LEWISTON – Scott Peters has listened to the Rolling Stones’ greatest hits album, “Made in the Shade,” nine times a day for the last 11 months.
It plays in one ear while he walks an 8-mile mail route around town.
Setting off his official U.S. Postal Service uniform: a small metal belt buckle with the Stones’ trademark tongue. They aren’t so durable, so he keeps a back-up buckle.
Off the clock, Peters wears Stones’ shirts.
“I’ve been with him since he was 13 – never a day without a Rolling Stones T-shirt,” said his wife, Lisa.
He is perhaps, locally, the band’s biggest fan and indisputably the tallest.
Peters says he got hooked on the 1980 album “Emotional Rescue.” His mother stopped him from going to a live show the next year. At 17, he was too young. When the group broke up in 1987, he figured that was that.
He’d never see his favorite band in the flesh.
In 1989 they reunited. Hope was restored.
He’s seen them 35 times since. Peters has 12 pairs of tickets for the upcoming tour – and the Rolling Stones haven’t released the dates yet for the winter leg.
Starting in Boston’s Fenway Park this Sunday, he’ll miss nary a Mick moment.
“This is what I do. I can’t find anything else better,” Peters, 40, said. “Maybe the reason is I’m there with 90,000 of my friends having a great time.”
He caught the band 24 times on the last tour. Each night’s playlist was sort of the same. There were song sets for arenas, theaters and stadiums, but each time the Stones changed it up by throwing out five unexpected tunes, “the ones I wait for,” he said.
The way to tell when a show’s half over: Keith Richards steps to the mike to give Mick Jagger a breather.
In time for 2003’s Forty Licks tour, Peters paid $400 for custom boots to see the stage better.
Sans shoes, he’s 5 foot 8 inches. With the boots, he’s 7 foot 1 inch.
They’re comfortable, he said, but initially, tricky to run in. At his first show with them on, in Toronto, when the gates opened at 8 a.m. – Peters and a friend had been camped out in line since 3 p.m. the day before – he booked it into the stadium, bolted to the front and fell twice. People helped him up. He just kept on running.
Peters said he’s paid as much as $500 for a ticket, $900 for a pair. He’s been all over the United States and Canada and seen three shows in Europe.
“There are lots of fun places I’d never have gone if it wasn’t for the Stones,” said Lisa.
When his wife calls Peters’ cell phone, “Mick Jagger” pops up on the ID. When it’s his best friend, the phone blinks “Keith Richards.”
The Boston show will mark exactly two years since he’s seen the Stones live. He bought the tickets and started counting down 114 days in advance.
Know a collector we ought to feature? Contact Kathryn Skelton at 689-2844.
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