The opening night from Mick Jagger’s 1988 Japanese tour
In Japan, where rock & roll fans consider the Rolling Stones hon mono – “the real thing” – Mick Jagger‘s eight-show solo concert tour there in 1988 sold out in a matter of hours. The shows were the first Japanese concerts by any member of the Stones, whose 1973 tour of the country was scrapped due to drug-related visa problems.
Jagger gave four performances in Osaka, two in Tokyo and two in Nagoya. A total of about 170,000 fans paid an average of 6500 yen apiece – approximately $50 – for the chance to see the forty-four-year-old superstar.
Officially dubbed Suntory Dry Beer Live Mick Jagger in Japan, the tour was a commercial and artistic success – although some critics were disappointed by how Jagger’s career as a solo performer had turned out. Indeed by the time he reached Tokyo’s Korakuen stadium on March 22nd, he had dropped three of the solo songs he had performed at his shows in Osaka; the Tokyo concert featured just six songs from his two solo albums, She’s The Boss and Primitive Cool. Instead, the fans at the newly opened 50,000-seat domed stadium were treated to a heavy dose of Stones classics in the twenty-two-song, two-and-a-half-hour show.
The first show of the tour however was something of a triumph. Performed at Osaka’s Osakajo Castle Hall on 15th March 1988, and featuring an energy and dynamic rarely seen again on the tour, Jagger was clearly enjoying himself, as were the audience, who had waited so long to witness a live Rolling Stone in their home country. With the entire show transmitted for live FM broadcast, this recording also remains the finest quality show available from Jagger’s 88 tour.