On July 12, 1962, The Rolling (then Rollin’) Stones played their first show at the famed Marquee Club in London. By the fall of 1963 they were on the road in Europe, on the low end of a package with the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Bo Diddley and more.
Flash forward 60-plus years, and they’re filling the world’s biggest stadiums — as they have been since the mid-’70s — with the current North American leg of their Hackney Diamonds Tour.
Few acts boast the kind of road resume the Stones have built over the decades. Conservative estimates put the group’s tally at more than 2,000 concerts for more than 45 million people — including an estimated 1.5 million alone on Feb. 18, 2006 at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And sometimes it seems like Mick Jagger has worn precisely that same number of outfits during all those years of performing.
Two of the Stones’ treks — A Bigger Bang from 2005-2007 and No Filter from 2017-2021 — are among the top 10 grossing tours of all time, according to Billboard Boxscore. The group’s two ’90s tours, Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 for that decade, and A Bigger Bang topped the 2000s. Clearly, we like it when the Stones come to town — yes we do.
Why? So many reasons — not the least of which is a wealth of rock anthems the Stones dependably deliver most every time they hit the stage. There’s also staging, which is just as dependably awesome, and a sense of seeing bona fide history on display. We can certainly marvel at (and maybe be a little jealous of) Jagger’s continued vigor as he nears 81, and take comfort in the fact that Keith Richards, also 80, is still inexplicably with us despite behaviors that would take most everyone else off this mortal coil. “How do you make rock ‘n’ roll grow up? It seems to me that’s a very interesting question, and we’re the only answer,” Richards told this writer back in 2005. “When we finally croak, you’ll find out how long we can do this.”
The Hackney Diamonds Tour, which began April 28 in Houston and runs through July 17 in North America, is showing that the Stones have yet to gather any moss. Invigorated by a strong new album of the same name, the early shows have featured strong performances and changing set lists, and fans are still coming in droves.
And that has us thinking back over the group’s touring history, and the enormous legacy that’s been created since those Stones started rolling. Check out our ranking of the band’s 17 tours below,
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