Banging old Bones are bang on

The Rolling Stones A Bigger Bang: Live On Copacabana Beach

How punks used to sneer at “The Strolling Bones” – they were old, they were finished, they were yesterday. Well, look who’s had the last laugh.

With a combined age of nearly 310 years, the Stones have outlasted and outsold all of the mockers and knockers to become the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band. A British institution with global appeal.

A Bigger Bang is the spectacular gig they played to an estimated 1.5 million people on Brazil’s Copacabana beach in February 2006.

That’s a mighty long way from where they started out at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey. Most of this record-breaking Rio de Janeiro show has already been released, on the 2007 four-DVD set, The Biggest Bang.

Now remixed, re-edited and remastered, the live album comes with four songs not in the original collection – 1972’s Tumbling Dice and 1968’s Sympathy For The Devil, along with Oh No, Not You Again and This Place Is Empty (sung by Keith Richards) from their 2005 album A Bigger Bang. The 20 tracks include classics Jumpin’ Jack Flash and It’s Only Rock n’ Roll (But I Like It), Brown Sugar, You Can’t Always Get What You Want and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – the 1965 smash hit that Keef claimed to have written in his sleep.

This strutting anthem of alienation with its simple addictive riff proved the Stones were more than just an exciting but derivative R&B band.

They followed it that year with Get Off Of My Cloud, a howl of post-adolescent rage.

The set shuffles between eras. We get Start Me Up (a Top 10 hit from 1981), Happy from 1972’s Exile On Main Street, 1969’s Honky Tonk Women, and 1994’s You Got Me Rocking.

All that and Mick ad libbing in Portuguese.