No Brooklyn concerts for Rolling Stones?

October 15, 2012 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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New dates announced – in Newark

Bruce Ratner and Mikhail Prokhorov took the Nets out of the Prudential Center in Newark and brought them to Barclays Center in Brooklyn this year.

Now, however, the folks who run the Prudential Center may be having their revenge.

The Rolling Stones’ official site yesterday made public the four long-awaited concerts the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” has scheduled for its mini-50th anniversary tour.

Two concerts, as expected, will take place at London’s 02 Arena, on Nov. 25 and 29. But the two others, instead of being in the Barclays Arena, as long reported, are scheduled for the Newark Prudential Center on Dec. 13 and 15.

The possibility that the Rolling Stones might be coming to Brooklyn first appeared in Billboard.com, the website of an authoritative music-business magazine, in September. It soon spread to scores of blogs, newspapers, magazines and other media outlets.

While the concerts never appeared on the Barclays Center’s website, the idea that the Stones were coming to Brooklyn was so accepted as fact that Bruce Ratner himself, at the Barclays ribbon-cutting event, said he looked forward to the Stones playing there.

“We have a place where for a few hours of the day,” Ratner said at the time, “a fan, a follower, a patron, a guest can have their troubles left behind, and they can be whooshed away for a few hours, whether it be a child laughing at a clown in the circus, or a teen bopping to Bieber … or a rocker screaming at the Rolling Stones right here in B-K-N-Y.”

James McKinley Jr., writing Monday on the New York Times’ blog, said that the Stones’ management and Barclays entered into negotiations early this fall, “but in the end, no agreement was reached.”

Spokespersons for Barclays Center did not respond to emails from this newspaper.

Brooklyn Stones fans are sure to be disappointed, but one thing’s for sure – with Bob Dylan, The Who, Rush, the Smashing Pumpkins, Pat Benatar and Journey, not to mention the Sounds of Reggae, Barclays Arena still really rocks!

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