The Rolling Stones
This was the first time I saw the “The greatest rock & roll band in the world”. The year was 1972 in Vancouver. It was a great sold out show at the Coliseum. It was also the time that Annie Leibovitz shot the famous photograph of Keith Richards passed out on a chair at the Blaine boarder crossing waiting to get cleared into Canada. I was just beginning to learn that good shots required good access to the band. These were still the days when anyone going to a concert could turn up with a camera and shoot as much as they wanted. The stage lighting was usually atrocious and most photographs turned out extremely badly. The Stones had more lighting than anyone at the time but it was still more direct light with little regard to fill or ambient light and the stage set was still the basic slightly raised drum kit, wall of amplifiers behind the guitar players and sound monitors at the front of the stage so the band could hear their vocals.
As it was the first concert of the '72 tour they were a bit ragged but no one in the audience seemed to care, after all they were The Rolling Stones. Stevie Wonder opened the show and had a great set endearing himself to a much broader audience. There was a riot outside the Coliseum with a few thousand people trying to crash the gates to get in battling hundreds of police trying to keep them out. Inside we didn’t hear a thing. The Stones played loud.
