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Glendale — The Rolling Stones proved Wednesday night that there's more to University of Phoenix Stadium than Arizona Cardinals football.

That even the Stones, the world's greatest rock band by most accounts, couldn't pack the stands like the old days begs the question of whether the days of stadium concerts are a thing of the past.

Roughly 40,000 people loosely filled about two-thirds of the stadium.

Granted, Wednesday's concert was the Stones' second in a year; the band sold out the neighboring Jobing.com Arena — formerly Glendale Arena — the weekend after last Thanksgiving.

Ticket prices also could have played a role; floor seats were $350, and the cheap seats on the fourth-floor balcony, where even seeing the large screens on the five-story stage set up at one end of the football field required squinting, were $60.

But none of this seems to matter to those who did flood into the enormous stadium, which seats more than 60,000 for game day.

With the stage set up, the stadium lost one big swath of seats, leaving capacity at roughly 45,000, and large sections in the middle were empty.

"I think it's fabulous," Cathy Tiberia of Glendale said while home-grown rocker Alice Cooper, wearing black from head to toe, sang his anthem, "School's Out."

"Look how many people you can seat. The food sucks, but other than that I think they should have a concert every night."

Tiberia stood outside the field level, leading to the football surface where the Cardinals and Dallas will play on Sunday.

On Wednesday, that glorious green surface was wheeled outside. Near it, dozens of flat-bed trucks were parked. They were used to haul in the tons of equipment and field grids used to construct that stage that easily swallowed Cooper and his four band mates.

But Cooper made good use of the front half of the stage, pumping a black crutch in the air as he wailed the lyrics to "I'm Eighteen." Then he pulled a Houdini and disappeared beneath the cape of a woman clad in fishnet stockings and a black veil, cracking a whip.

Tiberia didn't see that, nor did she see the audience go wild during "School's Out."

Casa Grande teacher Jeff Doran also missed that. He and his friends were outside smoking. They figured they would wait a bit to check out the scene, he said, and size up the stadium just in case there was another concert.

Doran, a Florida native who has been in Arizona about 10 years, said the Stones event was his first Arizona stadium concert, which is not surprising.

The last time Arizona hosted a concert of this magnitude was back in 2001, when George Strait brought about 20,000 to Sun Devil Stadium, the Cardinals' first home.

Back in 1997, the Stones packed 50,000 folks into that same venue.

No doubt organizers were hoping for that kind of turn out Wednesday.