Cubans will finally get some satisfacción!
The Rolling Stones will play for the first time in Havana, Cuba, on Friday night — a performance some fans say is more exciting than president Obama’s visit earlier this week.
The legendary rock band — whose “subversive” music was banned from the radio by communist leaders in the 1960s — are expected to draw floods of emotional fans on the time-frozen island.
“I think I’m going to cry,” said Miguel Garcia, 62, who traveled hours by bus for the concert, to AFP.
“The Rolling Stones are going to open up Cuba — especially to an era we were unable to participate in,” he said.
The rockers flew in to Cuba by private jet Thursday, three days after Obama’s visit ended — and four decades after their songs were yanked off the radio following the Cuban revolution.
More than 1 million fans are expected to flock to Havana’s Ciudad Deportiva for the free show. One of them is Enrique Carballea, a Cuban music producer who called the show more important than Obama’s trip to the country.
“The Rolling Stones signified radical change in the 1960s. Now, they are arriving here as the whole country is changing. The Rolling Stones don’t know the energy they will generate,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
The concert is a symbol of Cuba’s new openness, other fans gushed.
As a boy, Eddie Escobar, 45, said he used a makeshift radio to tune to American airwaves so he could sneak-listen to bands such as the Stones and Led Zepplin.
“Rock music, I hope, will open everything else — politics, the economy, the Internet. We’re 20 years behind absolutely everything,” said Escobar, the owner of a rock-music club in Cuba.
The band asked fans to vote online which songs it should play at the concert —”Get Off of My Cloud,” “All Down the Line,” “She’s So Cold,” and “You Got Me Rocking.” But few Cubans have access to the Internet to vote.
Thousands of fans camped outside the stadium Friday afternoon waiting for their chance to see the rock legends in concert.
“I get very emotional thinking about it. It’s like a dream. I never imagined I would see this day,” Luis Manuel Molina, one of the country’s most influential rock musicians, told the UK Gaurdian.
“It will undoubtedly be the biggest concert ever in Cuba,” he proclaimed.
Obama’s visit was just a warm-up for the concert, Rolling Stones manager Dale Skjerseth joked last week.
“He’s our opening act! ” said the band’s manager Dale Skjerseth.