Nettes Review von der Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Rolling Stones rock their fans inside and out PNC ParkThursday, September 29, 2005
By Gabrielle Banks and Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
While top-dollar ticket holders awaited the arrival of the Rolling Stones last night inside a packed PNC Park, another party got going on the streets and sidewalks and riverbanks outside the stadium, among hundreds of Stones fans who did not pay a penny for the privilege.
Rock fans without tickets spread picnics on the sloping lawns outside the outfield stands and sipped beers stretched out on yoga mats on the Clemente Bridge. The guitar strains of the Stones and Pearl Jam, the opening act, carried across the rivers and could be heard as far away as Mount Washington.
More than 100 boats anchored on the Allegheny River by the stadium, including a group of about 20 children and two chaperones who paddled up in a canoe.
The Rolling Stones came in promising "A Bigger Bang," and that's exactly what they delivered in a performance that kicked off with fireworks, outer-space video images and flames shooting out of the floor as the band tore into "Start Me Up."
They stayed in trashy rock mode for the first few songs -- "You Got Me Rocking," "She's So Cold" and "Tumbling Dice" -- as Mick Jagger worked the crowd in gold lame, looking sharp and moving like a frontman half his age -- assuming any frontman half his age could hope to move that way.
And when they reached into "A Bigger Bang," their most exciting new release in more than 20 years, for a raucous "Rough Justice," they rocked even harder, displaying a youthful abandon that flew in the face of those premature rumblings about the band's advancing years.
Sam Amata was glad he drove in for the show from Cleveland, even though he'd seen the band Saturday night in Columbus.
"You never know when they're gonna come back intact," he said. "Or at all."
"They inspire me, seeing them running and jumping around like that. It makes me think it might not be so bad when I hit that age," said Amata, 52.
"What's old? I plan to rock 'n' roll until they put the lid down," said Patti Fine, who was 13 when she saw her first Stones concert in 1964. "Look at this place. There's young. There's old. There's middle-aged. They're obviously doing something right."
That something right included dusting off "Paint It Black;" inviting Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder back to join in on "Wild Horses;" a suitably raucous performance of "Rocks Off" and spirited takes on such overplayed staples as "Sympathy for the Devil," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)," "Jumpin Jack Flash" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Midway through the set, they rolled a portion of the stage out to the middle of the crowd for "Miss You," another great new rocker called "Oh No Not You Again," "Get Off My Cloud" and "Honky Tonk Women" as a giant inflatable tongue with flowers on it stood in for the band on stage.
This being a stadium show, they brought along a huge production, including two metallic columns of balconies flanking the stage where fans could pay a premium to look down on the show from a really strange angle. But they could have done the same set on an empty stage without detracting from the entertainment value.
Like Pearl Jam's set, for example. Strolling on stage with a bottle of red wine, Vedder told the crowd, "I guess it's our job to get you guys in the mood." But judging from the crowd reaction, Pearl Jam's spot on the bill was far from your typical opening-for-the-Stones scenario.
They had people standing and singing along for almost their entire 60-minute set, a scissor-kicking explosion of punkish abandon and guitar heroics that featured impassioned performances of such modern rock radio staples as "Better Man," "Daughter," "Jeremy" and "Evenflow," which emerged as an epic behind-the-head guitar jam.
And if Vedder's heart was more invested in the newer songs, you never would have known from the intensity he poured into "Alive" and "Jeremy," which he followed by joking, "All right, here's another teen death song for you" as a setup for the band's hit version of the doo-wop classic "Last Kiss."
Other covers ranged from "Rockin' in the Free World" to John Lennon's Nixon-era blast at uptight politicians, "Gimme Some Truth."
So yeah, they did their job. In fact, it's hard to picture many bands that could've followed their opening set. But we're talking the Stones here. Jagger may be looking older than he did in 1964, but the Stones are still working the stadium circuit for a reason. And it goes beyond their alarmingly youthful frontman. Charlie Watts remains the greatest argument for understated drumming in a rock 'n' roll band, while the other "frontmen," Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, did exactly what a Stones fan would have wanted them to do on lead guitar, trashing their way through countless variations on those old Chuck Berry licks with Richards tearing it up in particularly raucous fashion on "It's Only Rock and Roll."
"If they lost anything, I don't notice it, because I've lost more," Amata said.
Outside the stadium, Greg Joyce had organized 27 friends and three dogs from the All-States Marina in Glenfield to help celebrate his 46th birthday. Sitting barefoot on a bar stool on the Riverwalk and sipping a beer, Joyce explained that he took a half-day off work to land a choice spot for his house boat.
Perched atop a stairway to the Riverwalk, Erika May, a recent Carnegie Mellon University graduate, strummed Stones and Pearl Jam tunes on a steel-stringed guitar and even made a little money for her efforts.
Although they were outside the big event, many of the Stones fans said they had planned to attend the concert this way since it was first announced.
"Two hundred bucks for a ticket? They've got to be out of their minds," said Jack Fossett.
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