41.000 people big audience will be at the PAC
BELL PARK event tonight and
even Saturday evening.
Mick and the boys defy age, rain to entertain sold-out crowd at Pac Bell Park
November 9, 2002,By JOHN BECK
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
SAN FRANCISCO -- "Gimme Shelter" may have been an unspoken desire
Friday as intermittent rains threatened a die-hard Pac Bell Park crowd, but the
Rolling Stones mounted their own "crossfire-hurricane," showering the
audience with a downpour of old favorites and timely covers.
"I tell you, you're a really ... great audience for coming out on a
night like this," Mick Jagger told the sellout crowd of 38,000.
If there was ever a band to promote Viagra, it's the Rolling Stones, who
continue to flaunt more staying power and stamina than possibly any other band
in the history of rock 'n' roll. At least a nod in the Guinness Book of World
Records would be fitting. At this point, the band is a perpetual rolling feat of
nature -- as much about defying age and convention as it is about reworking the
blues.
The same intransigent spirit was on full display outside the park as their
faithful following of mostly baby boomers seemed to embrace the rain, yelling
and jumping in puddles. Arriving in stretch limos, taxis, buses and on foot,
rain-weary fans filled all the bars around the waterfront ballpark as scalpers
made a bundle hawking tickets.
Jim Bennington, 45, flew in from Los Angeles after seeing the Stones play
Tuesday.
"I don't care if they're 90 years old," he said. "If they come
to play, I'll be there."
His 19-year-old daughter, Wendy, accompanied him.
"I'm not really that big of a fan," she said. "But if it's
something we can get out and do together then I'm all for it. If only the
Strokes were opening tonight, then I would have bought the tickets myself."
Mike Sheehan drove from Oakland and bought bleacher seats from a scalper for
$100.
"I made the guy hold my hand and follow me to the gate to make sure it
wasn't counterfeit," he said.
Nearly every band making the rounds today, even legends like Bob Dylan and
Paul McCartney, arrives with new material. Not the Rolling Stones. It's as if
they don't need it. They're beyond new material.
A band that started playing upstart fighting man's blues has matured into
nostalgic jukebox Geritol blues. But it still packs a punch.
By the third song, "Start Me Up" was almost redundant considering
Sir Mick and the boys had already set the tone with a sassy "Brown
Sugar" and the sing-along anthem "Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like
It)."
With Jagger teasing the harmonica, "Midnight Rambler" slowed to
molasses blues drip, before building again to its honky-tonk roots.
Dwarfed by a Broadway-sized stage adorned with trademark red lips stretching
a pair of underwear, the Stones could have hosted a made-for-TV concert as live
images chronicled every move of every member of the band (even the ever sedate
drummer Charlie Watts).
At 59, Jagger turned a concert into a track meet, competing only with time as
he ran back and forth across the outfield of a stage, stalking a long catwalk
into the crowd to strike mocking bad-boy poses.
No singer does more with one hand on his hip than Jagger. Like a mother
admonishing naughty children or a 5-year-old playing dress-up in front of a
mirror, he flapped and strutted while preening for the crowd.
Still dirty, still lovesick, his vocals held up fine on slower ballads like
"Angie" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Every bit the blue-collar working man's guitarist, a perpetually grinning
Richards crunched blues chords that seemed to mirror the lines in his face.
In an age when the next new thing is old before puberty, the Stones proved a
welcome relic Friday night. It's not new. It's not as bad as it once was, but
the sexagenarian millionaires can still get the blood running.
The Rolling Stones return at 7 p.m. today at Pac Bell Park and play Tuesday
in the Oakland Arena.
Time is on their side
BY LESLIE KATZ
Of The Examiner Staff
Whatever the Rolling Stones are on these days, it's
working.
The band looked great and sounded good at a
dampened Pacific Bell park on Friday night at the first of three Bay Area
shows on its "Forty Licks" tour. (It played at the ballpark again
Saturday, and moves to the Oakland Arena for a concert Tuesday night.)
While Friday's event fell short of the
quasi-religious/historic experience that characterized other rock 'n' roll
pioneers Paul McCartney and The Who, who toured the Bay Area this year, this
greatest hits show nicely encapsulated the band's best known theme: "It's
Only Rock 'N Roll." The tune came second in the 20-song set.
And despite the mind-numbing hype and glitz that
accompanied the many Stones tours in recent memory, this show had almost an
old-fashioned appeal in its no-nonsense approach. There they were: a baseball
field of nearly 40,000 rain-moistened fans, a huge stage with a massive video
screen backdrop, and those songs that are beyond famous; they're in your
bloodstream. The band is even mixing things up, slightly altering the song
lineup for each performance.
Still, this wasn't the show for diehard fans
looking for obscure nuggets, even though the tour includes some stops at
smaller venues where the fellas are pulling out some lesser known tunes from
their four-decade career.
Backed by a brass section and background singers,
the Stones started up (yes, they played "Start Me Up") their hits
and didn't stop (they snuck in one new tune, "Don't Stop") for a
little more than two hours.
They opened with "Brown Sugar," encored
with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," and in between were
"Angie," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "You
Got Me Rocking," "Midnight Rambler," "Tumbling Dice,"
"Sympathy for the Devil," "Gimme Shelter," "Jumpin'
Jack Flash" and "Street Fighting Man."
To be honest, none of the renditions was revelatory.
But all were solid.
Though Mick Jagger's vocals bordered on barking, he
oversaw the action with his commanding style and interpretive strutting, which,
when you haven't seen it live for awhile, looks better than most modern dance.
Jagger himself looked marvelous, too. His tailor,
stylist and personal trainer deserve every penny they're making. Mick's
fashion sense rivals Madonna's (he sported an array of smart coatwear
throughout the show), not a hair was out of place, and not an ounce of flab
could be detected on that well-worked 59-year-old body (projected on a
three-story video screen, to boot).
Guitarist Keith Richards was missing his
death-warmed-over look. He took his sunglasses off after the first few tunes,
and got his own two songs: the soulful "Slipping Away" and happily,
"Happy." Richards shared guitar duties with Ron Wood, who looked
amazing in leather pants and a bright blue rain jacket.
Of course, Charlie Watts' solid drumming held
everything together, and he put on a big smile when he was introduced.
The band members even managed a couple of moments
of intimacy, waving and shaking hands with folks in the audience as they
walked down a runway to a smaller stage in the middle of the field (didn't the
Backstreet Boys do something to this effect last year?) where they performed
as mini, up-close-and-personal set featuring "Neighbours,"
"Little Red Rooster" and Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling
Stone." (The irony of the Dylan lyrics were not lost in connection with
this, the world's most publicized rock band.)
Back at the main stage, the dried-off Sheryl Crow
joined Jagger on vocals for a bump-and-grind duet of "Honky Tonk Women."
Though the intrepid Crow got drenched during her opening 40-minute set (the
rain stopped before the Stones came out), and there certainly was no sun to be
soaked up, she was having fun.
In the end, just about everyone -- the beer-bellied
guys, the soccer moms and grandmas, the folks in the rain ponchos, and fans
wearing the blue-and-red flickering tongue logo pins, and some younger folks,
too -- was having fun.
It's a lot more than can be said about some of
today's shoe-gazing, ice-cool rock acts that, while following in the Stones'
footsteps musically, have a thing or two to learn about showmanship. It's
comforting that after 40 years, we can still look to the Stones for an
emotional rescue.
Pacific
Bell Park, San Francisco, California
Stones,
fans roll with the weather
