Remembering the summer of 1972...

In the summer of 1972, I attended a Rolling Stones concert at the Montreal Forum, which was located at the corner of Atwater Ave. and Ste.Catherine Street in Montreal's downtown. It was right across from Cabot Park, where many of us young folk would meet and hang out. Of all the tours the Rolling Stones made across North America, the 1972 tour was probably the most outrageous, most provocative tour ever. For a number of reasons. For a synopsis of the tour itself, you can visit the link below, which provides an 'unofficial' bibliography:

http://www.culturecourt.com/Ajo/media/CBlues.htm

The concert itself was epic, held during a veritable heat wave on July 17th. The temperature inside the Forum, jammed to capacity with delirious fans, soared into the 100s. It wasn't long before many of the young women in attendance began hauling off their tops. Sticky Fingers had been released in April of 1971 and was still horrendously popular, when they followed this up with the Exile on Main Street album in the spring of 1972.

Following this concert, some young French nationalist asshole, planted a bomb under one of the Stones' trailers, which were parked out back of the Forum on De Maisonneuve Blvd. It detonated and destroyed some of the Stones' equipment. Mick Jagger quipped: "Why didn't the cat leave a note?"

What followed was a musical drought for the cultural ghetto which Quebec had become. There was not a single group which toured North America for the next 17 years, that would play in that province and rightfully so. No civilized person has to deal with that kind of xenophobic bullshit.

It wasn't until 13 December 1989, that the Stones would deign darken the province of Quebec with their shadows. It was during the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour, when they played Montreal's Olympic Stadium for the first time.