Stones fans spend ten days snooping on tour rehearsal through a wall

I was one of those detectives. In the beginning, there were one or two fans in the scene. One of them was Bjornulf Vik, a 69-year-old grandfather, who has lost count of the number of times he has seen the Rolling Stones since 1973, although he is certain it was more than 500.

In just a few days, we were joined by professional autograph hunters, dedicated fans and occasional spectators. On the last day, there were about two dozen of us. You might say it was a well-kept secret — or that most people had something better to do.

For real: we didn’t actually see the performances. But we could hear everything from the side street by putting our ears on the old stucco walls or some openings. I think it was more like “muffled rocks” than “rolling rocks”, but it was easy to tell what was going on on the other side, within a few meters. The few obstacles were the noise of traffic and curious passersby — who received false information, such as “It’s the Eagles playing.” The Stones themselves knew about the snooping, but didn’t seem concerned.

The crowd included a young trio from Argentina living in Los Angeles. Jonatan Ruiz, 32, his girlfriend, Sabrina Pastorino, 29, and his brother Facundo, 15. They showed up every day, and you could hear them coming from blocks away because they had been listening to obscure Stones songs in their Kia Soul.

Jonatan has already seen the Stones 29 times and plans to follow the entire US tour – for which tickets in the front rows cost more than US$660 (about R$3,400), if you can get it. “We Argentines have a special connection with the Rolling Stones, we always felt they should be Argentine,” says Jonatan.