The Stones Are Back In Hyde Park! And So Are The Trees

The Rolling Stones are set to play an outdoor gig at London’s Hyde Park this Saturday, 44 years after they played their first show there, almost exactly to the day. In honor of that first show, the rockers are instating some, well, restorations to the scenery. Some massive model oaks have been installed around the stage, while bushes and branches have sprung up in various nooks and crannies, according to The Sun. And no, this isn’t some ploy to get patrons to go green, it’s just the nostalgia talking.

44 years later, The Stones are still rolling.

A source said for The Sun: “When Mick and the band looked out from the stage back in the Sixties all they could see was a sea of people and a load of trees, but many of those have been cleared or replanted since. So they want to recreate the woodland. As you can see from the pictures, the two oak trees either side are absolutely massive. They want it to look as authentic as possible.”

This Saturday, they will try to recreate the feeling of that first gig.

Of course, a lot has changed since then – and not just the foliage. The band’s lineup has undergone several alterations since then as well. Back in 1969 it was Jagger, Richards, Watts and Bill Wyman, who took the stage. The band had lost guitarist Brian Jones two days earlier, when he drowned in the pool of his West Sussex home. Jagger opened the show with a tribute to his former bandmate, reading out a Shelley poem, before stagehands released 2,000 butterflies. So while this Saturday’s return to the Hyde Park stage marks the Stones’ monumental career, it is set to also be a bittersweet moment for the musicians and a lot of their fans.

And honor the memory of their late bandmate.