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“This music’s for Manhattan!” Mick Jagger instructed the gang on Thursday night time at MetLife Stadium, earlier than launching right into a punchy rendition of “Shattered,” that agitated ode to late-70s New York City that closes out the band’s 1978 album “Some Girls.” In the following 46 years, town has modified in some superficial methods however by some means remained primarily the identical — a lot, as they confirmed all through an impressively energetic two-hour set, just like the Rolling Stones.
The Stones’ first New York-area stadium gig in 5 years was sponsored, with no trace of irony, by AARP. It was acceptable: At occasions what transpired onstage felt not similar to a rock live performance however a show of the evolutionary marvel that’s getting old within the twenty first century. (Albeit getting old whereas rich, with each potential technological and medical benefit at one’s disposal. I’ll have no matter nutritional vitamins the Stones are taking, please.)
Ronnie Wood, the core group’s child at age 76, nonetheless shreds on the guitar with a grinning, impish verve. Eighty-year-old and eternally cool Keith Richards pairs his bluesy licks with a humble demeanor that appears to say “I can’t imagine I’m nonetheless right here, both.” And then there’s Jagger, who turns 81 a number of days after the Hackney Diamonds Tour wraps in July. Six many years into his performing profession, he’s by some means nonetheless the indefatigable dynamo he all the time was, slithering vertically like a charmed snake, chopping the air as if he’s in a kung fu battle towards a swarm of unseen mosquitoes, and, when he wants each arms to bounce, which is usually, nestling the microphone provocatively above the fly of his pants. Sprinting the size of the stage throughout a rousing “Honky Tonk Women” — the thirteenth music within the set! — he conjured no different rock star a lot as Benjamin Button, as he appeared to develop into much more energetic because the night time went on.
Last yr’s “Hackney Diamonds” — the Stones’ first album of recent materials in practically twenty years — was the nominal motive for the tour, however they didn’t linger on it, and the gang didn’t appear to thoughts. Across 19 songs, they performed solely three tunes from the newest launch, together with two of the very best: The taut, growly lead single “Angry” and, for the primary a part of the encore, the gospel-influenced reverie “Sweet Sounds of Heaven.” Mostly it was a type of truncated biggest hits assortment, capturing the band’s lengthy transformation from reverent college students of the blues (Richards’ star activate the tender “You Got the Silver”) to countercultural soothsayers (a singalong-friendly “Sympathy for the Devil”) to company rock behemoth (they opened, after all, with “Start Me Up”).
Jagger, Richards and Wood all nonetheless emanate a palpable pleasure for what they’re doing onstage. But these joys additionally really feel noticeably private and siloed, hardly ever mixing to supply a lot intra-band chemistry. That is probably going a preservation technique — the surest method to hold a well-oiled machine operating and to proceed sharing the stage with the identical folks for half a century or extra. But when Jagger ended a captivating story a few native diner that had named a sandwich after him (“I’ve by no means had a [expletive] sandwich named after me! I’m very, very proud”), I didn’t fairly purchase his assertion that he, Keith and Ronnie had been going to go take pleasure in one collectively after the present.
Some of that fractured feeling is probably going as a result of absence of the nice Charlie Watts, the band’s longtime drummer who died in 2021; the Hackney Diamonds Tour is the Stones’ first North American stadium tour with out him. His substitute, Steve Jordan, does about nearly as good a job as anybody might — like Watts, he balances a rock drummer’s energy with a jazzy agility — and his presence by no means overwhelms. Though they’re surrounded by loads of proficient backing musicians, the staging makes it clear that the Rolling Stones are actually a trio.
The night time’s breakout star, although, was Chanel Haynes, a backing vocalist who took heart stage to sing with Jagger throughout two of the night time’s finest performances. Haynes — who performed Tina Turner within the West End manufacturing of the jukebox musical “Tina” earlier than becoming a member of the Stones’ touring band in 2023 — ably stuffed the footwear of the mighty Merry Clayton on a blazing “Gimme Shelter,” and sat in for Lady Gaga on “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” matching the megawatt depth of her “Hackney Diamonds” cameo. Though Haynes may very well be velvety mushy when the music known as for it, at her most spectacular she sang with a low, grumbling starvation that usually swelled into ferocity, as if she had been taking huge, meaty bites out of the songs.
Jagger, for his half, delivered lots of his traces in his signature bark: The second music, a considerably slowed down and blues-ified “Get Off of My Cloud,” was reworked by his virtually scat-like supply. But in fleeting moments — together with a number of falsetto runs — he confirmed {that a} sure tenderness in his tone stays intact.
That was most obvious on a beautiful rendition of “Wild Horses,” the music that gained inclusion within the set by successful the nightly on-line “fan vote.” For a lot of this present, the Stones successfully proved they may outrun age, irrelevancy and all the opposite indignities that point brings to mere mortals. But right here they settled into one thing extra contemplative, elegiac and susceptible, and the present was higher for it.
At a time when their few remaining friends are wrapping farewell excursions and bands which have been collectively for half as lengthy are operating on fumes, the Stones are an anomaly. It’s not that their present is devoid of nostalgia, but it surely’s not coasting on it both. They don’t appear like they did within the ’70s — who does? — however when their sound is gelling they can faucet into some type of everlasting current. For higher or worse, they appear intent to be the final band of their era standing, to experience rock ’n’ roll all the best way to its logical endpoint. Astoundingly, they don’t sound like they’ve reached it but.
