Amidst the boxes filled with old check registers, broken parts from kids’ bikes, and other largely disposable detritus, I stumbled across a box of Kodak 35 mm slide carousels. We’d been carting them around for years, never unpacking them, and they’d survived moving vans, hot storage facilities, and the dust and neglect of years of garage life. On a whim — I was really getting bored with the cleanup task — I decided to take a glance at the photos.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the slides — many 25 to 35 years old — had survived in excellent condition: the colors were virtually unchanged from when they were taken. A host of subjects presented themselves — a trip to Europe after college, early photos of my wife and I in the first years of marriage, our children at early ages, and those agonizongly long years spent enduring my Army assignment at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
But then the prize of prizes: photos of a Rolling Stones concert in July 1972. Whoa! Cool!
The concert was held in RFK Stadium in Washington D.C. on July 4th, 1972. I had just graduated from college (no giggling out there, you young whippersnappers…), but I have no recollection with whom I went or how I got tickets. I do remember bringing a Pentax Spotmatic camera, and a new zoom telephoto lens I bought just for the occasion. I was using a Kodachrome slide film — ASA 400, as I recall. Film technology was not what it is today, and the film is fairly grainy when the shots are blown up.
The lead-off band was Stevie Wonder:
You can see Stevie on center stage, at the keyboard, surrounded by his band. The crowd, as you can see, was huge, but not particularly animated at this point.
The Stones had released their Sticky Fingers album — one of their best ever, in my opinion — in April 1971, and this was their first US tour after the release. In addition to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the band featured Bill Wyman on bass (right), Charlie Watts on drums, Mick Taylor on lead guitar (who had played with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and had just joined the Stones the year before), Billy Preston on keyboards, and Bobby Keys on sax.
Bill Wyman stayed in the shadows throughout the concert, playing a clear Lucite Dan Armstrong bass.
Mick Jagger was decked out: blue denim jacket over star-speckled jump suit with red sash at the waist and around his neck, and a star on his forehead. Ostentatious as always.
Here’s the set list for the concert.
