Stones to headline Wight festival

It will be the band's first UK festival date since Knebworth Fair in 1976.

Frontman Mick Jagger said he would have liked to have played Glastonbury, but "the Isle of Wight was the one who offered, so that's the one we did".

The band also unveiled dates in Russia, Ireland, Romania and London's O2 Arena on the second European leg of their long-running A Bigger Bang world tour.

The 27-date tour will also see the Rolling Stones visiting Serbia and Ukraine for the first time.

Tickets for concerts for some countries will go on sale on Saturday to the general public, although fan club members can purchase tickets for some shows from Friday.

Carbon footprint

Talking about the band's UK festival appearances, Sir Mick told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Glastonbury would have been a good one but I was never really offered the Glastonbury festival to do this year."

But he added "it would be great to do Glastonbury" in the future.

He also said the band's carbon footprint was "rather enormous" - but that the band had started taking measures to offset it at least three years ago.

"We were part of this whole thing where we planted lots of tress, like Coldplay," he said. "We didn't make a huge publicity stunt about it but we did it."

Their Bigger Bang concerts kicked off in Boston, USA in August 2005.

Lucrative tour

Since then, the band have visited 16 countries, playing 110 shows in front of 3.5 million fans.

The Stones were named the best live act in North America in 2005 and 2006.

Despite several cancelled and rescheduled gigs, the global jaunt became the most lucrative tour of all time, taking $437m (£226m), according to Billboard magazine.

Tour director Michael Cohl said: "The Rolling Stones define and redefine the rock spectacular every time out, and it's great that they're coming back to Europe - as promised - to do it again."

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