Portland Rockers Line Up To Get Their Stones Satisfaction

The last time Alana Vallese saw the Rolling Stones in concert, she paid a San Francisco security guard $5 to let her slip into a side door to see a 1983 show during the “Tattoo You” tour.

This time around, tickets are going for $125, and there’s no cutting to the head of the line.

Hundreds of fans waited in line Thursday for their blue wristbands - the first step in a tricky two-day process to get seats for the Stones’ January stop in Portland. The Jan. 30 show at the Rose Garden will be the band’s first appearance in Oregon since 1966.

Demand for tickets was so high that the band announced it was adding another date - Jan. 31 - to the tour supporting its new album, “Bridges to Babylon.”

Many weren’t happy about the wristband system, which guarantees fans a place in the ticket line but not much else. Those who picked up the paper bracelets Thursday must return to the arena box office Friday. No camping out is allowed.

At 8:30 a.m., a number will be announced, and the lucky fan with that number will be first in line to buy tickets - a maximum of four each - ranging in price from $39.50 to $125, not including service charges.

“This is stupid and corny,” said Michael Harris, 38, who was issued wristband number 343627. “I feel like I’m in the hospital.”

Vallese, 49, and her husband Tiger didn’t mind the policy, which they say will help thwart scalpers.

“I hate those suckers, man,” said Tiger Vallese, 46, who admits details are fuzzy about the last Stones concert he attended, a 1969 show at the Forum in Los Angeles at which Ike and Tina Turner were the opening act.

Inside the ticket office, Roberta LaCroix patiently snapped wristbands on people and answered their questions, although explaining and re-explaining the ticket system threatened to turn her hair a whiter shade of gray.

“It’s just hard for them to understand,” she said.

LaCroix, by the way, owns exactly zero Rolling Stones albums.

“My son used to listen to them, though,” she said. “I could tell when he was playing them, I’d walk around the corner and the house would be vibrating.”

Liz Preston, 42, hopes the Stones’ live act has aged well since she saw them on the “Some Girls” tour in the ‘70s.

“I saw James Brown in Seattle not too long ago, and it was a little sad,” she said.

Chris Peters, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Portland, will skip school Friday to get tickets to his first Stones concert. But unlike older fans, he and classmates Morgan Burke, 18, and Ryan Malone, 19, are just as excited to see the opening act - either Sheryl Crow, the Dave Matthews Band, Smashing Pumpkins or, some say, grunge gods Pearl Jam.

“I just wish we could camp out all night,” Malone said.