Folsom: Lucky Dip with the Rolling Stones

It’s called the Lucky Dip, and from what I’ve seen, it’s the best value in entertainment.

Lucky Dip tickets go on sale at the main on-sale time as other Stones tickets. But these only have a face value of around $29. (The exact number changes depending on the tour, but it’s usually below $30 each.) Of course, Ticketmaster takes its fees, so it ends up costing around $80 for two tickets.

The cheapest you will find regular Rolling Stones tickets is around $70 each, and that is for nosebleed seats in a stadium. With Lucky Dip tickets, you could end up in the nosebleeds (I’ve seen posts from people who say they ended up in seats where it is difficult to hear or even see the show), but you also could end up in the pit in front of the stage.

Another thing about Lucky Dip is you don’t know where you’ll be sitting until you pick the tickets up at the will call window the day of the show.

But I’ve been very happy the two times I’ve bought Lucky Dip tickets, including for the recent St. Louis show.

My first Lucky Dip experience was for my second Stones show. The August 2019 show at the San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, California, was my second time seeing the Rolling Stones, 20 years after my first show in Memphis.

I heard about Lucky Dip tickets on a message board and decided to try them. We arrived at the show around 5:30 p.m., two hours before the scheduled start time, went through security where you would think the president and pope were speaking, then went to the special Lucky Dip will call window.

Everyone in front of us seemed happy with the tickets they got, with some getting pit seats right in front of the stage. Those can go for over $1,000, though the price tends to come down closer to the show.

We didn’t get those but ended up loving the seats we got, about 25 rows up in the stands to the side of the stage. Singer Mick Jagger came over to the side of the stage closest to us several times, giving us a close-up view.

Although we could see Mick and guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood well, it was tough to see the other musicians, particularly drummer Charlie Watts, who we could see the front half of, with the rest of him obstructed by the side of the stage.

Six months later, we were planning to move to Missouri when the Stones announced a 2020 stadium tour of cities they didn’t hit in 2019 ­— including St. Louis. So on Valentine’s Day 2020, my last day at work in Oregon, I spent part of the morning securing two more Lucky Dip tickets online as soon as they went on sale, at a total cost of $87.50, including Ticketmaster fees.

Of course, COVID-19 made mincemeat of the original scheduled concert date of June 27, 2020. Like nearly all major concerts, it was postponed. No makeup date was announced, so I didn’t know when, if ever, I’d get to see the Stones again.

We waited for more than a year from the original scheduled date. Eventually, more people were getting vaccinated, and COVID cases started dropping. Major concerts even started to resume.

But the chances of seeing the Stones before summer 2022 still looked grim. Although the St. Louis show was to be at The Dome at America’s Center, some of the other concerts were scheduled at outdoor stadiums in cities like Pittsburgh and Nashville that might not be ideal in October and later.

But the stunning news came July 22. The tour would proceed in fall 2021, with the first show in St. Louis on Sunday, Sept. 26. COVID numbers were rising again, but I was cautiously excited.

The show was to be the night before I returned to work after our vacation in Wisconsin, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Then came the news Aug. 4 that Watts would not be taking part in at least part of the tour because he was recovering from what was called a “successful medical procedure.” He would be replaced on the tour by Steve Jordan, who has worked closely with the Rolling Stones for decades.

Then the gut punch came Aug. 24 ­— Watts, who had been with the Stones since 1963, was dead at age 80. The jazz-trained drummer and heartbeat of the band was irreplaceable, but they announced a few days later the tour would move forward.

We started the day of the concert in Davenport, Iowa, but raced home. I went and took some photos at the Immaculate Conception Fall Festival, then came home to get ready for the show.

Even the parking was cheaper than it is for many Stones shows. We parked for $15 about a half-mile from the dome in a garage near Busch Stadium.

We went to the Lucky Dip will call window, where there was a small line. A man in front of us screamed excitedly when he opened his envelope and saw pit tickets.

We opened ours to see the seats were in the 100 level, which means they were likely to be good. Although the pit would have been nice, we already were tired from our trip, so standing for four hours did not sound ideal.

Unlike the Stones show we went to in California, where people with Lucky Dip tickets had to enter the stadium immediately upon getting their tickets, we were able to go back on the street before entering. They warned people that they could be kicked out if they sell Lucky Dip tickets, but we wouldn’t do that anyway.

We went inside (the usher liked seeing rare cardboard tickets) and found our seats to be around the 50-yard line (back when it was a football stadium), 15 rows up. We loved the seats, which had a great view of the stage, not too far away.

Naturally, I had to check Ticketmaster to see how much these seats would have cost on the open market ­— $346.50, plus fees, for each ticket. So we got a discount of more than $600 total.

The show started with a drum beat and video tribute to Watts over the years on the enormous stage. It was sad to think we would have had great seats to see Charlie this time, but we were robbed of that opportunity by the 15-month delay (another sad result of the pandemic).

More thoughts on the show

This was our first time watching a large, non-social distanced indoor event since the pandemic started, so my wife and I kept our masks on the entire show. Though the rules said attendees were supposed to wear masks, those wearing them in our section were a small minority.

Finally, we heard the opening to “Street Fighting Man,” fireworks shot off the top of the stage and the boys came out and tore things up for two hours.

It was incredible seeing Mick Jagger’s energy at 78 (and the fact he can still wear a see-through shirt).

Of course we missed Charlie, not just because of his presence and understated drumming, but because of the impact it had on the setup of the show. My favorite part of the 2019 Stones concert was when they came out to play “Let it Bleed” and “Sweet Virginia,” lesser-known tracks from their classic album era of 1968-72, on the mini stage near the center of the stadium floor.

With our tickets close to the mini-stage it would have been fantastic to see that again. Mick came out to the center stage several times, so it was still a good spot.

They mixed in some songs I hadn’t seen live before, like “Under My Thumb,” “19th Nervous Breakdown” and “Wild Horses,” with classics like “Gimme Shelter” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

The one lull came with the dragged-out versions of “Miss You” and “Midnight Rambler,” played back-to-back. But that gave me a chance to spend time observing the playing of Jordan, whose drumming was a slightly more funky version of what Watts’ did, and longtime keyboard player Chuck Leavell, who I love because he is a Georgia guy in a British band (who also does a lot for the country’s forests).

Charlie’s death made us appreciate the guys who were still up there even more.