Rolling Stones book Athens date for June
The Rolling Stones, currently sweeping their way across the USA for sold-out shows and critical admiration underlining the band’s staying power, yesterday confirmed a European tour for next summer with a night in Athens, on June 29, included on the itinerary. The tour’s European leg, which kicks off in Barcelona on May 27, includes over 30 European shows in support of an acclaimed new album, «A Bigger Bang.» Ticket prices on the continent will average 75 euros, according to the band’s official website. Though ticket and venue information for Athens remains unconfirmed, the legendary British band’s Greek show is expected to be held at the Olympic Stadium, where the Rolling Stones last performed here as part of their «Bridges to Babylon» tour in the late ’90s. Quite sensationally, the British act had made an unsuccessful attempt to play its first-ever Greek show back in 1967, just ahead of the country’s looming military dictatorship. However, police officers, expressing the political establishment’s line of intolerance toward the notorious visiting rockers, ambushed the stage and stopped the show just four songs into the band’s set. Led by singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, both 62, the Rolling Stones have spent four decades playing their mixture of blues, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. «Everybody has been saying: ‘How can they enjoy themselves? They should be bored to death doing this, ‘» Jagger said yesterday in an interview with Britain’s GMTV. «If we were bored to death, we would not be doing it.»
