Time May Change Me
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The Rolling Stones, Roundhay Park, Leeds, 25 July 1982

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The main Tattoo You tour had taken place in 1981 in the USA and this was a follow-up European leg. Having graduated from Manchester University with my Mathematics degree finding any job in Manchester had proven pretty much impossible in those early years of the Thatcher government which had triggered a recession in 1981. There were 3 of us sharing a council flat in a soon to be condemned block (knocked down before the infamous Hulme Crescents on the other side of the city) and we decorated the bathroom with all our rejection letters.

 

After around 80 unsuccessful job applications I finally got an interview with a small accountancy firm on the outskirts of Leeds. My only interview resulted in a job offer and I took up residence in a bedsit in Kirkstall with the job starting on 2 August 1982. At that time the Stones were the biggest rock band in the World and I was not going to miss this opportunity to see them.  This was the first time Roundhay Park would host a rock concert, but it was so successful that it was followed with the likes of Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson in later years.

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I was more than a little paranoid at the prospect of my camera being confiscated or being refused entry.  I expected to be quite a distance from the stage and therefore took a 200mm Tamron lens.  How the hell could I hide that?  Well it was an all-day concert and I ended up taking the inside out of a vacuum flask and hiding it in the outer plastic body, with the camera body again strapped behind my back.  In those days no-one batted an eyelid at the thought of someone taking some warm sustenance into an all-day show.

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 The attendance was recorded at 120,000 (a record for a gig in the UK at the time), but fortunately I did manage to get in early enough to get a decent position not too far away from the stage. This was a stage that had been created exclusively for this tour. It took a few days to construct (I recall the local BBC TV station reporting on its construction a couple of days before the gig), and they therefore had two identical stages, with the other one in the process of being dismantled at Slane Castle in Ireland where the Stones had played the previous night.

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There were three support acts, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Joe Jackson, and the J Geils Band. I had four films with me, two black and white, one colour negatives and one colour positives/slides, each with scope for 36 photos. I only took a single shot of Joe Jackson and none of the other two supports as I took the view that the film was too precious and needed to be saved for the headliners.

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