For four full months in 2015, the head honchos at Solana Beach, Calif., club The Belly Up were forced to keep a big secret: The Rolling Stones would soon be playing the 600-capacity venue.
“We made a vow within the [those] of us who knew that we’re not telling our spouses, we’re not telling anyone until the week of the show, and we stuck to that,” says Belly Up Entertainment president Chris Goldsmith, who held the secret alongside The Belly Up owners Steve Goldberg and Phil Berkovitz. What Goldsmith did do was tell his wife to save the date for what would go down as one of the legendary band’s most exclusive gigs on that tour. “I think [my wife] appreciated not having to try and keep that a secret herself for four months,” he says. “I did her a favor.”
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The gig was scheduled for May 27, 2015, at the beginning of the Stones’ Zip Code stadium tour — three days after Mick Jagger and company played to more than 40,000 fans at nearby San Diego’s Petco Park. The underplay was especially under wraps since tickets wouldn’t be sold to the general public; instead, former Hewlett-Packard chairman Ralph Whitworth had hired the band to play The Belly Up for a private event benefitting immunotherapy cancer research. After news of the private event began to leak the week of, The Belly Up added privacy screens along the chain link fencing behind the venue, “so Mick could do his little jog back and down the alley,” Goldsmith adds.
