On June 27, 1972, three Mobile-area college freshmen walked into the Mobile Civic Center to see the Rolling Stones on their legendary 1972 American Tour — the Exile on Main Street tour, the one documentaries are made about. Fifty-two years later, to the month, the same three friends stood in a New Orleans crowd to do it again.
The distance between those two evenings measures not just a band’s career but the reach of live music across a lifetime.
1972: The Greatest Rock Tour Arrives in Mobile
The Stones’ 1972 North American tour is still regarded as one of the greatest rock tours ever staged — a 32-show sprint across America behind Exile on Main Street, with the band at its primal peak. That it routed through the Mobile Civic Center says something about what the Gulf Coast’s concert scene once was: Mobile regularly landed acts that bigger cities got, and the Civic Center Arena — originally Municipal Auditorium — built a history of hosting legendary musicians and groups over generations.
For a group of friends fresh off their freshman year of college, the night delivered exactly what the era promised: “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It)” energy in a packed arena, years before that song was even released. The show became one of those shared reference points — the concert everyone in the group still measured later concerts against.
2024: Time Was on Our Side
When the Rolling Stones announced a rare, exclusive Thursday-afternoon set at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in May 2024 — part of their Hackney Diamonds tour — the same friends, now decades into careers and families, decided history owed them a second show. The 5 to 7 p.m. slot, they noted with some satisfaction, was perfectly suited to attendees of a certain lifestyle.
On May 2, 2024, the three 1972 attendees, joined by a New Orleans friend, folded 19-inch base camp chairs under their arms and headed west. The crowd at the Festival Stage numbered around 40,000, and the average age inside it felt unusually forgiving: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were up there singing, playing and dancing at 80 years old, which everyone present took as encouragement.
The Show
Dumpstaphunk, the New Orleans funk institution led by Ian Neville, opened with the kind of local-royalty set the fest is famous for. Then, out of nowhere, came the three-chord riff that has started more concerts than any other — “Start Me Up” — and the Stones played solidly for two hours.
The New Orleans setting produced the night’s signature moments. Mick duetted with Irma Thomas, the Soul Queen of New Orleans, on “Time Is on My Side” — the song that became the Stones’ first American hit, written, fittingly, with New Orleans in its bones. On “Gimme Shelter,” Jagger traded vocals with Chanel Haynes, the New Orleans-raised singer who had starred as Tina Turner in London’s West End. “Jumping Jack Flash” landed in its 2024 form, and the setlist — one member of the group left with a signed copy — stretched from “Out of Time” back to “Let It Bleed,” a song released in 1969, the crowd’s junior year of high school.
Full Circle
Over supper afterward, the group of five agreed on the only conclusion that mattered: music as timeless as the Stones binds friendships together, even friendships more than 50 years old. The 1972 show was a night; the 2024 show was a reunion — proof that the band’s famous longevity is measured as much in the audiences it carries along as in the albums it sells.
Mobile’s Civic Center has since been through its own renovations and changing fortunes, and the Stones, improbably, are still touring. Somewhere along the Gulf Coast, a few more freshmen are probably buying tickets right now, unaware they’re starting a 52-year habit.