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Dec. 5, 1981: Superdome, New Orleans, LA, USA Under My Thumb/When The Whip Comes Down/Let’s Spend The Night Together/Shattered/Neighbours/Black Limousine/Just My Imagination/Twenty Flight Rock/Going To A Go Go/Let Me Go/Time Is On My Side/Beast Of Burden/Waiting On A Friend/Let It Bleed/You Can’t Always Get What You Want/Band introduction/Little T & A/Tumbling Dice/She’s So Cold/Hang Fire/Miss You/Honky Tonk Women/Brown Sugar/Start Me Up/Jumping Jack Flash/Satisfaction
The Rolling Stones live in New Orleans 1981 (from nola.com):
The Stones concert which set records not only here but across the country was Dec. 5, 1981. The Superdome crowd of 87,500 broke the U.S. record for the largest attendance at an indoor concert. Although George Strait shattered the record with a 2014 concert in Dallas, the Stones still hold the title for the largest crowd ever for a Superdome concert. Their 1981 show featured opening acts The Neville Brothers and George Thorogood and the Destroyers.
“Clad in a red and white Hawaiian shirt with sweat pouring off, Mick Jagger danced and gyrated across the stage of the Superdome Saturday night as the stadium shook with the deafening music of the Rolling Stones,” reported The Times-Picayune front page the next morning.
A few days before the concert, gossip columnist Betty Guillaud chronicled a private party hosted for the Stones aboard the riverboat President, which was catered by Paul Prudhomme and featured performances by The Meters, Deacon John Moore, Clarence “Frogman” Henry and The Neville Brothers. Jagger and then-girlfriend Jerry Hall also dined at Brennan’s and Broussard’s while in town, Guillaud reported.
The Rolling Stones American Tour In 1981 Set A Record That Would Stand For 33 Years (from OffBeat Magazine)
Sitting in his office in California, legendary concert promoter Bill Graham searches for the answer as he puts together The Rolling Stones American Tour 1981.
“New Orleans was a tough one because I had to make a decision as to whether we should play there or go to Baton Rouge to the university stadium,” Graham said in his 1990 auto-biography My Life Inside Rock and Roll. “The history of rock and roll shows in New Orleans was not all that great. I decided to go for it and do the Superdome.” It’s a gamble that would pay historic dividends.
Over in Tennessee, Pat Adams and his friend hear that the Stones will be playing at the Superdome in New Orleans and purchase a pair of tickets at a Nashville record store for the princely sum of $18.50 each. They start up the car for the all-night drive to the Crescent City. “We made it to New Orleans the next morning. We checked into the hotel, rested up a bit and headed to the concert. We got there early and were among the first people to get into the Superdome,” Adams writes on his website http://www.tennesseeconcerts.com. “We enjoyed walking up the ramps and checking out this massive venue, eventually ending up on the floor level when the concert began.”
The larger-than-life stage was the handiwork of Japanese designer Kazuhide Yamazaki. “We had the bright, bright primary colors and we had these enormous images of a guitar, a car and a record (and an American flag),” Mick Jagger recalled in a 2003 interview.
Back then, there was no reserved seating. It was all general admission seating— first come, first served. If you secured a spot near the front of the stage, you could not leave to go to concession stands because you would never get your place back. The Neville Brothers opened the show followed by George Thorogood & The Destroyers. “Both acts were great. They flashed up a sign that the concert had set a record for the largest indoor concert ever held with 87,500 people,” remembers Pat Adams.
Then, it was time for the main event. Jagger gyrated onstage clad in a red Hawaiian shirt and yellow football pants. They opened with the 1960’s hit “Under My Thumb” as the crowd rocked back and forth and the force of it separated friends in the front rows as the pandemonium unfolded. An anonymous fan said, “Standing on the Superdome floor front and center five rows back, the sound was incredible. With all of the crowding and pushing, I had long been separated from my brother and sister. During ‘Under My Thumb’ my sister was on the front row being forced against the plywood barricade. She remembers looking at Keith Richards who was standing 15 feet from her. The Stones security guards thought she was going to pass out, so they pulled her over the barricade and threw her under the stage. They then threw her back into the audience.”
The Stones would proceed to play for two and a half hours. “First time I heard them play ‘Let It Bleed’ live,” remembers a fan. “They played many songs from their 1981 album Tattoo Youand the 1978 album Some Girls. Before ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ Jagger yelled, ‘We’re going to need your help on this next song. New Orleans, can you sing?’ At the end, all of the lights came on and they blew the lid off the Dome.
Bill Graham’s gamble on New Orleans had paid off. “We went into the record books for doing the biggest balloon drop in the history of an indoor closed stadium,” remembered the late Graham. “Since we had a few days off, I decided New Orleans was the ideal spot to throw a middle- of-the-tour crew party. We got Paul Prudhomme, the great Cajun chef, to cater a party for us on this beautiful paddlewheel steamer (SS President). I invited all the local musicians—the Meters and Allen Toussaint and Professor Longhair and a lot of local Cajun musicians. Nine hundred people on the boat and we danced all night and it was a great party.”
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