The 'Steel Wheels' Tour: Marketed as a Final Farewell After the Stones' 80s Slump

The Rolling Stones’ 1989 Steel Wheels tour was absolutely sold as a potential farewell. The promotional tagline “This Could Be the Last Time” wasn’t just clever wordplay—it was plastered on T-shirts and ads. After a disastrous mid-80s stretch (Jagger’s solo detours, the lukewarm Dirty Work album, and public spats), the band leaned into the narrative that this might be the last chance to see the original core together. And it almost worked—Bill Wyman quit right after.

The slump was real. Dirty Work (1986) sold poorly, and the Stones hadn’t toured the U.S. since 1981. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were barely speaking. So when they announced Steel Wheels, it wasn’t just a tour—it was a test of whether the band still had a pulse. The stadium spectacle (the biggest in rock history up to that point) was both a victory lap and a high-stakes reset. They even opened with “Start Me Up” like a defiant handshake.

Of course, it wasn’t the end. They toured again