” and “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg”).
Energy and relevance
The BBC’s Listener journal mentioned of the present, “Charlie Watts looked very neat and as like Bertrand Russell as ever: one’s feet were with him and one’s pulse with Bill Wyman.” Whereas The Sunday Mirror mentioned, “Scores of girls went topless as the scorching sun sent temperatures soaring in mid-afternoon. Some plain-clothes policemen mingled with the crowd, but only one arrest was made for an alleged drugs offense – even though ‘pot’ was said to be on sale.”
Maybe The Melody Maker summed Knebworth 1976 up better of all, “The Rolling Stones drew a vast crowd estimated variously at between 110,000 and 250,000, to an exhausting, drawn-out event… it showed once again that they still have power and relevance.” Some issues by no means change…
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