It has been claimed The Rolling Stones played the loudest gig ever witnessed by Hyde Park when the band performed two shows at the London venue last month as part of the inaugural British Summertime Festival – but thanks to a meticulous attention to detail on the part of the organisers only one complaint was received from local residents.
“The Rolling Stones played the loudest anybody’s ever played in Hyde Park before and we had one complaint,” Jim King, of concert promoters AEG, has told Music Week. “The music could have been off and we’d have still had that complaint anyway.”
Local councilors and residents have been in conflict with promoters of concerts at Hyde Park for a long time, with restrictions placed on those running Hard Rock Calling eventually persuading them to find a new home at London’s Olympic Park after a series of high profile incidents.
As a result, King has revealed the extraordinary lengths his company went to in order to ensure this summer’s concerts passed off without incident whilst still providing an excellent sound quality for fans.
“We put cranes in where all the noise-monitoring points were around Park Lane and Bayswater Road and we ran a show for three days,” he continued. “We took nearly 10,000 noise measurements and ran it through five different sound systems – all the best sound systems that are out there.”