The Millennium Tour Visits Groningen

It has already been fifteen years since Tina Turner’s Twenty Four Seven ‘Millennium’ tour was rumbling through Europe. During a particularly grey and wet summer, the rock and roll circus put up its tents in all the major cities: Paris, London, Berlin and… Groningen?! Yes, that’s right, Groningen – if you don’t know it: Google it!

Photos by Sjef

Groningen, a provincial town in the North of the Netherlands with approximately 200,000 inhabitants, was one of the smaller stops of the tour. However, the concert itself was one of the biggest, with 65 thousand fans gather on the city’s horse race track in the main park.
There is something extra exciting about a big rock and roll concert tour taking over a small city like Groningen, especially when it’s Tina. The event was put together with the help of the local city administration, in an attempt to put Groningen ‘on the map’. In 1999, The Rolling Stones came. And now it was Miss Turner’s turn. The city was already buzzing with excitement weeks before the show. All hotels fully booked, the local television station broadcast an hourly ‘Tina Turner newsflash’, Tina made headlines in all the newspapers. Roads blocked. Tina Turner camping-sites. Special trains. Traffic jams. And fans, lots of them.

And yours truly, Tina Turner Blog reporter Sjef, was there in the front row at the tender age of ten. For me, one my most memorable experiences, as I got to sing with the legend herself when she came down from the stage during the final song of the evening, Twenty Four Seven.

Tina herself left the sight fifteen minutes after the concert ended, escorted by police in a black Mercedes, racing to the next stop: Hamburg. She left the city, and her fans, in a state of shock. The people of Groningen are still talking about it today. And so are her fans.