![Комсомолка (в Питере) от 15 апреля.]( "Комсомолка (в Питере) от 15 апреля.")
"Комсомолка "(в Питере) от 15 апреля.
The St.Petersburg Times
961, Friday, April 16, 2004
McCartney in City for Birthday
By Irina Titova
STAFF WRITER
Photo by Alexander Belenky / SPT
St. Petersburg fans of former Beatle Paul McCartney, who is to perform a concert in the city's Palace Square on June 20, have invited the pop star to celebrate his birthday on June 18 with them on the Gulf of Finland.
"We've been celebrating McCartney's birthday for the last 30 years on the gulf and we just dream to have him in person with us this time," said fan Grigory Kozel, who on Tuesday attended a news conference dedicated to the concert.
McCartney is to arrive with his wife Heather to St. Petersburg on June 17.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 people are expected to attend the concert three days later, organizers said.
"The security services won't let any more people into Palace Square than that," said Alexander Gafin, a member of the board of directors of Alfa-Bank, which is one of the organizers.
McCartney is to perform not only songs from the Beatles era, but also a new program.
Organizers said the concert is being staged at the personal wish of McCartney, who really liked the city during a visit last year when he performed in Red Square in Moscow.
Nadezhda Solovyova, a representative of SAV Entertainment, another organizer, said that McCartney had written to President Vladimir Putin's asking for his help before the musician got approval for the concert.
"Putin answered that he would be grateful if McCartney had a concert in his native city," Solovyova said.
The concert will last 2 1/2 hours. A special stage from Los Angeles that is 18 meters high and 68 meters long. will allow the crowd to see and hear McCartney. Organizers said it will take 260 people two days to assemble the stage.
Several huge TV screens will display the action on stage.
More than 2,000 police and private security guards will make sure the concert and its star are safe, said Sergei Rakitin, general director of security firm SDS, which is in charge of security.
Spectators with seats in the stalls will enter the square through the Arch of the Main Headquarters, while others will enter from the side of the Alexandrovsky Gardens.
Rakitin said spectators will pass through metal detectors and go past dogs trained to detect explosives.
"We'll take the standard safety measures, but with some elements of surprise," Rakitin said.
Tickets will go on sale in early May and will range in price from $10 to $300, said Yevgeny Finkelshtein, general director of Planeta Plus, another organizer.
Organizers plan to give away some tickets to students of music schools and orphanages. They admitted it would be hard the prized tickets out of the hands of scalpers.
Several additional charter flights will bring fans from throughout Russia to and from the concert, Solovyova said.
McCartney plans to stay in the Konstantinovsky Palace, which was restored last year as a presidential residence and also offers high-class hotel accommodation, she said.
It is not yet known if McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills, will bring their newborn daughter, although an adult daughter, Stella, a fashion designer, intends to come because she wants to open her fashion store in St. Petersburg, Solovyova said.
In response to a question about whether it is appropriate to hold a pop concert next to the State Hermitage Museum, Gafin said people had criticized the decision to hold McCartney's concert on Red Square, but it went fine.
Nadezhda Kuschenkova, head of St. Petersburg Culture Committee, said that "Palace Square is historically the center of the city and it can't avoid public events."
"However, we forbid alcohol sales in the area around the square," she said. Concert-goers will be admitted to the square two hours before the concert begins.
She appealed to fans to come to the concert on foot or by public transportation because there won't be enough parking. They shouldn't bring photo or video equipment since private photography and video filming will be prohibited.
Gafin said staging the concert will cost about $2.8 million. The general sponsor of the event will be oil firm TNK-BP, which also sponsored McCartney's concert in Moscow last year.
