Stockholm July 31st was supposed to be the last show of The Rolling Stones SIXTY tour in Europe 2022. From experience I know that things may change, so I kept all of August available, in case there were delays, changes or additions. Luckily the Stockholm show went on exacly as planned, but it was not the last show of the tour, as they added another show, at Berlin Waldbühne in Germany, three days after the Stockholm show.
I went home for a day or so after being on the road for two weeks in Vienna, Lyon, Paris and Düsseldorf/Gelsenkirchen. The return flight to Norway on the day after the Gelsenkirchen show went fine, and same with the flight from Oslo to Stockholm 36 hours later. Oslo to Stockholm is a relatively short distance. In an emergency, i.e. closed airport, strikes, or other travel issues, I can drive the distance it in 6-7 hours. Also, there are several flights. I was never worried about travel to the Stockholm show, like it was a worry for the rest of Europe this summer.
I had my daughter joining me on the show travel to the Vienna show. It is always great to be with family on tour. For the Stockholm show, I was joined by family once more. My oldest son drove with his family the six hours to Stockholm a couple of days before the show, and we spent two days in Stockholm together. We were three generations of my family at the Stockholm show.
Stockholm is a great and beautiful city, with water all over. I have been to every Stones show here for as long as I can remember. Also, I took my sons to Råsunda, to see Queen and Gary Moore way back in 1985, so travel to shows in Sweden is nothing new to us. My first Stones show was in Gothenburg Sweden 1973, and I never missed any Stones shows in Sweden since then.
We did a visit to Grand Hotel, where the Stones stayed, had drinks there, met friends, and then we moved out to our hotel – Quality Hotel Friends, right next to Friends Arena. It was getting warmer, and more fans were arriving the day before the show. I met many many friends from Norway, also from Sweden, and other places around in Europe as well as the rest of the world.
On this tour I have been very careful about not getting Covid, as I have friends who have got Covid, and lost shows due to high fever and illness. I never loose shows, for me it was very important to be in my own tour bubble, limiting the number of close contacts. Usually I am in close contact with 50-200 fans and friends in every city on tours. That would introduce a high risk of Covid, so just like in USA last year, I reduced the number of close contants to a minimum on the SIXTY tour, may be 10-20 close contacts per show/city. This way I reduced the risk of getting covid by 90%. Mask on wherever there were many people, like hotels, travel and so on. Meeting people on tour is always a great part of touring, but I could not take any risks, so touring this year was very different from pre-Covid days, also sort of unfriendly, but I could not take many risks. In Stockholm I could lower my “guard” a bit, meeting more people and close friends, because it was just three days until the last show of the tour – in Berlin.
We spent the show day mostly by the stadium, and at the nearby area Råsunda, resting, dining early, drinking water, preparing for the show. It was hot, but not that hot. We did not know the conditions inside the arena, it turned out it would be very, very hot, almost like at the Lyon show. It was a reminder of the fact that you must always drink a lot of water before entering any venue, because you never know how the situation is inside the venue. As Friends Arena have a closed roof, and not proper ventilation, the temperature got too high, not really comfortable, in fact dangerous for those who did not drink a lot ahead of the show.
This is parts of my report from the Stockholm show:
Having close family with me to the show made it emotional when the pictures of Charlie went up on the screen at the show opening. I have seen this intro fourteen times last year in USA, and thirteen times this year, I got used to it, and since the sadness at the St Louis show, I have learned to live with the band without Charlie on stage. Still, with family around me, all the emotions from the St Louis show got much closer, and when Mick dedicated the show to Charlie, after they had done “Let’s Spend The Night Together”, I realized I still missed Charlie so much.
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The venue was very very hot. Dehydration was a danger, so we had to rush over to some water taps near the pit to fill up with water, avoiding any problems during the show. Thanks to the venue for making water easily available!
For show reports and pictures please see the IORR reports pages:
The Rolling Stones
Friends Arena
Stockholm Sweden
Sunday July 31, 2022
