When “The World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band’’ rolls through town, we know it’s going to be a party.
However, many things have undoubtedly changed for the Stones since the band’s first Detroit performance in 1964, where they played Olympia Stadium for $3 a ticket. (A Detroit Free Press review of the show said “There were 500 jumping, jittering, squirming, squealing girls dancing in their seats. There were boys, too, about one in seven. Adults looked lonely.”)
For one, they are, well, older (with a median age of 76.5) and, in August, just as they were set to continue their record-smashing No Filter tour, the Stones’ longtime drummer and founding member Charlie Watts died at the age of 80, forcing the band to perform without the beloved “gentleman of them world’s most dangerous band” for the first time in their 60-year-long career.
“…We felt — and Charlie felt — that we should do this tour,” Jagger told the Los Angeles Times. “We’d already postponed it by a year, and Charlie said to me, ‘You need to go out there. All the crew that have been out of work — you’re not gonna put them out of work again. So I think it was the right decision to keep going.”
So, for the band’s 22nd metro Detroit performance, Steve Jordan will set the beat. Meanwhile, there's another change as the setlist will have a notable omission: 1971’s hit “Brown Sugar.” The band announced that they would be removing the song, which they have played since it was released due to the song referencing slavery and sexualization of Black women and girls.
Luckily, the Stones have a million other songs and, not to be morbid, but this might be a good time to cross the Stones off your concert bucket list because, well, the bucket will be kicked someday. “I love to play the drums and I love to play with Mick and Keith and Ronnie, the rest: I don’t know,” Watts said in 2018. “I wouldn’t mind if the Rolling Stones say that’s it — enough.”
Doors open at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 15 at Ford Field; 2000 Brush St., Detroit; 313-262-2000; fordfield.com. Tickets are $96+.
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