Concert History | Sullivan Stadium — Three Nonconsecutive Nights Turned Traffic into Town Revenue

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On Friday 29 September 1989, the Rolling Stones brought the Steel Wheels tour to Sullivan Stadium in Foxborough. Boston Globe photographer Ted Gartland identifies that date and place and describes an industrial-themed stadium stage built at a scale he had not seen there before, with the opening marked by fireworks. [Boston Globe](https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2019/07/03/photos-globe-photographer-rolls-through-decades-with-stones/S4fp735yxHan9rMP9Ur9qO/story.html)

This was not an isolated stadium rental. Billboard reported in August that the band had become the first act to sell out three Sullivan Stadium shows, and to do so in record time. The three dates fell on nonconsecutive nights. A WNEV report made on 4 October, after the engagement, records why that spacing mattered: the shows brought heavy security and heavy traffic, but also more than $100,000 into the town treasury. Its footage shows trucks on the field while the stadium stage was being assembled or removed. The opening night therefore reveals a local operating bargain—large concerts arrived as a sequence the town could police and absorb, while municipal revenue helped justify the disruption. [Billboard, 12 August 1989](https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/80s/1989/BB-1989-08-12.pdf) [Boston TV News Digital Library](https://bostonlocaltv.org/catalog/V_DQHVJ6V5FY3JK64)

The WNEV figure is an engagement total, not attendance for 29 September: its report says approximately 150,000 people went to the three sold-out concerts. No single-night crowd estimate is used here.

**Coordinate method.** The pin at 42.092668, -71.267485 is the midpoint of the historical-stadium coordinates in [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q339850) and the independent [USWNT venue record](https://uswntstats.com/venues/052.html); they agree within about 25 metres. Because Sullivan Stadium was a large bowl demolished in 2002 and the surrounding parcel was redeveloped, the honest precision radius is 180 metres. The pin represents the former stadium footprint, not a surviving entrance.

**Cover image.** NASA, public domain: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foxborostade.png). Caption: a later NASA World Wind aerial showing the old Foxboro/Sullivan Stadium beside its successor under construction; it does not depict the 1989 concert.

**Status note (7 September 2026).** Sullivan Stadium had been demolished; the Rolling Stones’ official site remained active. [Official site](https://rollingstones.com/)