On August 13, 1998, the Rolling Stones presented a big show in Moscow. That was the first visit to Russia in the history of famous musicians. The long-awaited arrival of the group to the country took place as part of the world tour of the legendary group – Bridges to Babylon 97-98. It was a great event for true fans of the Rolling Stones and just lovers of real live rock music. The concert was organized by the Moscow company Silence Pro in partnership with TNA Group (US).
JSA was invited to work at this event as a local company to manage the technical production of the event and support staging and installing other objects of infrastructure for the concert.
For JSA, this was the third major work on a concert with a high-level world star (before there were: Michael Jackson – 1996 and Jean Michel Jarre – 1997). The company successfully coped with the task, and our team was ahead of all work schedules planned by the group’s management for the concert production. Especially when the dismantling of the equipment and the stage was completed half a day earlier and the tour team RS of technicians was able to rest slightly more.
In this project, we were lucky to work together with Jake Berry / Jake Berry Productions – an outstanding personality in the touring business for the Superstars of the world show business. Below is a photo of Jake Berry and Alexander Strizhak in the JSA production office in Luzhniki.
More than 500 people worked from the JSA side, including managers, supervisors, scaffolders, stagehands, and a team for all local works on technical and other issues. The JSA team managed the installation of the stage, FOH and towers, control room, stage workers, loaders for the show equipment, cranes, a VIP podium, and safety barriers. They also provided and installed plywood for surface coating at the stadium, coordinated other production issues, and much more.
There were many new and interesting things for our team during the preparatory and installation work. We also had some funny moments. There was no professional cover for the fields of stadiums in Russia at that time. So we had to solve the problem. Particularly memorable was “Plywood Madness”, for a lot of plywood was used in the project to cover the running tracks and other stadium sections. “Bridges to Babylon” was a great experience for a young company and became another “bridge” to new achievements in professional activity in the future!
Special thanks from JSA for the positive cooperation on this project: Natalya Kozmina, Andrey Sukharev, Mikhail Kapnik, Alexander Gunyaev, Igor Vereshchagin, Marek Shpindovsky, Natalia Korchagina (Lukyanova), and many others.
In the photos below:
– inside the structure of the “retractable” bridge (span 40 meters in working order), the main feature of the show “Bridges to Babylon”
– The poster of the first concert of The Rolling Stones in Russia, in the center of Moscow on Smolenskaya Square.
– Backstage (a rare shot) – behind the stage, everything was natural.
P.S. As we learned later, the project was not very simple: the promoter had many unexpected problems and external challenges due to the 1998 financial crisis in Russia. Nevertheless, the great show of The Rolling Stones succeeded in Moscow. The fans enjoyed the show and were happy that the long-awaited visit of the famous musicians finally happened.
The photo below shows the moment of dismantling the production set of the Rolling Stones show – “Bridges of Babylon” in Moscow / in front: Local Project Manager – Natalia Kozmina (Silence Pro) and Chef of the local production team – Alexander Strizhak (JSA).
Версия на русском языке: ROLLING STONES – ВПЕРВЫЕ В МОСКВЕ! “МОСТЫ К ВАВИЛОНУ” НА СТАДИОНЕ В ЛУЖНИКАХ
© All photos and pictures are the exclusive copyright of JSA Stage Company.