Back at the newly minted U Arena for the second night of The Rolling Stones’ Paris residency, the first surprise comes immediately. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” replaces “Sympathy for the Devil” as the opener, raising hopes that the set might be shuffled a little more substantially. Those changes remain modest, but “Dancing with Mr. D” is a welcome one, all funk, menace and the dark sleaze that hangs over so much of the Stones’ seventies work.
The audience vote is less adventurous. “Angie” wins over “Beast of Burden” and “Dead Flowers,” both of which would have been more interesting choices. Keith Richards is again mostly in good form, though he somehow manages to mangle the intro to “Brown Sugar,” something he has now done with alarming regularity. How anyone can lose his way in a riff he wrote and has played thousands of times remains one of the enduring mysteries of rock ’n’ roll. He laughs it off, and the moment passes.
Ronnie Wood is his usual animated self and particularly strong on “Midnight Rambler,” while Charlie Watts remains the quiet engine of the whole operation. The connection between Watts and Richards is clearest on “Honky Tonk Women,” where each seems to pull the other forward. That push and pull is still one of the essential ingredients in the Stones’ sound.
Once again, though, Mick Jagger is the centre of gravity. At 74, he remains almost absurdly mobile, but tonight there is something else: he looks genuinely playful. At one point he slips behind Charlie and starts hitting the cymbals with one of the drummer’s sticks. During “Gimme Shelter,” he wanders over to the backing singers and joins them, everybody cracking up in the process. The performance feels less controlled and more spontaneous than the previous night.
That looseness extends to his relationship with Keith. There is more joking, more eye contact, more visible interaction, including Keith stealing Jagger’s harmonica before the blues numbers. On nights when Richards is struggling, Jagger’s frustration can be obvious. Tonight there is very little of that. The tension seems to have eased, and the whole show benefits from it.
The backing band is immaculate as ever, perhaps too much so in places. Chuck Leavell occasionally sits a little high in the mix, while Sasha Allen brings enormous power to “Gimme Shelter.” Her duet with Jagger is tremendous fun, even if a little more restraint would give the song more room to breathe.
The setlist still leaves plenty of obvious possibilities untouched, but night two is less about what changes on paper than what changes between the people onstage. The Stones are better when they look like they are enjoying each other, and tonight they do. For all the machinery surrounding them, the best moments still come when the four of them forget the machinery is there.
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