The iconic Rolling Stones lips stage at Knebworth ’76
“The Rolling Stones play Knebworth at the weekend amid speculation that it is the last time they’ll appear live in this country… ‘When bands have been around this long,’ guitarist Keith Richards is reported to have said, ‘they should be dead and buried.’ And says [singer, Mick] Jagger: ‘I would hate to think I would still be singing Satisfaction when I’m forty.’” reports Maurice Chittenden of the Luton Evening Post in the summer of 1976.
In the summer of 2016, the concert itself is forty – and Mick Jagger somewhat older – but still the Rolling Stones are not gathering moss, announcing a big concert in Palm Springs, California, in the autumn. Also on the bill are British artists Paul McCartney, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and The Who. “Sounds like a great bill for Knebworth”, a friend says to me, hoping I will say that Knebworth has been lined up as the U.K. venue for a similar concert next year. “We already did that, in 1990,” I say, blasé, “all those bands played Knebworth long ago – the Americans are just catching up.” But, of course, I entirely agree – if such a concert were brought to the UK, Knebworth Park, with the largest licence capacity in the country, would be the place for it.
I might even go watch this time. In the summer of 1976, I was a ghastly 14-year-old, Star Trek was on the telly, and Mick Jagger just some skinny old bloke. Well, Mick Jagger is still skinny, still old, and still singing Satisfaction – and, forty years on, I am only one of these things!
Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com