Joe Bonamassa reflects on opening for ‘the Greatest Rock and Roll Band Ever’

What exactly goes through an artist’s mind when they get the call to open for The Rolling Stones?

In Joe Bonamassa’s case, he first felt confusion. “I go, ‘Did they run out of people?’” Bonamassa recalled during a recent interview with Blues Rock Review. “Because those calls don’t happen for me.”

The blues chart-topper was preparing for a performance in Paris at the time his manager approached him about the opportunity back in April. The Rolling Stones invited several guest musicians to open for them as part of their 2024 tour in support of Hackney Diamonds, the band’s first collection of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. The Stones wanted Bonamassa to open for them on May 15 at Lumen Field in Seattle, Wash.

“Just to be asked to do that was crazy,” Bonamassa reflected. Once he had been reassured that the invitation was real, his answer was immediate. “I’m like, ‘Sure, let’s do it. Of course.’”

Bonamassa and his band have played for huge crowds before—as many as 60,000 or 70,000 people at various music festivals in Europe, or nearly double the 35,000 to 40,000 that Bonamassa estimates he played for at Lumen Field. But that opening slot for the Stones was an entirely different experience. It started on a positive note, with the Stones’ longtime sound mixer, Dave Natale, giving Bonamassa’s team “a really open lane” with the sound system. The show that followed was electric.

“We sounded really good,” Bonamassa said. “We got two standing ovations, and we killed it. And that’s how I rate the show: We killed it.”

The Stones’ audience was a solid fit for the blues music Bonamassa brought to the stage. A quick glimpse at his social media numbers after the concert further confirmed the match. “I got 10,000 new Instagram followers in 45 minutes of that show,” Bonamassa said. “We killed it.”

Even with the strength of his own performance, Bonamassa was blown away by the one that followed.

“Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Steve Jordan, Darryl Jones, Chuck Leavell, Bernard Fowler and company come out,” Bonamassa remembered, “and Keith goes into ‘Start Me Up,’ and with two chords—remember now, we killed it—and within two chords, they killed us.”

Watching the rock ‘n’ roll icons bring their magic to the stage was a special experience for Bonamassa. “You don’t realize how effing good those guys are until you see them live,” he said. “The songs are insane, iconic. But they are good. They are better than good. They are the greatest rock and roll band ever.”

The energy that the band’s three core members—Jagger and Richards, who are in their early 80s, and Ronnie Wood, who is 77—brought to the stage also left an impression. “Mick is a freak of nature,” Bonamassa said. “He’s 80 years old, running around. He’s probably running five miles up there, 10 miles. Keith sounds the same. Ronnie sounds the same. It’s just an amazing thing.”

In the couple of months that have followed the Seattle show, Bonamassa has kept busy with his own projects. He released V, a new album with Black Country Communion, in mid-June and followed shortly thereafter with his own Live at the Hollywood Bowl With Orchestra. The new live album earned him his record-setting 28th No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart.

But as Bonamassa pointed out, sharing a bill with one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands of all time is an experience that doesn’t come along every day. 

“I was just honored to be in their orbit for an afternoon,” Bonamassa said. “That was such a great show.”