Bridges to Babylon Tour
| Tour by The Rolling Stones | |
| Associated album | Bridges to Babylon |
|---|---|
| Start date | 23 September 1997 |
| End date | 19 September 1998 |
| Legs | 5 |
| No. of shows |
|
| Box office | $274 million ($402.61 in 2017 dollars) |
| The Rolling Stones concert chronology | |
The Bridges to Babylon Tour was a worldwide concert tour by The Rolling Stones. Staged in support of their album Bridges to Babylon, the tour visited stadiums from 1997 to 1998. It grossed over $274 million, becoming the second-highest-grossing tour at that time, behind their own Voodoo Lounge Tour of 1994–1995. The Bridges to Babylon Tour was followed by 1999's No Security Tour.
The tour was announced in a press conference held underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.
The tour began on 9 September 1997 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and comprised fifty-six shows in North America, nine shows in South America, six shows in Japan and thirty-seven shows in Europe. It concluded on 19 September 1998 in Istanbul, Turkey. Five shows were cancelled (in Marseilles, Paris, Lyon, Bilbao and Gijón), and five more were postponed (in Italy, Ireland and Great Britain).
The production was designed by Mark Fisher, Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger and Patrick Woodroffe. The show opened with a circular central screen exploding with fireworks, from which guitarist Keith Richards emerged playing the classic riff from "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". The stage design included a 46 m (150 ft) long telescoping cantilever bridge that extended from the main stage to a 'B' stage in the center of the field.
One of the innovations on this tour was the "web vote": Fans who had purchased a ticket could vote for a song which they wanted to hear. If a song was picked by the web vote 4 shows in a row it became a permanent part of the set list ("Gimme Shelter" was added early on in the tour and "Under My Thumb" came one shy of 4 on 6 occasions, but never was requested for 4 consecutive shows). A few shows had no web vote (for example at the Brazil shows where the band performed a duet with Bob Dylan on "Like a Rolling Stone").
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