Stones could back out of SARS concert.

[Phuz]

With all the griping going on, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones could reconsider appearing at the Toronto SARS-relief concert, warns promoter and impresario Michael Cohl.

"What would you do if you were him?" Cohl asked, referring to Jagger. "(He might say) 'I think I might not come after all. It's not what I signed on for.'"

This week's headlines have complained about everything from fans not being allowed to bring in umbrellas to concert-goers having to walk miles to get home. The good-news story about the Stones trying to raise Toronto's spirits and profile after being ravaged by SARS this spring has quickly turned into a long whine concerning just about everything to do with the hastily conceived concert.

"I'm reading too much of this bulls--t in the Toronto press about the concert," an angry Cohl said yesterday from Stockholm, where the Stones were performing on their European tour.

"What a bunch of a--holes, pardon my French," Cohl continued, referring to the endless media writers criticizing the July 30 Downsview Park concert. "It's outrageous.

"I just hope Mick doesn't read it -- even though it's my job to show it to him."

The Toronto-based promoter warned that all the naysayers would quickly change their tune if the Stones considered pulling out.

"Now with all of the complaints in the Toronto Star, with them pumping up the whole brouhaha, and now everybody's getting ready to go, 'Oh my God, what a bad idea this was,' what do you think would happen tomorrow if I cancelled? If I called in and said the Stones cancel, I mean they'd have a fit, wouldn't they?"

Cohl believes all the "doubting Thomases" should just chill. It's the nature of a "last-minute" concert that there are still many issues that need to be ironed out.

"I can't imagine that between Clear Channel Entertainment and House of Blues and Molson's and Dennis Mills and Jerry Grafstein and the Toronto Police and the Toronto Emergency Services and all of the same people who looked after the Pope at Downsview last year, that these people aren't going to get it together," he said.

"And if I didn't think they were able to get it together, I wouldn't have given them the band. Because at the end of the day, the most important thing I do for the Rolling Stones is make that decision above all others. They look to me to say: 'We can go here to play' and 'We can't go here to play.'"

That'd suck. Wish I was going all the same, ACDC yeaaah.

 

[NoReMoRsE]

I'm not going to the concert but that day should be very interesting for public transit...

I hope they don't back up the sewers and flood Idomo again

 

[xirtam]

So there was this one guy who went to play a bunch of music and he was doing it for a good cause had something to do with SARS the disease not the store so it was like anticommercialism and stuff.

 

[KingNothing]

Originally posted by: xirtam
So there was this one guy who went to play a bunch of music and he was doing it for a good cause had something to do with SARS the disease not the store so it was like anticommercialism and stuff.

And someone got mad on his behalf.

 

[xirtam]

And complained.

 

[Schadenfroh]

if all they have done to themselves already has not killed them, then SARS is a minor concern

 

[xirtam]

I'm not worried.