The Rolling Stones open a three-night stand at the brand-new U Arena with “Sympathy for the Devil,” an inspired choice that immediately makes you wonder why they haven’t been opening shows with it for years. From there, much of the evening is considerably more predictable. “Satisfaction,” “Paint It Black,” “Start Me Up,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Miss You”: after more than half a century, there are songs they simply cannot leave out. Yet predictability has never meant precision with the Stones. Even surrounded by backing musicians, with Chuck Leavell helping steer the ship, they retain the peculiar impression that everything could still come apart at any moment.
Keith Richards is at the centre of that tension. His playing has become increasingly economical, his parts sometimes reduced almost to their bare essentials, but tonight he is mostly solid. Ronnie Wood takes considerably more of the guitar workload, and that arrangement works. Wood has spent decades being compared unfavourably with Mick Taylor, which rather misses the point. His loose, conversational playing meshes perfectly with Richards, while his permanently amused stage presence provides some welcome levity whenever the machinery begins to creak.
Holding everything together is Charlie Watts. There is almost nothing demonstrative about his playing, but remove that subtle swing and half the catalogue changes character completely. “Tumbling Dice” is the obvious example: in lesser hands it could become an ordinary rocker; Watts gives it that peculiar rolling gait that makes it unmistakably the Stones. His reception during the band introductions is enormous and entirely deserved.
And then there is Mick Jagger, who at 74 continues to make the normal rules of ageing look suspicious. For two and a half hours he runs, dances and prowls across the enormous stage without any noticeable decline in his singing. The blues shout gets most of the work, but the falsetto remains intact, as do the country sneer and softer ballad voice. He addresses the audience almost entirely in French, jokes about the current political climate and points out that, as this is the first event ever held at U Arena, everyone in the building is technically a virgin.
The setlist is where the evening plays things safest. Earlier dates on the tour had produced “Dancing with Mr. D” and “Play with Fire,” both of which would have been welcome, while the audience vote produces “Let’s Spend the Night Together” from a selection that also includes “Bitch” and “Let It Bleed.” The two blues covers are excellent, but there is still a sense that a band with this catalogue could afford to take a few more chances.
It hardly matters once the familiar sequence takes over. The apparent contradiction remains the great pleasure of a Stones concert: one of the biggest touring operations in the world, rehearsed and organised down to the minute, built around a band that still sounds fundamentally loose. Charlie keeps the floor beneath them, Ronnie patches the gaps, Keith throws in those clipped chords that seem permanently in danger of arriving a fraction too late, and Jagger races around above it all.
The Rolling Stones have spent more than fifty years perfecting the art of sounding as though nothing has been perfected at all.F or all the complaints about the setlist, the rough edges and the inevitable signs of age, none of it changes what happens when the four of them lock into “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” or “Satisfaction” and the whole arena lifts with them. Plenty of bands have inherited pieces of the Stones. Nobody has inherited the whole thing. Tonight, in Nanterre, they remain the world's greatest rock n' roll band.
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