steel wheels tour shea stadium

The World Series of Love: The Rolling Stones at Shea Stadium

by Dan Epstein December 30, 2016

In October of 1989, The Rolling Stones played six shows at Shea Stadium. (via Brent Hoard)

Editor’s Note: This article was originally printed in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2017 . You can purchase a copy of it here .

For most baseball fans, a road trip involving visits to 14 current and former major league stadiums would be something of a dream come true. But for the Rolling Stones in the late summer and fall of 1989, such an expedition was strictly business—or, as they themselves might have put it, only rock n’ roll.

It had been eight years since the Stones last performed in North America, and the demand for tickets to their blockbuster Steel Wheels tour was so intense that the band was able to easily sell out gigantic sports facilities in most of the cities they visited. Of the 33 North American venues the band hit between Aug. 31 and Dec. 20, nearly half were (or had previously been) home to major league baseball teams: Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium, Toronto’s CNE Stadium and SkyDome, Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, Busch Stadium in St. Louis, RFK Stadium in Washington DC, Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, New York’s Shea Stadium, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the Houston Astrodome, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis and Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

The band’s four October 1989 dates at LA’s Memorial Coliseum—home to the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1958 through 1961—drew more than 360,000 fans, grossed more than $9 million and garnered the most national press, thanks to the controversial addition of the then up-and-coming Guns N’ Roses to the bill. But the Stones’ six October concerts at the home of the New York Mets really underscored just how massive the once-notorious band had become in the 27 years since its original formation. The band sold 387,737 tickets for the Shea shows, earning the Stones a reported $11,607,452 (or $22,352,021 in 2016 money), but the six-night stand was also a symbolic success: No band, not even the Beatles, had ever headlined the Flushing Meadows ballpark more than twice. Whatever you thought of their current music, or how well the musicians had aged—other than Ronnie Wood, who’d turned 42 that June, they were all in their mid-to-late 40s—the Stones’ stature on the rock n’ roll playing field was clearly unequaled.

“It was like a residency,” is how Jason Kassin remembers the Stones’ Shea concerts, “but in a stadium instead of a club.” The co-founder of FilmTrack, Inc., a Los Angeles-based software company, Kassin was a senior at Vassar College when he attended four of the band’s six Shea shows. An obsessive Stones fan who’d grown up in Brooklyn, Kassin also caught three other shows on the Steel Wheels tour—in Philadelphia, Syracuse and Atlantic City—but recalls the Shea shows as having a definite “homecoming” vibe. “The Stones were such a New York band, in a weird way,” he says. “Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were basically New Yorkers at that point; Keith was actually living above Tower Records in the Village. So even though they were English, they felt like our band.”

Indeed, Jagger and Richards had maintained residences in New York City since the 1970s, and their affection for the Big Apple and its vibrant culture had come through loud and clear in such Stones songs as “Miss You” and “Shattered” (from 1978’s Some Girls LP), while “Neighbors” (from 1981’s Tattoo You ) was inspired by Richards’ difficulties in finding a Manhattan apartment where he could jam long into the night without getting the police called on him. And then there was the video clip for “Waiting On a Friend” (also from Tattoo You ), which showed Jagger and Richards looking far more at home on New York’s funky St. Marks Place than they would have been in early-’80s London.

Thus, it made perfect sense that the Stones should announce the Steel Wheels tour (as well as the impending new album that gave the tour its name) with a press conference at New York’s Grand Central Station. Held on July 11, 1989, the event—attended by over 300 members of the media, with hundreds of fans thronging outside—began with Jagger, Richards, bassist Bill Wyman, drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ronnie Wood chugging into the station on an antique caboose. The absurd nature of their entry, along with the apparent good-humored looseness of the five musicians (who hadn’t even appeared together in public since 1982), seemed to sharply rebut the breakup rumors that had been swirling about the band for years. The Stones hadn’t toured behind their previous two albums, 1983’s Undercover and 1986’s Dirty Work , while the release of two Jagger solo albums (1985’s She’s The Boss and 1987’s Primitive Cool ) and one by Richards (1988’s Talk Is Cheap ) had led many to believe the band was dissolving. But at Grand Central, the Stones seemed enthusiastic about being—and touring—together again. “We don’t have fights,” Jagger told the assembled press while theatrically draping a sinewy arm around Richards. “We just have disagreements.”

“It was super-cool, but also goofy,” says Kassin, who managed to sneak into the press conference along with his girlfriend. “It was kind of the Ron Wood show, in a way; somebody asked, ‘Are you doing it for the money?’ And he said, ‘No, that’s the Who!’” Wood’s crack was at the expense of the surviving members of the Who, who had recently reunited for a 25th anniversary tour, and who had played two nights at Shea in October 1982 as part of their previous “farewell tour.” Jagger, when asked, sniffed at the suggesting that the Stones would be doing a similar sort of “historical” set on their upcoming trek. “I don’t see it as a retrospective or a farewell or anything like that,” he said. “It’s the Rolling Stones in 1989.”

Unlike the Who, the Stones actually had a new album to promote. Jagger treated the press to “a free sample” of the forthcoming Steel Wheels LP by holding a portable cassette player up to the microphone as “Mixed Emotions,” the album’s first single, echoed throughout the room in a distinctly lo-fi fashion. “They were up there with a boom box, playing ‘Mixed Emotions’ through the mic, and it sounded terrible ,” Kassin laughs. ‘Ron Wood was like, ‘Listen to the new song—doesn’t it sound good?’ But it was completely distorted!”

A decent sound system wasn’t the only thing noticeably absent from the Grand Central press conference: There was also no mention of any New York City tour dates. Canadian promoter Michael Cohl (who had lured the Stones away from their long-standing relationship with American promoter Bill Graham by offering them a then-unheard-of guarantee of $70 million) told the press that stops in 27 North American cities had been confirmed for the MTV-sponsored tour; but it wouldn’t be until Aug 16, over a month after the Grand Central tour announcement, that NYC dates for the Steel Wheels tour were officially revealed. New York City Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern and local promoter Ron Delsener—who was working with Cohl on the NYC dates—held a joint press conference to announce that the Stones would perform two shows at Shea Stadium, on Oct. 26 and Oct. 28. Tickets, at $30 a pop, would go on sale via Ticketmaster at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 19, with a limit of eight tickets per buyer.

Though anyone born in the last quarter-century may have difficulty imagining it now, obtaining concert tickets—especially for big-name acts—in the pre-Internet age generally required more effort than just refreshing your browser. You could try repeatedly dialing various local Ticketmaster outlets from your home or work phone, praying you could get through to an operator before all the tickets sold out (or an important call came in); but if you were serious about snagging tickets, you had to stake out a store that housed an actual Ticketmaster desk, and line up hours (or even days) before the show went on sale.

Marty Walsh, now a mobile crane operator for Metro North railroad in Croton-On-Hudson, N.Y., was 25 years old and working as a dairy manager at a Croton A&P when the Stones’ first two Shea shows went on sale. He and a friend decided to buy their tickets from a Ticketmaster outlet located in a TSW toy store in nearby Yorktown Heights. He remembers showing up the Friday afternoon before the tickets went on sale in order to snag two of the 250 individually numbered wristbands that were handed out ahead of time to prevent people from camping out overnight (or cutting in line on the day of the sale). “It didn’t matter which numbered band we received, because the store would pick a random number to be the first on line,” Walsh explains. “Even if someone had wristband #001, if #120 was the number pulled, [the customer with the #120 wristband] would be first in line to purchase the tickets, with subsequent numbers 121, 122, 123, etc., being the next in line.”

When Walsh and his friend returned to the store the following morning, they were disappointed to learn that their wristband numbers were fairly low in the lineup, and they watched dejectedly as the tickets for the Oct. 26 show quickly disappeared. “We were lucky to score nosebleeds moments before the second show sold out,” Walsh remembers. “But I was really excited, as I had missed out on seeing the Stones the last time they toured, in 1981, and for all we knew this could very well be their last tour, so I was extra-determined to see them at least once.”

Walsh and his friend were walking back to his car with their tickets when a cry went up from the fans still remaining in line—a third show, for Oct. 25, had just been added. “We double-timed it back to the line, where we got better seats in the mezzanine level,” he recalls. “Again we were going to leave, but a couple were asking if anybody had wanted to trade two tickets to the first show for two to the third; being as I had just bought the maximum eight tickets for the third show, I gladly made the swap. As we were completing the exchange a fourth show [for Oct. 29] was added, and we all returned to score more mezzanine seats. We lingered to see if a fifth show would be added, but it didn’t come to pass.”

Though the Mets were still very much in contention at this point—their 4-1 win over the Dodgers on Aug. 19 pulled them within 2.5 games of the National League East-leading Cubs, and kept them a half-game ahead of the third-place Expos—there were no worries about the Stones possibly having to share Shea with the Mets during the World Series. Even with the 1985 expansion of the League Championship Series to a best-of-seven format, the baseball postseason rarely stretched past mid-October in the pre-Wild Card era. And since the ballpark was owned by the city and not the team, the Mets organization was absolved from any involvement in the promotion or logistics of the concerts. “Honestly, I have absolutely no memory of anything about those shows,” says legendary Mets PR man Jay Horwitz, who has worked for the team since 1980. “They happened after the season was over.”

“I’ve seen the Stones 15 times, but I wasn’t at the [Shea] shows,” says Ron Darling, who went 14-14 with a 3.52 ERA in 33 starts for the ‘89 Mets. “When I was with the Mets, whenever we didn’t make the playoffs, I always went away for a month to Europe. I hate when I miss them, but I have seen them all over.” Darling, who grew up in the blue-collar town of Millbury, Mass., says he always identified with the Stones’ working-class vibe. “They were my band when I was a kid. The Beatles were just too pretty for where I was from. The Rolling Stones were more like the people I knew—tough kids, tough language, tough music.”

The Mets inadvertently gave the Stones an assist on Sept. 25, when a 2-1 loss to the Phillies officially eliminated the team from postseason contention. The Davey Johnson-led squad would finish the season in second place with a 87-75 record, six games behind the Cubs. “It was another one of those disappointing post-’86 teams where they could have won it all, but they didn’t,” remembers music publicist Jim Merlis. A diehard Mets fan since childhood, Merlis was 23 years old and working as an assistant publicist at Columbia Records, the Stones’ label, when the band came to Shea. “There were several years in a row after 1986 where it was like, ‘This is a good team…so why aren’t we playing up to our capacity?’ They were in second the whole season and never made their move; that seemed to happen a lot in those days.”

But if the Mets couldn’t use Shea Stadium in mid-October, the Stones certainly could. Four days after the team was eliminated, the Stones announced that a fifth date—Oct. 10—would be going on sale. When tickets to that one sold out within hours, a sixth concert on Oct. 11 was added. “I really lucked out this time,” says Walsh, who managed to score tickets for both of these shows, in addition to the first four. “My kid brother’s friend had just started working as a stock boy at the [TSW] store, and he told me to just let him know how many tickets I wanted for each show. I bought the maximum eight for one show and four for the other, as it was all I could afford at that point—[$30] was a steep price at the time for a concert ticket.”

The new dates meant the Stones would have to play two nights at Shea, then transport the entire tour (including a gigantic post-modern stage set, which was designed and built by London architect Mark Fisher at an estimated cost of $18 million) to Los Angeles for four dates, then bring the whole thing back across the country for the final four shows at Shea. “Logistically, it must have been insane,” says Merlis. “It was like, ‘Okay, we’re going to move this whole operation across the country, only to come back here with it in two weeks!’” But the extra $3.7 million pulled in by the additional dates—not to mention the cachet of selling out six shows at Shea—apparently made the massive endeavor more than worthwhile.

By the time Stones finally arrived in New York for their first pair of Shea dates, the buzz surrounding the concerts was practically inescapable. “Stonesmania had completely gripped the town,” remembers attorney Michael B. Ackerman, who attended one of the shows as a guest of Living Colour, the New York funk-metal quartet who opened the concerts. “Everybody was like, ‘Are you going to see the Stones? Which night are you going? How were they last night?’ It was a big topic of conversation. I took the train from the Upper West Side down to Times Square to get the 7 train to Shea Stadium, and everybody on the 7 train was going to see the Stones.”

“One of the great things about those concerts at Shea was that I could take the subway there,” adds Kassin. “The Stones had felt so unreachable to me, so godlike—and here I was, taking the subway from my neighborhood to see them! There used to be a TV jingle for the subway train to JFK airport, which went ‘Take the train to the plane/Take the train to the plane’—and me and my friends were on the train singing, ‘Take the train to the Stones/Take the train to the Stones!’”

Ever mindful of his audience and surroundings, Jagger made sure to acknowledge the Mets during the first night of the Stones’ six-show stand. “We’re sorry the Mets didn’t make it to the World Series,” he told the audience from the stage, which had been built across the far reaches of the Shea outfield. “Too bad—but we’re going to have the World Series of Love!” The band then kicked into a fiery version of “Tumbling Dice,” from 1972’s classic Exile On Main Street . If there were any lingering bad feelings remaining in the house over the team’s disappointing performance, they pretty much dissipated at this point. “It wasn’t really bittersweet at all to be there in October without the Mets,” laughs Merlis. “It was more like, ‘Oh, cool—I’m seeing Shea Stadium in a different way!’”

Indeed, it was a World Series in which there would be no losers. Rather than offering a rote run-through of their greatest hits, the Stones—abetted by saxophonist Bobby Keyes, keyboardists Matt Clifford and Chuck Leavell, backing vocalists Bernard Fowler, Lisa Fischer and Cindy Mizelle, and the Uptown Horns, a Ray-Bans-wearing brass section featuring Arno Hecht, Crispin Cioe, Bob Funk and Paul Litteral—served up a muscular mixture of new material, classic tracks and deep cuts, including the psychedelic obscurity “2,000 Light Years From Home” from 1967’s Their Satanic Majesties Request . Though several wags in the rock press had jokingly dubbed it the “Steel Wheelchairs Tour,” the band was clearly still capable of going toe-to-toe with bands half their age.

“I’d seen the Stones at the Meadowlands in ’81, and to be honest I didn’t think they were very good,” says Ackerman. “But in 1989, I was pleasantly surprised—the set list was great, the pacing was great, the band sounded great. I thought they were terrific.”

“It really felt like I was seeing the Stones , compared to any of the times I’ve seen them since,” adds Kassin. “It also felt like a reaction to some of what was going on musically in the ‘80s; it was the era of Milli Vanilli, but this was just a band out there singing and playing really well. The first night at Shea, they even brought on Eric Clapton to play ‘Little Red Rooster’ with them, which was cool.”

For a Mets fan like Ackerman, getting to traverse the hallowed ground where his baseball heroes played was almost as cool as seeing his musical heroes perform. “My date and I had seats in the 18th row, and I remember walking to then, thinking, ‘Wow, I’m walking past the pitcher’s mound—this is amazing!’ I turned around to look at home plate from the pitcher’s mound, like, ‘Oh, that’s what [Tom] Seaver saw!’”

Ackerman got an unexpected treat when the skies opened up, forcing him and his date to find shelter. Concert security being significantly more lax than it would become in the ‘90s and beyond, the pair were able to briefly duck into the visitor’s dugout. “I couldn’t see the show very well from there,” he says, “but I didn’t care, because I was too busy looking at the bat rack, the water fountain, the cubbies, the tunnel to the clubhouse; I’m touching everything like a kid in an unguarded toy store! My date, who’s Swedish, was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? What are you doing?’ I explained to her that this was where the players sit during the baseball games, and she finally understood. We were there for two numbers before the cops came and made us leave. It was my one and only time in the dugout at Shea.”

The Stones’ six-show stand at Shea would ultimately represent the end of an era, and the beginning of another one. Those 1989 concerts would be the last time the band ever played New York with original bassist Bill Wyman, who opted to retire following the band’s European leg of the tour in the summer of 1990. “That was really it, as far as the Stones bringing their ‘A’ game,” says Merlis. “It was their last tour with Wyman, and after that it just became like a parody—I’ve seen them several times since Shea, and it’s almost the Rolling Stones Las Vegas Show.”

On the other hand, the Steel Wheels shows of 1989 effectively set the musical and financial template for the Stones’ next 27 years of existence, one involving lavish stage sets, a multitude of backing musicians, and wheelbarrows full of money. The band took in a record $175 million from ticket and merchandise sales in 1989 and 1990; realizing that people would pay far more than $30 for Stones tickets, Michael Cohl and the band began jacking the prices of medium- and top-end tickets on their subsequent tours, with staggeringly lucrative results. Just five years later, their Voodoo Lounge tour would see them gross $320 million, a number they would surpass on 2005-2007’s Bigger Bang tour, which set another industry record by grossing over $558 million. (A record that’s been broken only by U2’s 360 Tour of 2009-2011.)

Though several other major artists would perform at Shea Stadium before demolition of the ballpark began in October 2008—including Bruce Springsteen, who played three shows on his The Rising tour there in October 2003, and Billy Joel, who performed twice at Shea in the summer of 2008—no one would ever match the Stones’ record of six Shea concerts. Nor, for that matter, has any band ever played as many shows at one major league ballpark on a single tour.

But for the fans who were there, the Stones’ “World Series of Love” at Shea is warmly remembered as a magical event, as opposed to an impressive business feat. “Those six nights were as memorable for me as they were exciting,” says Walsh. “While I would subsequently see the Stones 13 more times in later years with each performance being fantastic, none of those matched Shea.”

“I felt personally validated by those shows,” says Kassin. “I’d spent high school and college being such a fan of a band that almost didn’t exist; people made fun of me for it, and people made fun of them. So if they’d been horrible at Shea, for me personally it would have been devastating. But they were phenomenal.”

References & Resources

• Special thanks to David Laurila for interviewing Ron Darling.
• Baseball-Reference
• Patricia Leigh Brown, The New York Times (reprinted by Ocala Star-Banner ), “The Rolling Stones’ Touring Stage Is Transportable Architecture”
• Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone , “Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour Stutters, Then Rolls”
• Murry R. Nelson, The Rolling Stones: A Musical Biography , 2010
• Sheila Rogers, Rolling Stone , “Stones Set Tour Dates”
• Peter Watrous, The New York Times , “Reviews/Music; Icons Who Rock: The Stones Play Shea”
• MaCentcon Chronicle-Herald , “People in the News: Shattered at Shea,” Aug. 18, 1989
• The New York Times , “The Rolling Stones Add Fifth Concert at Shea”
• YouTube, “Rolling Stones 1989 Steel Wheels Tour Announcement NYC”
• CenterfieldMaz.com, “History of Concerts at Shea Stadium (Part 2)”
• Richard Metzger, Dangerous Minds, “The Rolling Stones’ 1989 ‘Steel Wheels’ Tour Was Only Rock & Roll, But I Liked It”
• Jack Doyle, The Pop History Dig, “Stones Gather Dollars”
• Wikipedia, “Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour”

Very informative. Most everyone remembers The Beatles playing at Shea in 1964 but these performances are largely forgotten.

To the webmaster: Please consider a different typeface. On the computer screen, the period in this font is a misshapen blob that looks too much like a comma, which disrupts the reading experience. The period extends below the baseline, which is fundamentally wrong. (My browser is Google Chrome with default settings.)

You can add an extension to Chrome that allows you to substitute your own choice of font for a given site. One example: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/font-changer-with-google/jgjhhoglgjdklldfgoffdiaceffijeke?hl=en

I was at one of those shows (I forget which night) but one of the friends I was with got head-butted by another concertgoer and ended up at Booth Memorial Hospital in the wee hours of the night, getting his lip stitched up. he was sitting in a different section of seats than I, though we had all travelled together from New Jersey. So it was a mad dash to the ER to find out what the H was going on…

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When the Rolling Stones Returned for the ‘Steel Wheels’ Tour

The Rolling Stones had spent much of the '80s on the sidelines. Despite increasing friction between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the band kept putting out albums – but to relatively lukewarm reactions. Touring, however, was another story.

By 1989, the Rolling Stones hadn't played a live show in seven years.

Their longest concert drought (before or since) officially ended on Aug. 31, when the Stones launched the Steel Wheels North American Tour at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. (Technically, the drought ended a couple of weeks earlier at a  warm-up show  in New Haven, Conn.)

This tour was named for their new album Steel Wheels , which was released to enthusiastic reviews two days earlier. Jagger and Richards had patched up things earlier in the year, then started to write and record a record that felt like "classic Stones." Meanwhile, Jagger (in his mid-forties at the time) was consistently pressed on whether this would his band's final tour – a line of questioning that seems increasingly ridiculous decades later.

Besides, Jagger, Richards, Ron Wood , Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts had a ready answer in the form of a marathon, 28-song opening date.

After kicking off the show with the one-two combo of "Start Me Up" and "Bitch," Jagger showed he could hold up better than the power equipment – which blew a generator during "Shattered," the third song of the evening. Within minutes, the power returned and the Rolling Stones regrouped, carrying on with the Steel Wheels  cut "Sad, Sad, Sad." But they'd superstitiously drop "Shattered" from subsequent shows.

The set list represented just about every Stones era, from early blues covers (Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster" from back in 1964) to psychedelic experimentation ("2000 Light Years From Home") to country rock ("Dead Flowers") and even some '80s material ("Undercover of the Night"). Richards gave Jagger a break down the stretch by fronting the band for a couple of his own songs ("Happy" and "Before They Make Me Run") before Jagger returned to take it home with wall-to-wall hits ("Brown Sugar," "Satisfaction," etc.).

Watch the Rolling Stones Perform 'Mixed Emotions' Live

This being the Stones' first big tour since 1982, spectacle wasn't sacrificed. The band took the stage amid crackling fireworks and roaring flame towers – both of which would become de rigueur on future tours. They also introduced what might be the most garish stage decorations in rock history: a pair of giant inflatable barflies that flanked the stage during "Honky Tonk Women."

As the mammoth tour continued, the Rolling Stones seemed to only gain momentum. "We're keeping our fingers crossed, and I'll hit the wood here, but, yeah, they're getting better every day," he told Rolling Stone . "The band's really winding up now."

He also called 1989 a "dream year" for the Stones, and predicted that the North American tour would become a worldwide one in 1990. In fact, it did, although it was rechristened the Urban Jungle Tour before hitting Europe.

As dates flew by, the Rolling Stones recorded a live album ( Flashpoint ), broadcast a live pay-per-view special, one that was later edited into a prime-time concert special for Fox, and filmed an IMAX movie ( Rolling Stones: Live at the Max ) that was the first feature film completed with only IMAX cameras.

In some ways, the Steel Wheels dates marked the start of a new way of touring. It was the Stones' first tour with backing vocalists Bernard Fowler and Lisa Fischer and the first American trek with keyboardist and musical director Chuck Leavell. And, of course, it makes the first in a line of record-breaking, arena-sized blowouts that would continue into the new millennium.

None of those subsequent tours, however, would include the band's founding bassist Bill Wyman as a full-time member. Wyman decided he'd had enough and quit the band after the 1989-90 concerts. In this way, the Steel Wheels tour was both the beginning and the end of a Stones era.

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“Stones Gather Dollars” 1989-2008

In the feature story, Forbes writer Peter Newcomb provided a detailed look at what the Stones were then up to, and by way of their experience, a revealing look at the rock ‘n roll business on its way to the 1990s.

The Stones, even then, were a “senior” rock ‘n roll group, having risen to fame, along with the Beatles, a good 25 years earlier in the 1960s. Yet at this point in their lives and careers, they still had another 20 years of performing ahead. But in the late 1980s when Forbes caught up with them, they were at the beginning of a series of live concerts called the “Steel Wheels Tour,” a tour launched to coincide with a new album, also titled Steel Wheels . This tour, however, also presaged a new era in the business of rock ‘n roll, and specifically the big business of concert touring.

     In 1988, a Canadian promoter named Michael Cohl had guaranteed the Stones a take of $70 million for the tour.  The math went something like this: the tour would draw 3 million people in just under 60 locations.  At about $30 a ticket, a $90 million gate would be generated, with 40 percent paid to the stadium owners and local promoters, leaving 60 percent — or more than $50 million — to the Stones and the tour promoter.  Tour-related merchandise, including T-shirts, jackets, and other paraphernalia, would boost the take to the guaranteed $70 million.  In fact this tour, and its related business, would generate considerably more than $70 million.

Macy’s, Bud & Beyond

     The Stones had also made arrangements to sell tour-related material not only at the concert sites, but also at department stores such as Macy’s, J. C. Penney, and Marshall Field.  In some of these stores, “Rolling Stones boutiques” offered a full line of products stamped with the Steel Wheels logo: $5 bandanas, sweatshirts, skateboards, $450 bomber jackets, and two lines of Converse high-top sneakers.  There were also pay-per-view TV rights in the offing at $6-to-$7 million, not including foreign TV rights.  A tour-related movie and a two-hour TV special were being planned as well.  “We never dreamed there was any money when we started this thing. It was idealism. It was not knowing what else to do with your life. But then, suddenly, the impossible happened.”               – Keith Richards, 1989  And finally, Anheuser-Busch paid close to $6 million for rights to make its Budweiser beer the tour sponsor.  All of this meant that the Stones would gross about $90 million for the year.

Business Savvy

     At the time of the Steel Wheels Tour in 1989, the Rolling Stones were already pretty savvy business people.  Since 1971, they had secured the services of a former London merchant banker named Rupert Zu Loewenstein, who carries an old Bavarian title of “Prince” and became their financial advisor.  The Stones by then were also pretty capable when negotiating recording deals.  In 1985 they signed a distribution agreement with CBS Records that reportedly gave the band $25 million for four albums and the rights to all the old Rolling Stones catalog from Atlantic.  Walter Yetnikoff, the CBS record chief who negotiated with Jagger, said that “Mick was very astute,” lauding him as a guy who could think on his feet, capable of figuring royalty and tax rates in his head.  Jagger had studied macroeconomics at the London School of Economics, which he would later say was mostly economic history.

     But the Stones weren’t always on top of their game economically.  In fact, in the early years, they lost a good deal of money making bad deals.  During the mid-1960s, when the Stones first broke out, they had sold some ten million singles, including their monster 1965-66 hit “Satisfaction.”  They also sold some five million albums in the early years.  Still, they were not making money. “When we first started out, there wasn’t really any money in rock ‘n roll. There wasn’t a touring industry; it didn’t even exist….”                           – Mick Jagger   “When we first started out, there wasn’t really any money in rock ‘n roll,” Jagger explained to Fortune magazine in 2002.  “There wasn’t a touring industry; it didn’t even exist.  Obviously there was somebody maybe who made money, but it certainly wasn’t the act. …[E]ven if you were very successful, you got paid nothing.”  The Stones also suffered from lack of negotiating experience.  “I’ll never forget the deals I did in the ’60s, which were just terrible,” Jagger would later say .   In 1965, Allen Klein, a New York manager, helped the Stone’s negotiate a new contract with Decca records and also helped the group win their first million-dollar payday.  But Allen Klein also helped himself.  His company, ABKCO, still retains the rights to the Stones’ early songs from the 1960s through 1971 — a sore point with the Stones, who parted ways with Klein in the early 1970s.  Since then, the Stones have been very much a business-minded rock ‘n roll group, attentive to everything from royalty rates to tax policy.  But by the time of their 1989 Steel Wheels tour, their business savvy had reached a new level and demand for their music was as strong as ever.

Steel Wheels Success

Tour Model Honed

     Yet 1989’s Steel Wheels was just the beginning for the Rolling Stones.  More gate-busting tours would follow over the next two decades.  But Steel Wheels became the model.  Its promoter, Canadian Michael Cohl, was hired permanently by the Stones to become their full-time tour manager.  With each subsequent tour, the 1989 experience was honed, costs were pared, and even bigger paydays resulted. 

     The Stones’ Voodoo Lounge tour of 1994-95 grossed nearly $370 million worldwide.  In 1997-1999, the Bridges to Babylon/No Security Tour grossed more than $390 million, attracting some 5.6 million people worldwide.  By 2002, Fortune magazine estimated that between 1989 and 2002, the Stones pulled in about $1.5 billion, including tours and other business, an amount that exceeded what other rock ‘n roll competitors did in that same period, whether U-2, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, or Bruce Springsteen.  Nor did the Rolling Stones’ touring end in 2002.  Their Forty Licks world tour of 2002-2003 played to an audience of 1 million, generating $200 million over 32 show dates in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Far East.  In 2005, they released a studio album, A Bigger Bang , followed by another tour — this one the highest-grossing tour in history, pulling in $558 million between the fall 2005 and late August 2007, according to Billboard .

     The Stone’s success with touring and their tour-related businesses no doubt had an impact on other “retired” rockers who in recent years decided to get back in the game and on the road again.  But other economic factors were also at work by the late 1990s.  The traditional music sales model was changing dramatically with the internet and MP3 players, as album and CD sales began to plummet.  The live-performance business became a much more important source of income for artists, old and new.  Still, the Stones appear to have made a special category all their own.

     Fortune magazine’s Andy Serwer, writing in September 2002 on why the Stone’s continued their appeal way beyond their prime hit-producing years, explained:

“…Subjectively, the Rolling Stones sound pretty damn good, even after all these years.  And objectively, if they’re such has-beens, then how do you explain the band’s phenomenal commercial success over the past decade? No, they aren’t writing groundbreaking songs anymore — in fact they haven’t really recorded any new material of note in 20 years — but we sure are listening to their old stuff.  A lot.  And buying concert tickets.  Millions and millions of them.  And that’s the wrinkle here. Even though the Stones have been in what you might call a creatively fallow period, we want to hear them more than ever.  Couple that with the fact that they have perfected their business model, and it’s easy to understand why they are such an astounding money-making machine.”

Songwriting, Ads & Film

     Beyond touring and DVDs, there have also been other business deals and income streams to help fill the Stones’ coffers.  Songwriting royalties continue to flow to Jagger and Richards for the 200 or so songs they have jointly written.  “Music publishing is more profitable to the artist than recording,” Jagger explained to Fortune magazine in 2002.  “It’s just tradition.  There’s no rhyme or reason.  The people who wrote songs were probably better businesspeople than the people who sang them were.  You go back to George Gershwin and his contemporaries — they probably negotiated better deals, and they became the norm of the business.  So if you wrote a song, you got half of it, and the other half went to your publisher.  That’s the model for writing.”  So anytime one of the Jagger/Richards songs is played on the radio or any other public venue, they get a piece of the action.

     Ray Gmeiner, a vice president at Virgin Records has stated that “The Rolling Stones are a unique brand because they’ve taken the business side of rock and roll to the level that few if any other bands have.”  Add Roger Blackwell and Tina Stephan in their 2004 book, Brands That Rock :  “The Rolling Stones organization is a well-oiled, money making machine, and to say it resembles anything less than a Fortune 500 firm would be unjust…”

Still Rocking

     Their business empire aside, however, at the center of the Rolling Stones is their music.  Millions of fans young and old still enjoy that music, and will no doubt continue to enjoy it for many years into the future.  And for the Stones too, the music is key.  They don’t really need to be touring; they make money standing still.  In a 1995 interview with Jan Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine, Jagger told Wenner that love of the blues, love of rock music, and love of performing that music was at the center of what he did.  And Keith Richards has said much the same.  “This whole thing runs on passion,” Richards told Fortune in 2002.  “Even though we don’t talk about it much ourselves, it’s almost a sort of quest or mission.”  New York Times reporter Stephen Holden recently wrote in an April 2008 review of Martin Scorcese’s documentary featuring Stone’s concerts, “…[T]he Rolling Stones appear supremely alive inside their giant, self-created rock ‘n roll machine. The sheer pleasure of making music that keens and growls like a pack of ravenous alley cats is obviously what keeps them going.  Why should they ever stop?”

Other stories on the Rolling Stones at this website include: “Paint It Black” (song history & subsequent uses); “Start Me Up” (use of song by Microsoft as Windows 95 theme song), “…No Satisfaction” (1966 song that marked a kind of cultural divide at the time); and, “Shine A Light” (Martin Scorsese / Rolling Stones film trailer). Additional stories on music history, song profiles, and artist biography can be found at the “Annals of Music” category page. Thanks for visiting – and if you like what you find here, please make a donation to help support the research and writing at this website . Thank you. – Jack Doyle

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Date Posted:   3 December 2008 Last Update:   9 July 2017 Comments to: [email protected]

Article Citation: Jack Doyle, “Stones Gather Dollars, 1989-2008,” PopHistoryDig.com , December 3, 2008.

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Rolling Stones at Amazon.com …

Sources, Links & Additional Information

Peter Newcomb, “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” Forbes , October 2, 1989.

Constance L. Hays, “2 Generations of Fans Enjoy Rolling Stones’ Live Legacy,” New York Times , October 11, 1989.

Tom Harrison – Music Critic, “Keith Richards Sets The Tone,” The Vancouver Province , November 1, 1989.

Michiko Kakutani, Pop View, “Troubadours Of Fickle Time And Its Passing,” New York Times , September 4, 1994.

Richard Harrington, “That Old Jagger Edge; At RFK, the Stones Rock and Roll On,” Washington Post , August 2, 1994, p. F-1.

“Microsoft Throws Stones Into Its Windows 95 Ads,” New York Times , August 18, 1995.

David Segal, “With Windows 95’s Debut, Microsoft Scales Heights of Hype,” Washington Post , Thursday, August 24, 1995, p. A-14.

Jann Wenner, “ Jagger Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interview ,” Rolling Stone , December 14, 1995.

Michiko Kakutani, “Heart of Stones,” New York Times Magazine , October 12, 1997.

Richard Harrington, “Smooth Stones Roll Out The Oldies,” Washington Post , October 24, 1997, p. D-1.

Kelefa Sanneh, “Rolling Stones Revel in the Act of Survival,” New York Times , September 27, 2002.

Andy Serwer and associates Julia Boorstin and Ann Harrington, “Inside the Rolling Stones Inc.,” Fortune , September 30, 2002.

“A Conversation With Mick Jagger,” The Charlie Rose Show , Thursday, November 14, 2002

Roger Blackwell and Tina Stephan, Brands That Rock, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.

Jon Pareles, “Swaggering Past 60, Unrepentant,” New York Times , August 23, 2005.

J. Freedom du Lac, “Time on Their Side; The Rolling Stones, Still Rocking Like It’s 1995, or 1965,” Washington Post , October 4, 2005, p. C-1.

The Rolling Stones, No. 4, “The Forbes Celebrity 100,” Forbes , June 14, 2007.

Stephen Holden, “Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, but They’re Still at It,” New York Times, April 4, 2008.

“ The Rolling Stones ” and “ Shine a Light ,” Wikipedia.org , 2008.

_______________________________________________________

The Pop History Dig is a website offering historical and topical stories on business, politics, and popular culture.

Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour

The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels Tour was a concert tour which was launched in North America in August 1989 to promote the band's album "Steel Wheels"; it continued to Japan in February 1990, with ten shows at the Tokyo Dome.

The European leg of the tour (which featured a different stage and logo) was called the "Urban Jungle Tour"; it ran from May to August 1990.

These would be the last live concerts for the band with original member Bill Wyman on bass guitar. This tour would also be the longest the band had ever done up to that point, playing over twice as many shows as their standard tour length from the 1960s and 1970s.

The tour was an enormous financial success, cementing The Rolling Stones' return to full commercial power after a seven-year hiatus in touring marked by well-publicized acrimony among band members.

• 1 Tour Background
• 2 Set Lists
• 3 Tour Dates
• 4 Personnel

Tour Background [ ]

A Steel Wheels pre-tour 'surprise show' took place on August 12, 1989 at Toad's Place in New Haven, Connecticut with a local act, Sons of Bob, opening the show for an audience of only 700 people who had purchased tickets for $3.01 apiece.

The official Steel Wheels Tour kicked off later that month at the now-demolished Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the opening show in Philadelphia, the power went out during "Shattered" and caused a slight delay in the show. Jagger came out and spoke to the crowd during the delay.

The Stones returned to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and played two sold out concerts at B.C. Place Stadium.

Fan reaction for tickets was unprecedented. One local radio station 99.3 The Fox even had a man (Andrew Korn) sit in front of the station in a bath tub filled with brown sugar and water for free tickets to the concert. Total attendance was 6.2 million.[citation needed]

The stage was designed by Mark Fisher with participation of Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger. Lighting design was by Patrick Woodroffe.

Canadian promoter Michael Cohl made his name buying the concert, sponsorship, merchandising, radio, TV and film rights to the Steel Wheels Tour. It became the most financially successful rock tour in history up to that time.

Rival promoter Bill Graham, who also bid on the tour, later wrote that " Losing the Stones was like watching my favourite lover become a whore ."

Performances from the tour were documented on the album "Flashpoint" and the video, "Live at the Max" both released in 1991.

The opening acts for the tour included Living Colour, Dan Reed Network, Guns N' Roses and Gun.

In August of 1990, an extra concert in Prague, Czechoslovakia, was added. Czechoslovakia had overthrown the Communist regime nine months earlier and The Rolling Stones' concert was perceived as a symbolic end of the revolution.

Czechoslovakia's new president Václav Havel, who was lifelong fan of the band, helped to arrange the event, and met the band at the Prague Castle before the show. The expenses were partially covered by Havel and by the Czechoslovak Ministry of industry.

The attendance was over 100,000. The band chose to donate all the revenues from this gig (over 4 million Czechoslovak korunas) to the Committee of Good Will, a charity run by Havel's wife, Olga Havlová.

Set Lists [ ]

For the opening night of the "Steel Wheels Tour," the setlist was as follows (all songs composed by Jagger/Richards unless otherwise noted):

• "Start Me Up"
• "Shattered"
• "Sad Sad Sad"
• "Undercover of the Night"
• "Harlem Shuffle" (Relf/Nelson)
• "Tumbling Dice"
• "Ruby Tuesday"
• "Play With Fire" (Nanker Phelge)
• "Dead Flowers"
• "One Hit (to the Body)" (Jagger/Richards/Wood)
• "Mixed Emotions"
• "Honky Tonk Women"
• "Rock and a Hard Place"
• "Midnight Rambler"
• "You Can't Always Get What You Want"
• "Little Red Rooster" (Dixon)
• "Before They Make Me Run"
• "Paint It Black"
• "2000 Light Years from Home"
• "Sympathy for the Devil"
• "Gimme Shelter"
• "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)"
• "Brown Sugar"
• "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
• "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (encore)

For the final night of the "Urban Jungle Tour" (the last Rolling Stones concert with Bill Wyman) the band played:

• "Harlem Shuffle"
• "Street Fighting Man"
• "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
• "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (encore)

Other songs played on the tour:

• "Almost Hear You Sigh" (Jagger/Richards/Jordan)
• "Blinded By Love"
• "Boogie Chillen" (Hooker)
• "Can't Be Seen"
• "Factory Girl"
• "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (Dixon)
• "Salt of the Earth"
• "Terrifying"
• "Indian Girl"

Tour Dates [ ]

Personnel [ ].

The Rolling Stones

• Mick Jagger – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, percussion
• Keith Richards – guitar, vocals
• Ronnie Wood – guitar
• Bill Wyman – bass guitar
• Charlie Watts – drums

Additional musicians

• Matt Clifford – keyboards, backing vocals, percussion, French horn
• Bobby Keys – saxophone
• Chuck Leavell – keyboards, backing vocals and musical director
• Bernard Fowler – backing vocals, percussion
• Lisa Fischer – backing vocals on the North American & Japanese tours only
• Cindy Mizelle – backing vocals on the North American & Japanese tours only
• Lorelei McBroom – backing vocals on the European tour only
• Sophia Jones – backing vocals on the European tour only

The Uptown Horns

• Arno Hecht – saxophone
• Bob Funk – trombone
• Crispin Cioe – saxophone
• Paul Litteral – trumpet
• 1 The Magic Summer Tour

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The Rolling Stones Add Fifth Concert at Shea

The Rolling Stones' ''Steel Wheels'' tour has added a fifth date to its Shea Stadium performances, on Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 7 P.M. The date, which precedes by two weeks the band's sold-out four-night stand at Shea, became available when the New York Mets were eliminated from the National League East pennant race on Monday. All seats are reserved, with tickets going on sale tomorrow at 9 A.M. They may be purchased at all Ticketmaster outlets or may be charged by calling (212) 307-7171, (516) 888-9000, (201) 507-8900 or (914) 965-2700. The ticket price is $30, plus any local service charge. There is a limit of eight tickets per person.

The original concert dates of Oct. 25, 26, 28 and 29, which went on sale Aug. 19, established a New York record of nearly 250,000 tickets sold in a single day. This shattered a record set by Bruce Springsteen in 1985.

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• October 28, 1989 Setlist

The Rolling Stones Setlist at Shea Stadium, Queens, NY, USA

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• Start Me Up Play Video
• Bitch Play Video
• Sad Sad Sad Play Video
• Undercover of the Night Play Video
• One Hit (To the Body) Play Video
• Tumbling Dice Play Video
• Miss You Play Video
• Ruby Tuesday Play Video
• Angie Play Video
• Rock and a Hard Place Play Video
• Mixed Emotions Play Video
• Honky Tonk Women Play Video
• Midnight Rambler Play Video
• You Can't Always Get What You Want Play Video
• The Little Red Rooster ( Willie Dixon  cover) Play Video
• Can't Be Seen ( Keith Richards on lead vocals ) Play Video
• Happy ( Keith Richards on lead vocals ) Play Video
• Paint It Black Play Video
• 2000 Light Years From Home Play Video
• Sympathy for the Devil Play Video
• Gimme Shelter Play Video
• It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (but I Like It) Play Video
• Brown Sugar Play Video
• (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction Play Video
• Jumpin' Jack Flash Play Video

Edits and Comments

24 activities (last edit by event_monkey , 11 Feb 2023, 17:46 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Can't Be Seen
• Mixed Emotions
• Rock and a Hard Place
• Sad Sad Sad
• Gimme Shelter
• Midnight Rambler
• You Can't Always Get What You Want
• Tumbling Dice
• Brown Sugar
• Honky Tonk Women
• Jumpin' Jack Flash
• Paint It Black
• Sympathy for the Devil
• Ruby Tuesday
• One Hit (To the Body)
• It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (but I Like It)
• (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
• Start Me Up
• 2000 Light Years From Home
• Undercover of the Night
• The Little Red Rooster by Willie Dixon

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The release will be complemented by a double A-sided 10” picture disc for Record Store Day on September 26.

Published on

The Rolling Stones have announced the forthcoming appearance of their previously unreleased 1989 concert film Steel Wheels Live – Atlantic City, New Jersey . It’s been restored, remixed and remastered from the band’s archive and will be out in multiple formats on September 25 .

To complement the release, a double A-sided 10” picture disc of “Rock and a Hard Place” (Live from Atlantic City) and “Almost Hear You Sigh” (Live from Tokyo Dome) will be available for Record Store Day on September 26. The format will be exclusive to independent record stores worldwide.

Steel Wheels was the Stones’ first US tour since 1981, and saw the band in expansive, ambitious and spectacular form, with shows of two and a half hours. Their already-fabled catalogue of hits was accompanied in the setlist by several tracks from the just-released Steel Wheels album, released in late August, 1989.

Photo: Kevin Mazur

These included “Terrifying,” “Sad Sad Sad,” the US top five hit single “Mixed Emotions,” “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Can’t Be Seen.” They take their place in the Atlantic City Convention Center show, that December, with such timeless favorites as “Jumping Jack Flash.” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Gimme Shelter.”

“I would hate to come out with something that’s not startling,” said Mick Jagger on the launch of the 1989/90 Steel Wheels Tour . Needless to say the Stones kept their word, all the more so on the Atlantic City date with a series of remarkable guest appearances.

Photo: Dimo Safari

Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin of Guns N’ Roses accompanied the Stones on the first-ever live performance of “Salt Of The Earth,” from 1968’s classic Beggars Banquet album. Old friend Eric Clapton joined them for “Little Red Rooster” and was also on board as they welcomed one of their idols, blues giant John Lee Hooker, on “Boogie Chillen.”

Steel Wheels Live will be released as a special limited 6-disc version, which includes the Atlantic City performance on DVD, SD-Blu-ray, 2CD, a DVD of their Steel Wheels tour performance at the famed Tokyo Dome, plus Steel Wheels Rare Reels , a CD containing tracks that weren’t part of the core tour setlist. Other formats are a limited edition 180 gram 4LP coloured vinyl; 4LP black vinyl; DVD, SD Blu-ray, DVD + 2CD, SD Blu-ray + 2CD and digital formats.

Steel Wheels Live – Atlantic City, New Jersey is released on September 25. Pre-order it here .

The full Steel Wheels Live tracklist is:

1. Intro 2. “Start Me Up” 3. “Bitch” 4. “Sad Sad Sad” 5. “Undercover Of The Night” 6. “Harlem Shuffle” 7. “Tumbling Dice” 8. Miss You” 9. “Terrifying” 10. “Ruby Tuesday” 11. “Salt Of The Earth” (featuring Axl Rose & Izzy Stradlin) 12. “Rock And A Hard Place” 13. “Mixed Emotions” 14. “Honky Tonk Women” 15. “Midnight Rambler” 16. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” 17. “Little Red Rooster” (featuring Eric Clapton) 18. “Boogie Chillen” (featuring Eric Clapton & John Lee Hooker) 19. “Can’t Be Seen” 20. “Happy” 21. “Paint It Black” 22. “2,000 Light Years From Home” 23. “Sympathy For The Devil” 24. “Gimme Shelter” 25. “It’s Only Rock n Roll (But I Like It)” 26. “Brown Sugar” 27. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” 28. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”

Special 6-disc version also includes:

TOKYO DOME DVD 1. Intro 2. “Start Me Up” 3. “Bitch” 4. “Sad Sad Sad” 5. “Harlem Shuffle” 6. “Tumbling Dice” 7. “Miss You” 8. “Ruby Tuesday” 9. “Almost Hear You Sigh” 10. “Rock And A Hard Place” 11. “Mixed Emotions” 12. “Honky Tonk Women” 13. “Midnight Rambler” 14. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” 15. “Can’t Be Seen” 16. “Happy” 17. “Paint It Black” 18. “2,000 Light Years From Home” 19. “Sympathy For The Devil” 20. “Gimme Shelter” 21. “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)” 22. “Brown Sugar” 23. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” 24. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”

STEEL WHEELS RARE REELS CD 1. “Play with Fire” (CNE Stadium, Toronto, On 03/09/89) 2. “Dead Flowers” (CNE Stadium, Toronto, On 03/09/89) 3. “Almost Hear You Sigh” (Wembley Stadium, London 06/07/90) 4. “I Just Want to Make Love to You” (Wembley Stadium, London 06/07/90) 5. “Street Fighting Man” (Wembley Stadium, London 06/07/90)

Listen to the best of the Rolling Stones on Apple Music and Spotify .

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