10 Aug 2020
For any fervent fan who has been lucky enough to get there, front and center is the most coveted, sacred spot to experience a Rolling Stones concert!
There’s unequivocal excitement, intimacy and energy in this legendary and transcendental space where the Stones music seems to be absorbed via osmosis.
It’s where you can catch a guitar pick from Keith, or make eye contact with Mick, or even get a special riff played just for you from Ronnie. You can watch the band’s cues and interactions on a stage that’s mere meters away and maybe score a set list at the end from a roadie. It’s where you can turn around to embrace the awe and power of tens of thousands of other stadium fans behind you.
But it’s also where the surging crowds can crush you against the barricade and where you can’t leave your spot to get a drink or visit the restroom. It’s the place that serves as a flashpoint where the most volatile, territorial and unforgiving fans can converge.
Whether it’s in the pit or on the pitch, a combination of merriment, mayhem and madness has erupted in the front row at Rolling Stones concerts everywhere since 1962. And it’s often still instigated by the original fan disruptors who are now close in age to the septuagenarians themselves.
But front and center holding her own in that notorious pit for the “No Filter” tour – and in all her glory – is where you’d find “Gail on the Rail,” a tiny blonde lady with a megawatt smile.
It’s a very familiar spot for Gail, she’s been on the rail 40 times at Stones shows in stadiums, arenas and theatres these last 21 years. Before then, being up close and personal for the Rolling Stones was simply a dream.
“Once I had a taste of it, I decided I wanted this same spot for every show,” Gail Hoffman (#Gailontherail) said in a phone interview from her home in Manhattan where she’s listened to hours of Stones music during the COVID-19 quarantine. Gail earned the privilege of being on the rail for all 24 shows for both legs of the “No Filter” tours.
“I need to be at the green gate, where the rail curves. You know, the left corner on Keith’s side,” Gail told me. “From there I can see the catwalk and the stage and it’s where I’m thrilled to watch the Rolling Stones. I’ve had some great times doing that!
“Some fans say ‘you don’t see Charlie’, and yeah, that’s the trade off because I’m so short,” says the four-foot-ten inch cutie who is always dressed on tour in beautiful and stylish Stones fashion, representin’ the tongue logo.
“But I’m there in that front row spot every show I can get to. And it’s where I get a lot of Mick action,” notes the self-proclaimed “Mick Chick.” “It’s my ultimate perfect spot.”
For Gail to consistently get to that front-row rail takes extraordinary effort. In order to claim her personal space in the first row and/or in the pit an enviable 40 times in eight countries, it’s been a worthwhile struggle.
She has to figure out plenty of challenging logistics, like flights, hotels and transportation, including her return to the hotel after the concert, which can be a traffic nightmare, as concert-goers know.
“I never leave until after the bow. I’m usually on my way out when the venue’s lights are coming on,” Gail said. “I have to see that last bow. I’m there for the show. Everything else is extra.”
With her superfan reputation and contacts, scoring a pit ticket is an easy, but pricey, part of her adventure. Pit tickets prices have varied, as have the size of the pits, which changed for each tour. Tickets have ranged from $500 to $800; add that to her travel budget, then you know Gail is committed.
But the rest of her journey to front and center is Gail’s ultimate challenge. And it’s a testament to her impressive stamina, endurance and resiliency at age 58.
“It is really hard,” Gail understates. “But it’s my thing. I get there really early in the morning, like 8 a.m., and I do my time. I’m motivated and I do what it takes to get the spot that I want for the show.”
Often doing time includes standing in line in all kinds of inclement weather for at least 10 exhausting hours before the venue doors even open.
“I usually go with my daughter, or at times alone, and I bring a couple of waters, maybe something to eat and I scope it out. First thing I need to know, where’s the entrance? Sometimes it’s unmarked and a couple of times, like in Pasadena and Paris, I waited in the wrong spot,” Gail remembers.
“Sometimes I’m not the first person there. And then I panic that I won’t get my spot and see over people’s heads. But as long as I am somewhere on the rail, I am okay.”
Gail tracks down the closest restroom to the venue, which is sometimes not so close, and when she has to answer Mother Nature’s call she’ll ask a fellow fan fanatic to hold her spot in line.
“You can’t disappear for hours but I try and make friends with the people around me so I can take a quick bathroom or snack break. I am never gone for more than 15 minutes. I am vigilant.
“I ration my food and water and I know exactly how much to consume to time my breaks. Plus I have to dress for the day to look good 12 hours later,” Gail noted.
Waitin’ on her band in the scorching Arizona sun in Glendale in 2019 took its toll on Gail when she got dehydrated and almost passed out. “Friends came to visit me and helped me out with water and I rallied. You think you’re prepared, but certainly not for the unexpected,” Gail said.
“It’s been wonderful making friends in line from all over the world for the past 25 years who look out for me. I may go alone but I’m never alone when I’m there.”
After a full day’s wait in the queue, the venue door finally opens and Gail is ready to dash through the turnstile, unless she gets slowed up by the security check, or a ticket scanner that doesn’t cooperate. Then she makes a run for the rail. But that’s where it can be tricky for a tiny lady with short, little legs.
“When I have to run for it, that’s tough,” Gail says. “Sometimes it’s a free-for-all and the only advantage I have is being first. It’s hard to try and outrun some younger, tall guy,” she lamented. “But but I hold my ground. And sometimes I get the best gift after a long day when security makes us walk single file into the venue and the pit.”
Once Gail is firmly on the rail, it’s several more hours before the Stones even take the stage for their two-hour-plus show. So she usually spends about six more hours standing at the green gate once she’s inside.
“Often I haven’t eaten for hours, so a friend might bring me a snack or I might run for a quick bathroom break but once the opening band comes on, you can’t leave,” she said.
“I’m a New Yorker and I’m tough but I try not to leave that rail at all.”
When rooted at the rail, Gail gets an eyeful of the pre-show fun and/or debauchery. “There’s always a few troublemakers and some problems with people shoving and trying to push their way into the front,” she remembered.
“There was a fist fight in DC last tour where the first two rows were very tight. We tell (these pushy fans) ‘no, you weren’t here. Get lost. We’ve been here all day.’
“Even band security will sometimes ask us ‘can we put two people here’. We say ‘no way!’”
At this point in the conversation I have to confess to Gail (with chagrin) that my friend Cecelia and I were once those insufferable privileged fans. At the insistence of Keith’s best friend Freddy Sessler (“Move the fuck out of the way!), security put us in the front row, center, in Wembley Stadium just before the show started (“Bridges to Babylon” June 11, 1999, resumed after “No Security” ).
The displaced fans were rightly pissed, and Cecelia and I were embarrassed and thrilled at the same time. We gave the front spots back to the original owners and moved behind a few rows, partly in fear of the wrath of the feral fans around us.
We were on the pitch (not to be confused with the pit) at Wembley, which was about a quarter of the stadium playing field in a general admission (GA) area reserved for thousands of fans in this ticket tier.
It is much harder to get into the front of the pitch, where Gail can attest there is more craziness than seen in its later metamorphosis as the pit. The various sized pits had a smaller, limited capacity with a higher ticket price tag than the pitch. So the level of wild front row behavior for Rolling Stones tours since 2002 has gone down a few notches in infamy.
Fans at the front of the stage at the Rolling Stones concert at Longleat Estate, England, Aug. 2,1964.
The most infamous example of front row madness at a Rolling Stones concert is the Altamont Speedway Free Festival held (December 6, 1969) in California. The Stones stopped playing their opening number “Sympathy for the Devil” because of the violence in front of the stage, which was perpetrated by the Hell’s Angels biker gang hired as security.
Seen in the Maysles brother’s documentary, “Gimme Shelter,” Mick stops the song and tells the audience, “Brothers and sisters, cool out” and asks the fans, “Can you still make it down in front? Is there anybody there that’s hurt?’ before re-launching the song.
Mick asks later, “ who’s fighting and what for?” but the mayhem escalates. During “Under My Thumb” a man in the audience who brandished a gun was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels, marking a horrible legacy for the band.
For the next three decades, the front row at a Stones show had a very rough reputation. It was street fightin’ for sure, with legit fans literally knocked out of their seats by usurpers. There was lots of bad behavior, fueled in part by lots of beer and without scrutiny by security.
When I saw the Stones for my first concert in nosebleed seats on the side of the Philadelphia Spectrum on July 20, 1972, front row fans jumped over the security barricades and climbed up the giant speaker towers that flanked the stage. As they reached the top of the amps, I watched horrified as the poor (dumb?) fans (schmucks?) were thrown off by security into the abyss below.
While in my “shit tix” seat several sections back on the floor of the Spectrum (June 29, 1975) for the “Tour of the Americas,” I decided to give myself a ticket upgrade. It was a tactic I would use the next night at the second show and for future tours until I started scoring good tickets on my own. And then, depending on their degree of annoying behavior, I would tolerate (but not welcome) other fans who gave themselves an upgrade.
At that Philly show on the tour where Mick Taylor was replaced by Ronnie Wood on loan from the Faces (before he became an official Rolling Stone), I bravely barged my way to the front row. Tickets holders had seats on this tour and there was an improvised pit/pitch where I was definitely not welcomed. No matter. I thrived in the rogue excitement.
Dancing on an abandoned front row seat during “Starfucker,” I marveled at Mick riding a giant inflatable penis, nicknamed the “Tired Grandfather,” which eventually evolved by tour’s end into a middle finger with nail polish.
Sometimes front row fans meet the hands of fate. At the New Orleans Superdome show (December 5, 1981), Mick drenched Stones fans on the pitch with a fire hose. He soaked the crowd towards the end of the indoor show, which once held a long, unchallenged record for audience attendance of 87,000 fans.
At the second show in Amsterdam at the Paradiso (May 27, 1995), I truly thought I was going to be suffocated in the front of that legendary Stones concert. It was held in a former church and immortalized in the live CD “Stripped” and the DVD “Totally Stripped.” Battered by the insane power of the terrifying crowd, I had no control of my body and I was squeezed like a boa constrictor and lifted off the ground to weightlessness.
By the time Gail decided to stake her claim at the rail in 1999 during the “No Security” tour, the fans in the front of the pit were considerably (but not entirely) more civilized and respectful. And she was undeterred no matter what.
“I made the decision to do the whole ‘No Filter’ tour in 2018 and when it was extended into 2019, I committed to all those shows too. It was ideal that they were all in North America so I could manage the logistics and work around work,” said Gail who has a career as a finance controller.
“When the tour is in Europe I don’t have the luxury of time, money or travel to go back and forth to New York City. But I’ve always done a lot of shows since ‘Voodoo Lounge.’ For ‘Licks’ in 2002 I went to around 15 cities and 28 shows. I bought a lot of VIP packages so that I could get into the small theaters. Those were epic!”
Gail had her first delicious taste of being up-close-and-personal with the Stones thanks to a little luck, combined with serendipity and some kismet.
Before one of the Giants Stadium show in 1994 for “Voodoo Lounge,” Gail went to a food concession stand to buy dinner for her daughter, Lauren, who was 14. There, Gail just happened to run into her dentist who knew she was a mega fan.
“ ‘I’ve been looking all over for you!’ He told me, “I got you backstage passes!’”
Gail couldn’t believe that remarkable gift just showed up via Rolling Stones magic. She and Lauren followed the well-connected dentist to the backstage area, walking past the road cases and the riggers, going deeper and deeper into the inner sanctum.
“ I remember a half-eaten sheet cake and a big catered spread. I was very impressed,” she said, thinking that food would be the highlight of the backstage experience. But it just kept getting better and better. Especially when the Stones all walked right past her on their way to the stage. “I was frozen like a statue, it was utterly unreal,” she said.
And then it became even more unreal, yet very remarkably real — she and her daughter were escorted down to the front row and they were placed in random open seats.
“When Mick started singing ‘Not Fade Away’ I was blown away,” Gail remembered. “And I didn’t get off that high for days.”
For the European leg of “Bridges to Babylon” in ’98, Gail pledged, “if there’s a pit and it’s possible, I’m going into the front row.” Her faithful vow has been rewarded with lots of recognition.
She has a collection of Mick Jagger guitar picks from his bodyguards and roadies, with her first one from 2003 that she turned into a necklace.She’s been seen in Keith’s Instagram and shown on the concert video screen several times in 20 years, even seen singing about her favorite flavor, “Cherry Red.” And there’s a close up of Gail and her daughter during “Satisfaction” in Twickenham, England, in the “Four Flicks” DVD.
Another cool claim to Gail’s fame is a 2019 national news clip of Gail shot before the opening show in Chicago, where she is professing her love for Mick. When she’s interviewed as a fan girl, Gail always says, “Mick is the only man that never disappointed me.” She was in the front row for that show too, of course.
“When I was younger, I couldn’t afford to be in the first row. When I was in Amsterdam in ‘98 for ‘Bridges to Babylon’ I didn’t even know how the pit worked. I was in the seats behind it, with my view blocked by thousands of raised arms,” Gail said.
Gail came up to pit speed real fast. She took a chance on joining a tour group of Stones fans that she found through an advertising flyer for the “No Security” shows in London in ’99. That’s where she met fellow fans who became the core of her lifelong Stones friends circle. Through them she met “Stonesdoug,” a.k.a. Doug Potash, the affable and beloved leader of a popular Stones fan club, the Shidoobees. “And we’ve been best friends for over 20 years now,” she says.
Stonesdoug returns the love. “Gail is such a devoted Stone’s fan and a friend who is always there for me,” Doug said. “Her energy is amazing, especially at concerts. Her enthusiasm brings everyone up another level as we celebrate The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. Look for her in the front row at any show. I love #gailontherail.”
The London trip brought Gail another game-changing friend — the pit. It is where she found the pit calling and where she answered by trading a security guard a kiss in exchange for a pit wristband. Gail has made damn sure she’s never been shut out of the pit since.
Fan Photos courtesy
Gail Hoffman
Her Stones fever and fervor started at age 10, when she was growing up in Brooklyn and it was quite a while before she was able to get to her first live concert for the “Steel Wheels Tour” in 1989 at Shea stadium.
“I always liked their music but when ‘Angie’ came out in the summer of 1973 and was number one on a.m. radio, I loved it so much that I walked to record store and bought the ‘Goat’s Head Soup’ album,” Gail said. “And then I bought ‘Exile (on Main Street)’ and put up Stones posters in my room.”
Little did she know that when she was hanging photos of her crush in the ‘70s, that some 44 years later she’d be still crushin’ on him and sending Mick Jagger a personal thank you note for a lifetime of music.
“I love this band so much that the minute they come on stage everything I’ve gone through is worth it,” Gail said. “I’ve seen the Stones 193 times and I’m hoping to make 200.
“But with the pandemic and its unpredictable aftermath, I just hope I hope I can go through it all again someday. Soon.”
Amen, sister.
