Note: The following appears in the Florida State football gameday program.
Memorial Stadium is going to be “lit” in 2026. George Strait is headlining the first “Death Valley Nights” concert on May 2. He will be joined by Cody Johnson and Wyatt Flores for a performance “in the round” that is expected to be attended by more than 90,000 fans. The concert was announced at the Clemson Board of Trustees fall quarterly meetings.
The stadium that normally holds over 81,000 fans for a football game is no stranger to the ecstatic roar of crowds, but it generally sits quiet the rest of the year. It has been so for more than 25 years, with the last concert at Memorial Stadium in 1999, also headlined by Strait.
The stadium hosted concerts by some of the most celebrated artists of all time in the 1980s and 1990s, starting with the most legendary of them all, The Rolling Stones. The iconic English rockers brought their Steel Wheels tour to Memorial Stadium in 1989.
In a 1989 interview with The Greenville News, Allen Corbett, a promoter with Camden-based C&C Entertainment who brought the show to Clemson, said more than 60,000 tickets were made available for the show and the university was uniquely positioned to handle the logistics of such a large crowd.
“It’s just like Clemson has another home game this year, only this time it’s not a football game, it’s The Rolling Stones.”
Tickets for that show cost $31.50, not exactly cheap in 1989.
In a 2017 post about the concerts on Clemson’s Facebook page, alumnus Lester H. Cutter III said the following.
“Couldn’t afford tickets for The (Rolling) Stones, but I was able to listen to the entire concert from my dorm room at the Clemson House!”
Now, Tiger athletics has announced a partnership with Clemson Ventures and Does Entertainment to bring concert events back to the stadium. Dubbed “Death Valley Nights,” the series of concerts offers fans near and far the opportunity to see some of the world’s top musical acts.
“Memorial Stadium has always been more than a football venue,” said Eric Sabin, executive senior associate athletic director at Clemson. “It’s a place where unforgettable memories are made. With ‘Death Valley Nights,’ we’re excited to bring that tradition full circle and create new experiences that will unite our students, alumni and community in the same spirit of pride and passion that defines Clemson.”
Perhaps the biggest touring group in history, Pink Floyd, brought its Division Bell tour to Memorial Stadium in May 1994, the night before graduation.
Although the school year had ended and many students were long gone, 50,000 fans came to campus and were dazzled on May 12 by the sounds of Pink Floyd in Memorial Stadium. The sound of the band rehearsing the massive production echoed across campus, interrupting a normally tranquil day.
Billy Joel and Elton John played in the stadium in April 1995 during their Face to Face tour. They closed the show with the two of them duetting on Joel’s “Piano Man” to a sea of lit cigarette lighters swaying back and forth, a memory still fondly recalled on Clemson discussion boards to this day.
One of the best-selling musical artists of all time, the Eagles, stopped in Tigertown on their Hell Freezes Over tour in June 1996. The tour represented the first reunion of the band in 14 years.
U2 came to Clemson in May 1997, with opening band Rage Against the Machine, during their PopMart tour. That particular show was one of the most ambitious rock concerts ever produced. It featured an LED screen that was 170 feet wide and more than 50 feet tall, the largest video screen ever made at the time, a 100-foot parabolic arch and a 40-foot motorized mirror ball shaped like a lemon that the band made its entrance from.
In March 1999, Strait brought his George Strait Country Music Festival through Clemson. The day-long event, dubbed “The Country Music Lollapalooza” by Tim McGraw, also featured McGraw, Kenny Chesney, the Dixie Chicks, Jo Dee Messina, Mark Wills and Asleep at the Wheel.
A story about the event in the 2000 Clemson University edition of TAPS describes how, “Due to the size of the concert, the stage itself was built two weeks prior to the show.”
That was the last major non-football event held in Memorial Stadium until April 26, 2025, when the Savannah Bananas brought their traveling baseball show to Clemson and beat the arch-rival Party Animals 4-3 in front of a soldout crowd of 81,000 people. It was the first time the stadium was reconfigured for a baseball game and was the biggest crowd in Banana Ball history.
“That special event was over 18 months in the making, and plans for additional events have been going on for just as long,” added Sabin. “Death Valley is going to provide unforgettable experiences for the community for years to come.”
More information regarding the upcoming shows can be found online at DeathValleyNights.com.
