The Rolling Stones have been around for almost fifty years. Mick Jagger wanted to quit at the age of 76

From the novelty, the musicians reached for the songs Angry, Sweet Sound of Heaven and Mess It Up. The inclusion of Little T&A, sung by guitarist Keith Richards, was a surprise. The Rolling Stones haven’t played it live since 2016.

At the same time, all this should not have happened for decades. The first “last tour” of the Rolling Stones was supposed to be in 1975. Jagger had previously assured everyone that he did not want to perform forever. However, his vision did not come true. He will be eighty-one years old this July and his band is still touring.

Bad times

In the sixties, it was already clear that the Rolling Stones were not just a temporary trend that listeners would forget after a year. Thanks to strong songs and growing popularity, they strengthened their position and were not stopped even by drug and alcohol excesses, which they continuously committed.

However, the end of the decade was not pleasant. In early July 1969, guitarist Brian Jones died, and although he was no longer a member of the group at the time, his former bandmates were deeply hurt.

Photo: CTK

In the golden sixties. In the middle is the now deceased Brian Jones, who was originally supposed to be the leader of the band.

In December of the same year, a festival took place in the American Altamont, which was supposed to be a counterweight to the previous Woodstock and whose main star was the Rolling Stones.

During their performance, there was a fight between the security, which consisted of members of the biker gang Hells Angels, and the fans. During it, one of the security guards stabbed eighteen-year-old Meredith Hunter. The festival was canceled and the Rolling Stones still consider the event a dark day in their history.

End at thirty-three

“I’ll leave when I’m thirty-three. This is the time when a man has to start doing something else. I can’t say what it will be, it’s in its infancy, but it certainly won’t be anything in the entertainment industry. I don’t want to be a rock star all my life. I don’t want to end up like Elvis Presley, singing in Las Vegas to all the ladies and old ladies who come to the concert with handbags. It’s a horrible idea,” Jagger told The Independent in 1972.

He should have reached the mentioned thirty-three years in 1976, therefore the media perceived the announced Rolling Stones tour as a possible last one. But in the end it was different.

On May 1, 1975, journalists were invited to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York. They suspected that the band would announce a gigantic tour in both parts of America. But nothing happened in the lounge where the press conference was supposed to take place. Until there was a loud rumble outside.

Mick Jagger released the song Strange Game

Culture

Journalists and guests ran out into the street and in the atmosphere of the New York hustle and bustle, they saw members of the Rolling Stones with keyboardist Billy Preston on the back of a slow-moving truck. After a while, a version of the song Brown Sugar emerged from the noise they were making.

The performance lasted eight minutes. Jagger then reached for a trash can and started taking out and throwing flyers promoting the upcoming tour around. Not only journalists fought for the printed papers, but also fans, who also came because they had heard through whispers that “something was going to happen”. The musicians finished the song, drove to the end of the street, got into limousines there and disappeared. The press conference is over.

Drummer Charlie Watts came up with the idea to announce the tour from the back of a truck, who remembered that this was how Harlem jazz groups used to invite people to evening performances. Even in the following years, the band announced their tours in a similarly entertaining way.

After a successful concert campaign, Jagger did not fulfill his visions. But the Rolling Stones used the term “this is the last tour” several more times.

They won’t go away on their own

During the second half of the 1970s, they performed in Europe and America and lasted until 1982. They then took a break as communication between Jagger and Richards deteriorated. In addition, they all needed to get together a little, because there were a lot of drugs and alcohol in their lives after all.

After various vicissitudes, they returned to the tour in 1989. They started the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour and in August 1990 they also stopped in Strahov, Prague.

Rolling Stones still with drummer Charlie Watts in 2018 in Prague.

As the last one, the Rolling Stones talked about the Lick Tour, which took place in 2002 for the forty years of their existence. But it wasn’t the finale, apparently also because each new concert series of the band was technically better secured, which the musicians enjoyed. In addition, each tour made more money than the previous one. And to top it all off, the world began to regard the Rolling Stones as an untouchable musical legend.

It kind of belongs to that status that the band sometimes throws in something about the last tour. In reality, however, it seems that the Rolling Stones are not going to just leave the scene voluntarily.