Stones’ £4m payday. . . and that’s just for a secret warm-up before the main £6m show!
WHEN The Rolling Stones play a gig, they’re used to doing it on a grand scale, performing in front thousands of delirious fans at packed-out stadiums.
But last week the band sprang a surprise by playing a secret gig –for unsuspecting employees and guests of a truck company.
The private party, for just 1,000 lucky people in Las Vegas, was certainly a nice little earner for Mick Jagger and his bandmates Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood, with each of them pocketing £1million, according to insiders.
And it served as a warm-up for a much bigger event on Friday when the Stones joined Bob Dylan to open the Desert Trip festival in California in front of 75,000 fans, earning the stars another cool £6million in the process.
The band – who are set to release a new album, their first in a decade – caught their small audience in Las Vegas unaware on Monday. The trucking executives and their spouses had politely endured a jazz trio before being ushered into an adjoining ballroom, where the Stones burst into song. And the surprise went both ways. ‘We thought we were playing for a lot of truck drivers,’ Jagger told the well-dressed crowd. ‘So we practised our punching songs. But looking at you, I think we should play our usual set.’
The 14-song show that followed lasted 85 minutes, earning the band more than £47,000 a minute. Jagger, 73, who is set to become a father for the eighth time in December, explained his own motivation for accepting the gig, telling the audience: ‘There’s nothing I like more than a Sunday afternoon drive in an M2 half-cab cutaway chassis truck.’
The party was hosted by truck manufacturer Freightliner, whose top customers may have suspected something big was about to happen: in 2014 the company arranged for US band the Eagles to perform on board an aircraft carrier.
Freightliner boss Martin Daum said: ‘We pride ourselves on throwing the biggest and best celebrations, and the Stones are the biggest and the best.’ This weekend’s Desert Trip festival, also starring veteran stars Sir Paul McCartney and The Who, has been dubbed the ‘ultimate concert’ for baby-boomers.
A playful Jagger joked: ‘Welcome to the Palm Springs retirement home for ageing English gentlemen.’