Fans of the legendary rock band The Rolling Stones had their say on what is by far the weirdest opening act they have ever hired.
While the Mick Jagger-fronted group has enlisted the likes of Prince and The Commodores on previous tours, a unique choice for their Forty Licks tour still stands out to many fans. Kanye West would also open for the Gimme Shelter hitmakers on later tours, though it appears that a show in Hong Kong for the band marked their strangest on-stage offering. While Jagger and the band were preparing backstage, they enlisted the help of an unlikely musician to warm up the crowd ahead of a Hong Kong show in 2003.
A post to the r/RollingStones subreddit had fans share their thoughts on what may be the weirdest and wildest opening acts that had helped the band over the years. One person had the definitive answer though, writing: “An Elvis impersonator opened for them during one of the Hong Kong shows in 2003.”
Mick Gerace, a man tipped as “Australia’s premier Elvis Presley tribute artist” opened for the band’s show in Hong Kong. A review of the show published in 2003 credited Gerace for being a strong imitator of The King, but that the one-third full crowd were not at all interested in his work.
It reads: “The warm-up show started at around 19:15, when only one-third of the seats were filled, while the audience were queuing up for Carlsberg or finishing their supper in nearby restaurants. Mick Gerace, a superb imitation of The King, did quite a number of Elvis golds, including The Wonder of You, my favourite, but the crowd didn’t seem to enjoy it too much.
“The sound was somewhat uneven, and focus lost at times, as if the console was still doing a sound check. The background vocal was The Sweet Inspirations, singing for the King. Suspicious Mind completed the warm-up. Quite a good warm-up on the whole, but the audience seemed to booze and ignore clapping.”
Other fans were delighted to hear that a Presley impersonator had opened for The Rolling Stones. One person wrote: “That’s fucking hilarious.” Another added: “Must have been a great one.”
While fans were delighted by the Presley impersonator, some were alarmed to hear that Prince had received abuse from the audience when he served as an opening act for The Rolling Stones in the 1980s.
According to Far Out Magazine, members of the crowd hurled homophobic slurs at Prince and the band. Recalling the incident, bass guitarist Brown Mark said it was the “crazied thing I had ever seen” with the crowd throwing food at the band.
He said: “Next thing I noticed was food starting to fly through the air like a dark thunder cloud. Imagine 94,000 people throwing food at each other; it was the craziest thing I had ever seen in my life. I got hit in the shoulder with a bag of fried chicken; then my guitar got knocked out of tune by a large grapefruit that hit the tuning keys.”
Despite promoter Bill Graham attempting to calm the situation, Prince and his band were left with no choice but to leave partway through their performance of Uptown. The legendary performer would play just four songs to the crowd, and Prince vowed not to return to the follow-up show two days later.
Speaking in 1983, Jagger confirmed he understood how Prince felt but told him that if he did become a headliner in future, getting chickens and debris thrown at him would be all part of the performance.
Jagger said: “I talked to Prince on the phone once after he got two cans thrown at him in L.A. He said he didn’t want to do any more shows. God, I got thousands of bottles and cans thrown at me! Every kind of debris. I told him, if you get to be a really big headliner, you have to be prepared for people to throw bottles at you in the night.”
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