The world-famous Rolling Stones have added one more venue to their upcoming world tour: Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium.
The show will take place Oct. 8 at 7 p.m.—the Saturday of students’ Fall Break. Tour promoters announced the additional show July 25.
“We have been talking about getting a big event for a long time, but this sort of came out of left field,” Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said, adding that he hopes a big concert like this will become an annual tradition.
The general public will be able to buy tickets starting Saturday, July 30 at 10 a.m. Ticketmater.com has the tickets priced at $60, $95, $160 and $350.
Students, employees and alumni were sent an e-mail notifying them of a presale that begins Wednesday, July 27 at 10 a.m. The presale will last until Friday, July 29 at noon.
Students and faculty are able to purchase up to four tickets for a reduced price; the $95 and $160 tickets are being sold for $65 and the $110, respectfully. Trask said there are only 5,000 reduced tickets available.
“I’m trying to take care of my students,” Trask said.
Trask also noted that the concert is not a Duke event; it is being run through the tour promoters.
Wallace Wade will be able to seat about 40,000 people for the concert. University officials expect to supplement campus police with security personnel.
The Rolling Stones have performed in Raleigh three times, most recently in 1994. The band’s upcoming world tour begins Aug. 21 in Boston. The tour includes a stop at the Charlotte Arena-located in Charlotte, N.C.-Oct. 21.
Trask said the band chose Duke because it had a vacancy in its schedule and would be in this part of the world.
Several students agreed it is exciting that Duke is bringing a big name to campus.
“It’s going to be the most ridiculous senior year ever,” senior Chase LaFerney said, adding that he was going to buy as many tickets as possible and sell them to friends.
But some students expressed concern about the admission prices.
“I’m not so sure about charging $60 for a ticket—that’s kind of steep,” said Eric Aldrich, a first-year graduate student in the economics department.
Trask, however, said he is not worried that ticket-buyers will be lacking.
“I think a lot of people know who they are and I don’t think there will be any shortage of demand for tickets,” he said.
Senior Jesse Longoria, Duke Student Government president, said it is not a problem that some students do not know much about the band-which formed in the 1960s-or many of its songs.
“A lot of students can relate to the Stones without knowing the Stones because a lot of recent bands cover their songs,” he said.
Duke hosted major bands in the 1970s, including the Grateful Dead and the Beach Boys. Trask said he could not remember Duke hosting a bigger band than The Rolling Stones in the last 25 years.
Over the last few years, rappers Ludacris and Kanye West as well as the Indigo Girls, Ben Folds and Collective Soul have performed on campus.
The Rolling Stones will release their first new studio album in nearly eight years, A Bigger Bang, Sept. 6. The band is known for their classic rock hits “Brown Sugar,” “Miss You” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” among others.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.