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The Rolling Stones
Palace Square, St Petersburg, Russia
Saturday July 28, 2007

The set list

Start Me Up
You Got Me Rocking
Rough Justice
Bitch
She's So Cold
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Midnight Rambler
I'll Go Crazy
Tumbling Dice
--- Introductions
You Got The Silver (Keith)
Little T & A (Keith)
Miss You (to B-stage)
It's Only Rock'n Roll (B-stage)
Satisfaction (B-stage)
Honky Tonk Women (to main stage)
Sympathy For The Devil
Paint It Black
Jumping Jack Flash
Brown Sugar (encore)

Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel  :  7:40pm -  8:25pm
The Rolling Stones              :  9:25pm - 11:20pm

IORR Comments:
This was the best show of the summer for sure. And it was the best performance of the tour. The cheapest ticket was only 1,000 Rubel which is 30 Euro i.e. 40 us dollars. Cheap cheap cheap. And if you walked by you could see the show for free from the distance across this hugh and beautiful place. The crowd was great. Few were sitting down. They were absolutely into the show. Wherever you watched there were big smiles on all faces. The fans could not stand still. Their bodies just had to groove and rock with the music. And the "venue" was absolute beautiful. Unique buildings surrounding a large place/square in historic beautiful St Petersburg. Keith did his best opening parts on Rough Justice, see reports from his previous highlight in Russia, about Flip The Switch in Moscow 1998.
Indeed it was a great great show and a great great crowd. Mick, Keith and Ronnie were running around on the B-stage like maniacs. They wanted this to be a great show. Keith was 100% sharp and concentrated all through the show. The security style was changed 180 degrees vs. the previous show in Russia 1998, when they had 1200 uniformed police all over. Now there were suit and tie style security, in Las Vegas usher style, firm but nice. Nothing on sale anywhere except for special t-shirts. Total of 10 - ten - toilets for the entire crowd. But it was a great show.
St Petersburg is on Moscow time which means it is a city quite north but also quite west in it's time zone, which means we got the sun shining until after 10pm and not dark at all during the show. The twilight was coming as they played the encore. The show worked by the music and not by the visuals, as it is hard to make visuals with a blue sky. The rainbow was dropping down right into the palace on Keith side which made a visual effect you can't pay for, and thousands of great Russian smiles work great as well.
Ronnie was absolutely overdoing himself on some of his solo playing tonight. There were times you started wondering - did Ronnie ever do these great licks? Where does these come from? So great and intense. Fast playing on the end of some songs, playing the way only socalled mastermind guitar players play. Well so then Ronnie joined the league tonight, like he have done already of course to those who listen closely and not just look for errors and jokes.
When a Russian army cap was thrown on the B-stage Mick picked it up, did a nice bow as saying thank you for the hat, then placed it on Ronnie, see photos coming up here soon. Ronnie was wearing the hat with pride of course.
After the show the fans were out in few minutes. The organization was perfect. The streets of St Peterburg were filled with fans who outnumbered the cars. And when you know this is a city of 4.5 million people you understand this crowd was pretty large.
The Stones should add Russia to every tour. Just like Germany, UK, France and the other major markets they perform in Europe. And give the fans the same kind of show they did tonight in St Peterburg. Sure it is hard, but it happened tonight!
Added comments the day after the show:
Take a closer look at one of the photos here. Two bomb squad people with specially trained scaefer dogs looking for bombs on stage, also walking up to the upper deck. The stage is cleared and safe for the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world.
Steve Harley did a great job, just like in Warsaw three days earlier. They had some problems getting the right start of the opening song "Here Comes The Sun", but no worries, Steve Harley changed guitar, tuned up the new one and gave the fans a great version with a new start. During the set Steve Harley said he had been to St Petersburg for three days and loved it. He was in the romantic mood, because he had spent seven hours at the Hermitage Museum (which is actually the famous buildings on the very square they performed), but he needed seventy hours... So he played a romantic song. They ended with the usual hit ""Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me)".
Why was this show so great? Nobody knows. But if you have been to a few shows you know for a fact that certain factors need to be in place in order to make a great show: Temperature. It was perfect. Not too cold. Not too warm. Something like 20 C may be, not raining, but it had rained earlier during the day. Crowd. It was a great crowd indeed. They were new to the Stones you might think, but there were some T-shirts around from several tours. Setting. When you perform on a square with some of the greatest architectual buildings around you and you have your family in the security pit it helps a lot to push the show a little bit extra. Concentration. Everybody was 100% focused from the very first chords of "Start Me Up" to the end of "Brown Sugar". Keith did not even have time to walk the wing during the "Juming Jack Flash" extended solo, which he did on center stage, so he did an "overtime" walk to "Ronnie side" at the very end, during "Brown Sugar". Photo of that walk as seen right here - picture on these pages.

Review by Susan, Austria
I was looking forward to this show since last year, when it was cancelled. And finally it met my expectations. What a venue, what a great place for the show - "Precious Stones" and the Hermitage aside.. At the beginning Keith looked very concentrated, but he got more relaxed during the show. And Keith, thank you so much for "Little T & A"!!! She's so cold - not me, but part of the crowd, sitting in their chairs, very passive. After the return from the B-Stage I was worried a little they would not play "Sympathy" (like they did in Warszaw) but after a few seconds I started shouting "Wuu, huu, wuu, huu..." "Sympathy", my all time Stones favourite performed in St. Petersburg!!!! Tears filled my eyes, this was for sure one of the most emotional moments in my life. Excellent, fantastic show, a venue of its own - what a night! Chto kasaetsa show - eto vosmozhno uvidet v Helsinki!