AUGUST 8, 1998 – Over thirty years after the Rolling Stones requested to perform in Russia, they gave first concert near Moscow, playing through a driving rain before an appreciative crowd nearly 100,000 strong at the Grand Sports Arena in Luzhniki. ”At last, we are here,” Mick Jagger yelled into the microphone, his voice booming across the packed-to-capacity sports stadium The band came on stage playing their classic, “Satisfaction” then mixed other old standards such as “Honky Tonk Woman” and “Start Me Up” with their more recent material as “Anybody Seen My Baby?” and “You’ll Never Make a Saint Out of Me.”
“It’s our youth,” pop singer Alla Pugachova, Russia’s most famous contemporary entertainer, said before entering the stadium. “It’s a wonderful time.” The Stones had first applied for permission to play in the Soviet Union in 1967, but after Soviet officials went to watch a concert in Warsaw, Poland, they didn’t approve of what they saw. “They thought the show was so awful, so decadent, that they said this show would never happen in Moscow,” Jagger told a news conference at the 1996 event. “Anyway, things have changed,” he added. “We’re thankful to be here at last.”
