Like a museum come alive, The Stones have still got it
Rock The Rolling Stones Croke Park, Dublin ★★★★★
The conceit behind the Rolling Stones’s “No Filter” tour is that it’s Mick, Keith and the gang, raw and without embellishment.
But has it ever been any different with these primordial lords of crotchwaggling rock ‘n’ roll? The entire point of the Rolling Stones, from their early years as frisky blues chancers to their glory days as stadium rock’s dark rulers, is that they’re straight shooters giving it to their audience from the hip. They have never been a band to slap on the varnish.
So it proved once again as the louchest pensioners in pop kicked off the latest leg of a jaunt that has already parked 750,000 bums on seats and topped up their bank accounts by a cheeky £100 million.
With the first hints of red tinging the Dublin skyline, the Stones opened with Sympathy For The Devil, their operatic chronicling of backstage decadence. All these decades later, it still reads like a frontline dispatch from rock’s heart of darkness, a perfectly pitched portrait of the pain and pathos after the party.
Mick Jagger’s voice is more ragged than when the track oozed onto the airwaves, simultaneously eerie and bewitching, in 1968. But the singer, in a shimmering outfit that resembled a futuristic dressing gown Doctor Who might wear to brunch, still had that old strut and the vim.
Magnetism of a different sort was radiated by Richards, counterpointing Jagger’s peacocking with villainous glares and sheet lightning solos. The rest – Ron Wood, drummer Charlie Watts and several auxiliary players – looked pleased the rain had held off.
Jet-setting and with perma-tans on their perma-tans, the Stones may be living embodiment of pampered rock stars. But here, flanked by four large screens, they sounded angry and alive. With a combined age of 293 perhaps, after decades of jokes about bus passes and zimmerframes, there was a point to prove regarding their continued vitality and relevance.
That isn’t to say they didn’t show their vintage. There were enough wrinkles on stage to keep the cold cream industry in business until the next millennium, with Richards’s weathered visage maintaining a magnificent cragginess at all times and crenellating into pools of darkness as daylight faded. And, though lively, Jagger never quite threw himself about with abandon. At 74, abandon was to be approached with caution. His banter could have done with a little sparkle: “What a beautiful evening. Really nice, yeah?”
The music, thankfully, was a great deal livelier. An early ramble through blues curios Just Your Fool (originally by Buddy Johnson) and Ride ‘Em On Down (Jimmy Reed) acknowledged the group’s formative debt to the roots music of the American South.
Wending into the annals presented Jagger with his first opportunity to step outside his pouty persona and embrace the unfamiliar guise of grizzled veteran. Punters who had in some cases paid upwards of £100 may, however, have wondered how far down this cul-de-sac they were going to be led.
But with darkness stealing in, the Stones stretched their legs and charted a weaving course through brimstone belters such as Wild Horses, You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. These songs are so overfamiliar – the stuff of Martin Scorsese montages and drive-time playlists – it’s jolting to hear them delivered as living compositions, like visiting a museum to find all the exhibitions have come alive.
Surprises were at a minimum (casual fans may have been surprised at Richards’s ferocious turn as frontman on Before They Make Me Run). Yet Jagger was in spiky fettle and the encore one two of Gimme Shelter and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction brought a rewardingly pugilistic conclusion to a night that confirmed that the Stones still know how to throw their punches.