(Berlin) Elisabeth Zours attended her very first Rolling Stones concert in East Berlin in 1990, a few months after the fall of the Wall. An experience that completely changed his life.
Since then, hardly a year went by without this 51-year-old administrative manager going on stage to see these rockers still wriggling despite their great age, wherever in the world they were performing.
Before the pandemic of the new coronavirus, which caused a lockdown of the borders in particular of the United States where they planned several concerts, does not prevent it.
“My tickets for the – canceled – 2020 US tour were still valid, but with the travel ban in effect, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to use them,” Mr.me Zours. Originally from western Germany, she has been living in Berlin for 30 years.
“And (drummer) Charlie Watts died” in August, she adds, “it was a whirlwind of emotion.”
“Maybe the last”
Then there was the announcement, on October 15, by the White House of a reopening of the borders for fully vaccinated travelers, effective from Monday.
Right away, she knew she would be on the first plane.
“I have tickets for four concerts, first in Atlanta, then Detroit, Austin and Hollywood, Florida,” lists Mr.me Zours who has planned a three-week odyssey to make up for lost time.
Fans like her trembled at the idea that the tour was indeed canceled, she said, due to the age of the band members, especially the legendary duo Mick Jagger-Keith Richards who are fast approaching 80. years.
PHOTO JOHN MACDOUGALL, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
Elisabeth Zours fell in love with the Rolling Stones as a teenager.
The fans live permanently with the anguish that everything will stop. “But with the death of Charlie Watts” at the age of 80, “that could really be the case”, worries this affectionate.
She had purchased tickets to the St. Louis concert on September 26 in honor of the deceased drummer, in the hope that the ban on entry into the United States would be lifted by then. But wasted effort.
“In the end I watched (the concert) in the middle of the night in my bed via a live stream », She regrets.
“Broken hearts”
Elisabeth Zours fell in love with the group as a teenager.
“I liked a classmate and the Stones”, of which he was a big fan and owned all the albums, “served as a pretext to get to know him better,” she recalls.
“It was in the 80s, and I asked him to record all the albums on cassettes for me. Nothing happened with the boy, but the Stones are still with me ”.
Being a woman and such a fan of the Stones is not that common, some of their macho-style compositions in particular not fitting well with the present day.
As Brown sugar – the story of a black slave who becomes the sexual object of her white masters and whose title is also a reference to drugs -, or Under my Thumb (literally “under my thumb”), one of the greatest hits of the group which tells in terms considered misogynist by some how a man takes back control of a woman who made him suffer.
If these words are “problematic, I never considered the group to be misogynist.” It gives me strength, ”she says.
Seeing them back on stage will be a bit like coming home.
“Their music is like an old friend. She has helped me in crises since I was 12 years old: my broken hearts, my painful goodbyes, or my moments of depression, ”she confides.
“When I listen to their music, it’s good times back”.