For more than forty years, every tour by The Rolling Stones has come with the same question: is this The Last Time? With each passing year, the joke carries a little more weight. Mick Jagger turns seventy-nine in a few days, Keith Richards is not far behind, and this sixtieth-anniversary tour arrives less than a year after the death of Charlie Watts. Time Waits for No One, indeed.
The concert opens with a moving montage of Watts, the drummer who for decades drew some of the loudest cheers of the night during the band introductions. The tribute is brief, dignified and clearly cathartic, allowing both band and audience to acknowledge the loss before doing what the Stones have always done best: moving forward. “Street Fighting Man” detonates the set, and for the next two hours the band tears through one of the most bulletproof catalogues in rock and roll.
Jagger remains almost absurdly animated, prowling the stage, cracking jokes in impeccable French and singing with a force that makes his age seem increasingly irrelevant. Richards still embodies rock and roll cool without appearing to try, while Ronnie Wood, beneath the grins and clowning, supplies much of the guitar muscle. Steve Jordan has the most difficult job of all. He hits harder than Watts did, but crucially he understands the swing. That loose, slightly behind-the-beat feel remains the difference between a rock band and the Rolling Stones. It is what makes the Stones roll.
Inevitably, there is more emotion in the air than on previous tours. The anniversary, Watts’ absence and the sheer age of the men onstage make it impossible not to think about endings. But the Stones have spent their entire career making predictions look foolish. They helped invent stadium rock, then the blockbuster world tour, then the modern nostalgia circuit, all while moving freely through blues, country, soul, disco and rock and roll without ever losing their identity.
So perhaps asking how long they can continue is the wrong question. There is no template for this because nobody has done it before. Could they still be playing high-energy rock and roll well into their eighties? If anyone can, it is probably them.
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