 PNC Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
on Wednesday, September 28th. 2005. The Stones is arriving
Pittsburgh the day before show.
The warm-up on this place is Pearl Jam on the 45.000 PNC Park.
Set list:
Start Me Up -
You Got Me Rocking - She's So Cold - Tumbling Dice - Rough Justice -
Wild Horses
(Eddie Vedder joins - You Can't Always Get What You Want - Rock's Off - Night
Time -
Intros - The Worst -
Infamy - Miss You - Oh No Not You Again -
Get Off My Cloud
- Honky Tonk Women -
Sympathy For The Devil - Paint it Black - It's Only Rock'n'Roll - Jumping Jack
Flash - Satisfaction - Brown Sugar (encore).
Review:
Rolling Stones rock their fans inside and out PNC Park
By Gabrielle Banks and Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette
Mick Jagger gets the sell-out crowd rocking last night at PNC Park.
Click photo for larger image.
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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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