Cotton Bowl

The Cotton Bowl is an outdoor stadium in Dallas, Texas, United States. Opened in 1930 as Fair Park Stadium, it is on the site of the State Fair of Texas, known as Fair Park. The Cotton Bowl was the longtime home of the annual college football post-season bowl game known as the Cotton Bowl Classic, for which the stadium is named. The stadium has also been a venue for a number of historic concerts, most notably that which featured then 21-year-old Elvis Presley, which took place on October 11, 1956 and attracted what was then the largest audience in Texas history for an outdoor concert, in excess of 27,000. Many consecutive summers of huge concerts, featuring several artists, began in July 1978, with the 1st annual Texxas Jam, which sold out with over 80,000 attendees. For crowd control purposes, ticket sales for any future Cotton Bowl General Admission floor seating was limited, and Jams following the 1978 Jam, never reached 80,000 for that reason. Each Texxas Jam had a unique lineup of major artists chosen by the promoter. Over the years, the Texxas Jam featured some of the top-billed headliner artists of the day, including Aerosmith, Heart, Deep Purple, Boston, Journey, Ted Nugent, Scorpions, Loverboy, Cheap Trick, Van Halen, Blue Öyster Cult, Sammy Hagar, Nazareth, Styx, Foghat, Santana, The Eagles & Triumph, among others. The annual events came to an end in the summer of 1988, when Van Halen headlined the "Monsters Of Rock" Tour. U2 played here during the first leg of the Popmart Tour Since then, the stadium has continued to be used as a major concert venue; Eric Clapton held his first three-day Crossroads Guitar Festival there in 2004. The Rolling Stones have played 7 shows at the Cotton Bowl July 6th 1975, October 31 1981, November 1 1981, November 10 1989, November 11 1989, November 18 1994 and November 2 2021.