Live Stones deliver pure satisfaction
Put aside any prejudices and just enjoy the show from the greatest rock & roll band that ever lived
IT is one thing to worship your musical heroes from afar, quite another to see them in the flesh.
The trepidation approaching a Rolling Stones concert for the first time was that they would not live up to the image of greatness held so long in this fan’s head. It was that fear that had held me back from seeing them live on numerous occasions previously.
I need not have worried. On a warm July night in Hyde Park in London the Stones delivered a show that defied their advanced years and reinforced why they are considered the greatest rock & roll band the world has ever seen.
Any doubts that perhaps the Stones were has-beens was blown away the moment they burst into the evening’s opening song, a raucous version of 1965’s ‘Get Off My Cloud’.
Two hours later, as the triumphant final notes of ‘Satisfaction’ rang out into the night sky, the argument could be put to rest once and for all: they may be men on the cusp of their 80s but the Rolling Stones — or at least those members still alive — can still rock hard.
The fact they haven’t really made a decent album for 40 years hardly mattered.
Who knows what the secret is of their endurance, but at Hyde Park, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ron Wood performed with the energy, enthusiasm and passion of men decades younger.
This was no case of going through the motions and cashing the cheque at the gate.
Cast aside momentarily the fact that the Rolling Stones today are a global brand, a money-making corporation. Ignore that the cheapest ticket for this gig was more than 100 pounds and avoid the merchandise stores selling outrageously priced memorabilia that are dotted around the venue. Because whatever they are the rest of the time, when the Stones take the stage it is still all about the music first and foremost. That much has never changed.
Jagger, Richards, Wood and the other eight members of their backing band played with genuine joy at being able to make music together after all these years. And they were rewarded with an ecstatic reception from a 65,000-strong crowd at the British Summer Time festival.
How could we be disappointed with a 19 song set list that included ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, ‘Gimme Shelter’, ‘Miss You’ and ‘Midnight Rambler’, along with a cover version of Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’?
And while it would have been great to have heard them play ‘Street Fightin’ Man’, ‘Rocks Off’, ‘Beast of Burden’, or the now-banished ‘Brown Sugar’ (or anything from Sticky Fingers for that matter), there are only so many songs you can cram into a two hour set.
The indefatigable Mick Jagger, who turns 79 later this month, is a marvel. First appearing in a dark jacket with embroidered gold flowers across the chest and wrists, he was constantly on the move prancing and dancing across the stage or up and down the catwalk into the crowd and exhorting the audience up the intensity, and neither physically or vocally shows any signs of his recent bout of COVID.
Usually slouched to Mick’s left, Keith Richards, the ultimate rock survivor, was laidback cool behind dark shades in a leather biker’s jacket, his remaining whisps of grey hair held back by a red and black head scarf. He doesn’t do much, but he doesn’t have to, apart from be Keef, the human riff.
On Mick’s other side, Ron Wood, the youngest of the three, vamped for the audience hunched over his guitar in a gold and black striped suit jacket, his hair dyed jet black. His dexterity with a range of instruments — electric, acoustic, slide — was a revelation.
Perhaps there was extra significance to this Hyde Park concert that added to the fervor of their performance. In between songs at one stage, Jagger noted that this was the fifth time they had played at London’s largest open space just a short distance from Buckingham Palace (and 203rd show in London, but who’s counting?). The first time, entry was free, he noted wryly. “The following ones were not free,” he said and none of us needed to be reminded we’d shelled out a minimum of £100 for the privilege of being here.
That first time on July 5, 1969, was one of the most famous concerts in the history of rock music. It came two days after the band’s founder, Brian Jones, had drowned in the swimming pool of his country estate, and was the debut of his replacement as lead guitarist, Mick Taylor, in front of an estimated 500,000 people.
Nor did we need to be reminded that the Stones’ very first show 60 years ago — July 12, 1962, to be precise — took place a little over 2km away at the Marquee Club in Oxford Street.
No, this was no ordinary concert. As mortality encroaches on the Stones — personified by the pre-concert video montage tribute to the late Charlie Watts — there is a chance that this was their last ever live performance in their home town. Not that any of the band acknowledged that possibility. Indeed, on July 3, the three surviving Stones played as if they could continue doing this forever.
There was barely a pause as they bashed through the opening nine songs of the concert, which included a plaintive version of ‘Angie’, performed for the first time of this tour, the majestic ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, and the mandatory ‘Honky Tonk Women’, which gave the horn section a proper work out.
The band may have been colourful specks in the distance on the Great Oak Stage but loomed large over the audience on three massive high-resolution video screens and filled the park thanks to a booming sound system.
As the sun began to set over London, Mick took a breather as Keith strapped on an acoustic guitar and took over the vocals for the stark ‘You Got The Silver, accompanied by Ronnie on slide guitar. After all these years, the lived in raspiness of his voice gave the ballad from Let It Bleed extra texture, but it didn’t hold up so well for a slightly flat ‘Happy’, so the return of Mick for the show’s third section with a lengthy version of ‘Miss You’ came just in time to restore the energy.
From there it was a constant hit parade of ‘Midnight Rambler’, ‘Paint It Black’ and ‘Start Me Up’.
The opening arpeggios of ‘Gimme Shelter’ ringing from Keith’s guitar heralded another peak and a showcase for the voice of Sasha Allen who reprises Merry Clayton’s vocal solo from the 1969 classic. Jagger may have been referring to the Vietnam War when he wrote the lyrics in 1969, but as scenes of the devastation of Ukraine flash on the screen behind the band, we’re reminded that man’s penchant for violence and destruction towards his fellow man has not lessened over the past half a century.
From the first samba beat of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, the start of a two song encore, the entire park echoed with the song’s “wooh-wooh” refrain. With barely a pause for breath, Keith ripped into the opening riff of ‘Satisfaction’, and at 10.20pm the gates opened to release the audience into a darkened Hyde Park to wind our way home.
Is it fair to expect our heroes to appear in the flesh as we imagine them in our dreams, especially when their peak was 50 years ago?
Much as we would like to preserve Mick & Keith in wax from their glory days, we have to accept that they are now grizzled old men in the same way that the Rolling Stones of 2022 as a live band will never compare with the Stones of 1972.
Back then the Stones were dangerous and threatening; today they are an entertainment juggernaut, but about as edgy as grandma’s cardigan.
As famous for their bad boy, rebellious behaviour as for their song book of radio-friendly rock anthems, the Stones are now so much a part of the Establishment that their lead singer was knighted by Prince Charles in 2003.
So, yes, this was an exercise in nostalgia, but so what?
It also doesn’t really matter if they have nothing new to say, because they said more in their first decade and a half of their careers than most other artists living or dead ever managed.
These are the men who, after all, virtually wrote the book on the sound, look, and attitude of a rock band. Their style has been much imitated but never bettered.
If we want to enjoy the Stones as they were when they really did deserve the title of the greatest rock & roll band in the world, we can always go back to the recordings on vinyl.
Meanwhile, we should take any opportunity we can to celebrate their endurance and longevity, their ongoing joy at making music, and the not insignificant part they have played in the cultural and social history of the past six decades. Put aside any prejudices and just enjoy the show from the greatest rock & roll band that ever lived because they won’t be around forever.
