The Rolling Stones roll out, leave good impression on fans
SPEEDWAY, Ind. (WISH) – About 50,000 people filled the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday for one of the year’s most-anticipated concerts in Central Indiana.
The Rolling Stones took to the stage for the first time since last performing in Indianapolis back in 1994. Many of the fans camped out for days to be among the first inside the venue, since it was a festival-style concert and had no seating. Sunday was leaving day for those campers.
Darren Harrison, of Connersville said, “I don’t want to leave. I wish we could watch it again.”
Harrison and three of his friends all traveled about 70 miles to attend the historic concert. As they rolled up their sleeping bags and deflated their air mattresses, the group was still thinking about the experience at the concert.
Kim Fox said, “It was awesome. Great.”
John “J.P.” Patterson said, “I’d seen the Stones a couple of times before so I already knew what was happening. I knew it was going to be great.”
While the music was great, it was the moves of one man that got the ladies rockin’ and rollin’.
The Rolling Stones concert at IMS marked the first time the facility has hosted a music event not connected with a racing event.
IMS President Doug Boles said the concert was a success, however there were some minor issues.
He said, “Just like every other new event we had a few things that we could work on as we try to think about whether we do another one of these in the future, but getting people in the venue on 16th Street is still something where we have to get people on this kind of situation to think about coming from the north. So we have to message that a little better because we did have a little bit of a backup on 16th Street. Otherwise it was a pretty good show.”
Boles said IMS is looking into possibly hosting more stand alone music events.
“One of the things we know for sure about the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is it’s obviously a race track but it could suit itself very well as a concert venue. There are great seats there if we wanted to try to and put the stage somewhere and actually use seats. You can do something like what we did with The Rolling Stones which is a big festival. We could do like what we did on Carb Day, which is inside Turn 4. So there’s a lot of flexibility in the facility. So I think music is something that you’re going to see at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway going forward. What I don’t think you’re going to see is music every weekend. You may see music more on a one off type of basis. So you might two or three events a year at the most,” Boles said.