Rolling Stones Cuba concert the latest in a career of historic shows
Here's a look at some of the band's more famous, and infamous, performances
The Rolling Stones played a free concert in Havana Friday.
Rock legends the Rolling Stones strutted and sang before hundreds of thousands of jubilant Cubans in Havana on Friday, delivering a historic concert in a country that once forced fans to listen to their favorite music behind closed doors.
"Hello Havana! Good evening to my Cuban people," lead singer Mick Jagger shouted in excellent Spanish as he launched into the band's classic Jumpin' Jack Flash.
"After today I can die," said night watchman Joaquin Ortiz. The 62-year-old said he's been a huge rock fan since he was a teenager in the 1960s, when Cuba's communist government frowned on U.S. and British bands and he had to hide his Beatles and Stones albums in covers borrowed from albums of appropriately revolutionary Cuban groups. "This is like my last wish, seeing the Rolling Stones."
The band showed their excitement ahead of the concert.
"We have performed in many special places during our long career but this show in Havana is going to be a landmark event for us, and, we hope, for all our friends in Cuba too," the band tweeted with the hash tag #StonesCuba at the beginning of the month.
Here's a look at a few of the Stones's more notable concerts, starting in Toronto.
"Its great to be back in Toronto. We've got a special relationship here," Keith Richards said as he strutted on stage to start what is surely one of the band's more unusual shows.
The Stones played the Oshawa Civic Auditorium (there was a hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens) for a court-ordered benefit for the blind in 1979. That's Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, all on guitar, on stage in Oshawa.
*The 1979 Oshawa concert was, in effect, Keith Richards' sentence for drug charges after quite a lot of heroin was found in his Toronto hotel room in 1977 — the same time as the band's infamous El Mocambo Tavern run-in with Margaret Trudeau.
The Stones organized 'SARS Fest' in Toronto.
Officially named the Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto concert, the Stones headlined the massive festival, held in Downsview park, in 2003.
The band helped organize the show as a way to boost Toronto's image after an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that year. The concert, which drew as many as 500,000 attendees and featured Justin Timberlake, AC/DC and many others, is one of largest concerts ever held in North America.
A Bigger Bang brought more than a million people to Copacabana Beach.
No strangers to massive crowds, the Stones's Rio de Janeiro show in 2006 was touted to be the biggest rock concert in history by promoters but, despite packing Copacabana Beach with over a million people, attendance was well short of the estimated 3.5 million that turned out to hear Rod Stewart play there in 1994. (That's Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood, followed by a crowd shot, on Feb. 18, 2006.)
The Stones played in the Hurricane Sandy relief concert in 2012.
A star-studded lineup that included Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Kanye West and the Rolling Stones — among many other acts — took to the stage at Madison Square Garden for the 12-12-12 superstorm Sandy fundraiser. The concert's organizer, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, said it racked up more than $30 million US in ticket sales alone.
Hyde Park was so nice they played it twice.
The band performed at the British Summer Time Festival in London's Hyde Park in July 2013 as part of their 50th anniversary tour. During the show former member Mick Taylor came on stage to play a couple songs.
Their first Hyde Park show was in 1969.
The Rolling Stones famously put on a concert in London's central park on July 5, 1969, days days after the death of founding member Brian Jones. The free concert was replacement guitarist Mick Taylor's debut with the band (that's him with Mick Jagger at the show) and was their first live gig after a two-year hiatus.
Altamont and the end of Flower Power.
The free concert held in Altamont, Calif., at the end of 1969 was billed as a West Coast Woodstock but instead went down as one of the most violent days in the history of rock music.
During the Stones's set Meredith Hunter was killed by a member of the Hells Angels — who were brought in for security — after he pulled a gun. Three other people died in unrelated incidents and the show is widely regarded as the end of the halcyon era of Flower Power.
With files from Reuters, The Associated Press and Getty Images Hulton Archive