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Topic: Hub fans of Stones wait for satisfaction Return to archive
March 15th, 2005 06:35 AM
Nellcote Hub fans of Stones wait for satisfaction
Rumors swirl about concert at Fenway
By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff | March 15, 2005

The rumor swept Boston like a gust of wind: In August, the Rolling Stones will play at Fenway Park. Twice.

Most of officialdom was mum yesterday, but Mayor Thomas M. Menino passed along some secondhand scuttlebutt: He had spoken to Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino, , who told him the team is ''negotiating with the Rolling Stones to bring them to the city of Boston."

''There's no final contract with the Rolling Stones," Menino warned. But he said the rock band is expected to launch its next world tour at Fenway, making it the third headline act to play the ballpark, after Bruce Springsteen in 2003 and Jimmy Buffett last year.

Red Sox officials did not return calls to confirm the concert, nor did the Stones's New York publicist. A spokeswoman for Tea Party Concerts, which produced last year's Buffett show, had no comment.

But on Stones fans' message boards, diehards were already exchanging information about Boston hotels. On the Red Sox chatfest ''Sons of Sam Horn," members analyzed fan demographics (Stones equals older, equals calmer) and talked about crowd control.

Boston Courant publisher David Jacobs spent yesterday gabbing about the Stones on Los Angeles radio and the BBC. He fielded calls from giddy residents all weekend after his Back Bay weekly on Saturday first reported the Stones were coming, a big photo of Mick Jagger on the front page.

There seemed to be general agreement that the Stones were a fittingly colossal act to fill Boston's hottest concert venue. ''That might actually get this Yankee fan to Fenway," one person wrote on a message board called ''Shidoobee."

The speculation centered on a permit application the Red Sox filed with the city's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing. The paperwork doesn't include the name of the band.

And it's clear that Fenway Park makes for a coveted gig. Pearl Jam, whose frontman Eddie Vedder is friends with Sox general manager Theo Epstein, made its own ballpark aspirations clear, when in town for a concert last fall at the FleetCenter.

A Fenway show ''would be the ultimate goal," Vedder told the Globe at the time. ''And if they can handle Jimmy Buffett fans there, then I'm sure they can handle ours."

The Fenway concerts, introduced by the current Red Sox ownership, have drawn some controversy. Some neighborhood residents have balked about noise and fretted about crowds.

A concert, after all, draws more limousines and hangers-on than a ballgame, said Bill Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association.

And the Fenway shows have tended to run loud and late on work nights, though the sound impact depends, quite literally, on which way the wind is blowing.

Mark Hooker, 28, a Stones fan and Sox season ticket holder, said he could hear Springsteen two years ago from his apartment in Cleveland Circle. Buffett, he said, made considerably less noise.

The Stones, Hooker said, seem a less-obvious fit for a ballpark show. Baseball is the ultimate Americana. Jagger is a knight of the British empire.

Still, he's not going to complain. And Richardson, too, said his group has come to terms with the annual rock shows.

''We're at a stage where we can live with this once a year," Richardson said. ''We've always said that we understood that the Red Sox were going to try to expand their operation in certain ways. But we also expect them to be a baseball team and a baseball stadium, not a concert venue."

That could be the secret, some think, of Fenway's musical cachet. As Jacobs pointed out, the ballpark, which held 36,000 fans for Springsteen, makes for a much smaller venue than the huge stadiums the Stones usually play.

''The acoustics are terrible at Fenway," Jacobs said, ''but there's just something magical. Absolutely magical."

Steve Morse of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Madison Park contributed to this report.Joanna Weiss can be reached at [email protected].

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