Tickets Still Available For Rolling Stones Opener

Hours away from The Rolling Stones kicking off the “50 & Counting” tour and you can still buy tickets for the original bad boys of rock ’n’ roll. Of course, it will cost you a bit more than when the band toured in, say, 1969.

Photo: Joel Ryan / Invision / AP

The O2, London, UK

Criticized for setting ticket prices in the neighborhood of monthly car or mortgage payments, The Rolling Stones have yet to sell out tonight’s gig at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. As of 12 p.m. PDT today you could still purchase two tickets placing you across the floor from the stage. With a box office price of $600 per, additional fees raise the final price for a pair of these tickets to $1,280.

But as Mick and the boys prepare to rock their American fans, we were reminded of a simpler time when buying tickets for the Stones didn’t mean a stop at one of those instant loan stores.

San Francisco Chronicle pop culture critic and The Big Event blogger Peter Hartlaub went digging into the newspaper’s archives and found advertisements for past Rolling Stones concerts when tickets were priced a bit lower than this current tour.

For example, Hartlaub found a 1969 ad for the Stones headlining the Oakland Coliseum that also included Ike & Tina Turner, B.B. King and Terry Reid. Prices? $4.50. $5.50, $6.50 and $7.50. That’s for the second show of evening, scheduled to begin at 10:30 p.m. The 6:30 p.m. show had already sold out.

Harlaub figures that inflation has bumped the $4.50 price up to around $27.79. Of course, back in ’69 a Stones show didn’t include a “tongue pit.”