Stones in Hartford

Following the Rolling Stones' announcement yesterday that the band's Hartford concert date would be moved up to early November, 1000 people waited in line at Boston's Orpheum Theater for tickets but were disappointed when the Ticketron outlet could only sell 36 tickets before closing.

A few people--heeding rumors that circulated early yesterday morning--lined up in front of the ticket office, the only Boston outlet with Stones tickets, seven hours before the tickets went on sale at 3 p.m. WBCN began plugging the concert at 2 p.m., and within an hour the crowd had increased to 400.

A WBCN spokesman said the tickets had sold out by early evening, but there was no trouble from the hundreds of people who were turned away at 5 p.m., Boston police said.

Fans who want to buy tickets now, however, will have to pay anywhere from $125 to more than $1000, a spokesman for Tickets Unlimited, Inc., said last night.

The first 25 ticket-seekers in line, mostly college students, gathered outside the Orpheum early yesterday after hearing rumors emanating from radio stations in New York and Massachusetts. Although Orpheum spokesmen said they didn't know if tickets would be sold, WBCN hinted that people would be able to buy them within twenty-four hours. By 2 p.m. the ticket-seekers began to grumble.

"Mick died," someone said as WBCN announced that the concert would be the Stones' exclusive appearance in New England.

Most of the people who were early enough to buy tickets arrived before the outlet opened at 10 a.m. Some were there to buy tickets for the Stones' Nov. 27-28 concert in Syracuse, but the Nov. 27 date sold out Tuesday and tickets for the 28th would not be available through Ticketron, a spokesman for the Orpheum said.

Michael P. Drazen, a former Boston University student, said his brother awakened him to tell him about a rumor from New York's WNEW.

Others were there on slimmer evidence--Daniel L. Orange, the M.I.T. freshman who was first in line, siad "a friend of a friend of a friend" heard a rumor about the concert on a Springfield radio station late Tuesday night.