This is the story behind the IORR report about The Rolling Stones Photo session and rehearsals at the Estadio Nacional, Santiago de Chile, Chile, Monday February 1, 2016. May be it sounds easy and random, but to be honest, there is very little I do by random on Stones tours, and especially not just before tour start, on a day when I expect The Rolling Stones to be doing soundcheck and rehearsals at the stadium…
I was meeting friends and people at the hotel where The Rolling Stones were staying in Chile. As expected, they were preparing to go to the stadium for rehearsals. I did not want to waste any time, so I asked a taxi to drive me to the stadium. The drived did only speak Spanish. I did only speak English. He asked me where I wanted to enter, and I said yes, main entrance. He took me into the stadium, past the guards, past any security, and past a hundred or so fans by the gate. I did not want to be on my own inside the stadium, so I walked back out to the fans, well what I thought was fans…
There were some hundred or so fans. More than half of them had large cameras. I counted may be twenty large cameras for video. Then after some twenty minutes everybody gatherer in a corner. I join any queues, just in case, and I usually join the queue in the front, as it is forming. There was a lady with some five or so sheets of stickers. They had PRESS printed on them, and there were some 10 stickers on each sheet.
I asked for a press sticker, she said “camera”, and I showed here my tiny little pocket camera. She smiled. Then the others with their large real press cameras got their stickers. I stayed in the queue next to the lady waiting patiently, not pushing, not begging, just waiting, may be I made sure she had a close look at my T-shirt. Then she looked at me, placed the PRESS sticker on my T-shirt, and I was part of the fifty or so press team for the Rolling Stones press photo shoot in Chile.
The press shooting was done in less than three minutes, but it was some great three minutes. Later on I got to hear the Rolling Stones rehearse for two hours. It was a great day in Chile indeed, and for me, the tour had started, as usual, when I left home, and today it was the real start, the real band, the real Stones, the real great appearance and their great songs. The tour is on!
