Rolling Stones rock their fans inside and out PNC Park
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Alyssa Cwanger, Post-GazetteMick Jagger gets the sell-out crowd rocking last night at PNC Park.
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While top-dollar ticket holders awaited the arrival of the Rolling Stones last night inside a packed PNC Park, another party got going on the streets and sidewalks and riverbanks outside the stadium, among hundreds of Stones fans who did not pay a penny for the privilege.
Rock fans without tickets spread picnics on the sloping lawns outside the outfield stands and sipped beers stretched out on yoga mats on the Clemente Bridge. The guitar strains of the Stones and Pearl Jam, the opening act, carried across the rivers and could be heard as far away as Mount Washington.
More than 100 boats anchored on the Allegheny River by the stadium, including a group of about 20 children and two chaperones who paddled up in a canoe.
The Rolling Stones came in promising "A Bigger Bang," and that's exactly what they delivered in a performance that kicked off with fireworks, outer-space video images and flames shooting out of the floor as the band tore into "Start Me Up."
They stayed in trashy rock mode for the first few songs -- "You Got Me Rocking," "She's So Cold" and "Tumbling Dice" -- as Mick Jagger worked the crowd in gold lame, looking sharp and moving like a frontman half his age -- assuming any frontman half his age could hope to move that way.
And when they reached into "A Bigger Bang," their most exciting new release in more than 20 years, for a raucous "Rough Justice," they rocked even harder, displaying a youthful abandon that flew in the face of those premature rumblings about the band's advancing years.
Sam Amata was glad he drove in for the show from Cleveland, even though he'd seen the band Saturday night in Columbus.
First Published September 29, 2005 12:00 am
