Can Beyoncé top Billy Graham, the pope or Farm Aid? Past big events at Williams-Brice

When Beyoncé and Jay-Z take the stage inside Williams-Brice Stadium in two weeks, they’ll join a distinguished list of other performers and figures who have drawn thousands of people to the venue most often used for USC football games.

Here are some of the other big events that have happened under the lights.

Pope John Paul II

On a humid September evening in 1987, Pope John Paul II led an interchurch worship service inside a Williams-Brice Stadium packed with cheering, applauding worshipers.

The 35-minute prayer service drew more than 60,000 people from around the country who began arriving at the stadium at noon that day, even though the gates didn’t open until 2 p.m. and the homily didn’t begin until 7:30 p.m. It was part of the pope’s 10-day visit to North America, and was the first and only visit by a pontiff to South Carolina.

“The United States, which prides itself on the consecration of freedom, has lost sight of the true meaning of that word,” the pope told the crowd. “America, you cannot insist on the right to choose without also insisting on the duty to choose well, the duty to choose the truth.”

Thousands of residents and students lined the streets to cheer as the Mercedes-Benz Popemobile made a lap around the University of South Carolina Horseshoe.

“It is wonderful to be young,” the pope told the students. “It is wonderful to be young and to be a student. It is wonderful to be young and to be a student at the University of South Carolina.”

Billy Graham

Months before the pontiff’s visit to Williams-Brice, the Rev. Billy Graham ministered to thousands during an eight-day crusade at the stadium in April and May 1987.

The crusade included an appearance by country music legends Johnny Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash.

“I always thought of South Carolina as one of the most religious states in America,” Graham told The State ahead of his crusade. “South Carolina has a character it must not lose. It has a moral strength.”

During his Sunday night message that week, Graham repeated a theme from the night before, calling for members of the audience to prepare for God’s judgment with the urgency that was typical of the evangelist’s style.

“I wouldn’t leave this stadium for anything in the world if I didn’t know my name was in the book of life,” he told the crowd. “You may make and break the appointments here, but you won’t break that appointment.”

It was the evangelist’s second time preaching in Columbia at the stadium. In March 1950, Graham led a prayer rally at what was then called Carolina Stadium. Some 40,000 people attended, which was the largest crowd in the stadium’s history at the time. The Highway Patrol reported that some 10,000 others drove to the stadium but left after learning all the seats were filled.

Metallica/Guns N’ Roses

Under the constant billowing of video graphics and pyrotechnics, Columbia rocked out for nearly eight hours one night in September 1992 when heavy metal staples Metallica and Guns N’ Roses took the stage in Williams-Brice Stadium in front of 40,000 fans.

The concert was the first of its kind in Columbia, where three years earlier, USC’s athletics department rejected a request to use the stadium for a Rolling Stones concert because of concerns about security, damage to the field and an upper deck that swayed under the weight of rowdy Gamecocks fans. That rejection prompted a torrent of scorn and protest from Midlands residents.

“The musicians and their technical managers really liked the half-house setup we used for the Guns N’ Roses show because it put the entire audience almost directly in front of the performers,” Wendy Oglesby, then-marketing director for the Carolina Coliseum, told The State. That same amphitheater set up, which included an 80-yard-long stage, created a buzz in the music industry, prompting queries from other performers interested in coming to Columbia.

Two weeks later, Irish rock band U2 performed at Williams-Brice, with the two concerts netting the university more than $286,000, according to reports at the time.

Paul McCartney

When Paul McCartney stepped onto the stage in Williams-Brice the night of May 7, 1993, he told the thousands of fans “we’re going to have a party tonight.”

Throughout the evening, McCartney serenaded the crowd with some of his new songs, but also many of the classics by The Beatles, including “Drive My Car” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the latter of which appeared to end the concert.

Minutes later, McCartney burst back onto the stage waving South Carolina’s state flag and encored with “Band on the Run” and “I Saw Her Standing There.”

“I told you we were going to have a party, and it’s a party we’ve had. Here’s the last one; you might want to sing along,” McCartney said before starting into an extended take of “Hey Jude.”

The Rolling Stones

It was a concert five years in the making. But on Sept. 25, 1994, under flames and lights shooting from a 92-foot-tall cobra tower, Williams-Brice finally rocked out to The Rolling Stones.

After an about-face from the USC athletics department, which rejected a request to use the stadium for a Stones concert in 1989, the British Rock band finally rocked Columbia as part of their Voodoo Lounge tour.

After kicking things off with a version of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” the British rock band went into “Tumblin’ Dice” and one of their then-newer numbers, “You Got Me Rocking.” They ended the show with “Brown Sugar” and an encore of “Jumping Jack Flash” with more fireworks.

“They haven’t lost it,” Stones fan Debbie Sottile told The State at the time. “And they haven’t lost touch with their fans.”

Farm Aid

One of the biggest music events to rock Columbia was Farm Aid in October 1996.

Country music star Willie Nelson started Farm Aid with John Mellencamp in 1985 to raise both awareness about the loss of family farms and funds to keep farming families on their land. South Carolina, whose farmers were reeling from the effects of Hurricane Bertha that fall, was selected to host the 1996 event.

The daylong event was a who’s-who of music, with Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, the Beach Boys and Columbia’s own Hootie and the Blowfish among those taking the stage. The entire ensemble came out onstage to perform with Nelson for the finale.

The event raised more than $700,000 that year.

Barack Obama

Then-Sen. Barack Obama planned to hold a campaign rally at Colonial Life Arena when he visited Columbia in December 2007.

But when his presidential campaign announced just days before the event that Oprah Winfrey would be joining him, the rally was moved to Williams-Brice Stadium.

A crowd of around 30,000 was in attendance for what Obama said at the time was the best-attended rally of the political season. The stop in Columbia followed a trip through the early-voting states of Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire.

“Dr. (Martin Luther) King dreamed the dream, but we don’t have to dream the dream anymore,” Winfrey told the crowd. “We get to vote that dream into office.”

Kenny Chesney

After selling out several shows at Colonial Life Arena, country superstar Kenny Chesney was slated for a show at Williams-Brice Stadium.

But his stadium show in Columbia, which would kick off his “Poets & Pirates” tour in 2008, was a year ahead of schedule.

“We’ve done Kenny Chesney at the arena five straight years, and the last three years he sold out in 30 minutes,” the Colonial Life Arena general manager said at the time. “We just thought that because Kenny was so hot, why not go (with a stadium show) a year early?”

However, as Chesney entered the stage during his first number, “Live Those Songs,” his foot was crushed between the stage and the lift that was elevating him from beneath the structure.

Chesney pushed through the concert and returned to Williams-Brice in 2012 for a second stadium concert.

“I thought it was very important to come back to Columbia, South Carolina, and to the University of South Carolina’s football stadium and give them a real show,” he said in a recorded message released before the concert in 2012. “The last time I played there was the night that I broke my foot on the very first song. Everybody was out there having a blast and everybody stayed with me all night, but I felt really bad that I got hurt on the first song.”

This story was originally published August 9, 2018 at 12:21 PM.