 SBC Park, San
Francisco, California on Sunday, November 13th. 2005. The 40.000
people audience got what they came for a great hot show, with a great warm-up
from Metallica and around 9 local time the band were on stage.
Set list:
Start Me Up - You Got Me Rockin' - Live With Me -
Tumbling Dice - Oh No, Not You Again - Rain Fall Down - Sweet Virginia - All
Down the Line - Night Time - Intros - Slipping Away - Infamy - Miss You - Rough
Justice - Get Off Of My Cloud - Honky Tonk Women - Sympathy For The Devil
- Paint It Black - Brown Sugar - Satisfaction - You Can't Always Get What You
Want (encore) - Jumpin' Jack Flash (encore)
Reviews:
Stones deliver with a band
by Joel Selvin, SF Chronicle
What does Mick Jagger have left to prove? The 62-year-old vocalist for the
Rolling Stones has been world famous since he was a youth. His
accomplishments have been indisputable. If there is anyone in the world who
could coast on his reputation a little after all these years, Jagger might
be that guy.
If so, then what was he doing Sunday at SBC Park bellowing his brains
out, digging into his inner self, driving himself to deliver the kind of
galvanizing, electrifying performance that made him famous 40 years ago in
the first place? If there had been a roof on the ballpark, the Stones would
have blown it off.
At the first of two high-priced San Francisco concerts (the second is
Tuesday night, again at SBC Park), the biggest rock shows of the year, rock
'n' roll's most celebrated senior citizens took the stage with the offhand
command that has been a trademark since before many in the capacity crowd
were born.
Guitarist Keith Richards stroked the chord flourish that kicks off
"Start Me Up," and Jagger charged onto stage in skin-tight black
jeans and gold lame jacket. But instead of his customary racing around the
stage, knife-slender Jagger focused his intensity on his singing. His vocal
performance instantly lifted the band to levels the Rolling Stones have only
briefly visited in recent years.
But as the band heads toward a half-century of making music, the Stones
continue to explore virgin territory for rock bands. To find any kind of
parallels, you have to look outside the world of rock, perhaps, to the world
of jazz where orchestras led by Duke Ellington or Count Basie maintained
remarkably stable memberships over many years. It was said that it took 40
years to refine those horn blends. Perhaps guitarists Richards and Ronnie
Wood, who only joined the band in 1976, when the Stones were already 15
years old, are only just now reaching similar levels of empathy and
telepathy.
When the Rolling Stones started, a rock group was lucky to have a second
hit. Three hits was a career. Richards likes to look to role models such as
Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters (whose song gave the band its name in the
first place), who played vigorous, powerful music well into his 70s. From
the way the band played Sunday at SBC, there is no telling how far they can
take this.
Beginning with the 1989 "Steel Wheels" tour, after Mick and
Keith kissed and made up and put the band back on the road following a long
layoff, the Stones laid out a blueprint for their future, embarking on tours
of stadiums -- and sometimes smaller halls, as well -- every three years or
so. With a tidy ensemble of backing singers and horn players that fill out
their sound, the Stones have learned how to produce spectacular theatrical
rock on a grand scale.
Strutting and staggering on a stage set roughly the size of a five-story
downtown office building, the Stones performed in front of a 60-foot video
screen, music blasting with surprising clarity for the volume. At one point,
as the band launched "Miss You," the stage actually levitated and
rolled out on rails deep into the audience.
The band's opening act, Metallica -- last seen in the area headlining its
own baseball stadium gig, but more than willing to open for the Stones --
only made the headliners appear more Olympian.
The Stones shifted band configurations practically every song. Behind the
stuttering, cascading orchestrations of "Tumbling Dice" was the
full complement of four horns, three backup vocalists and two other
additional players. For "Live With Me," saxophonist Bobby Keys
joined the basic five-piece ensemble to re-create his solo from the
"Let It Bleed" album. "Rain Fall Down," from the band's
new album, "A Bigger Bang," found the core group comfortably in
funk drive, strongly featuring bassist Darryl Jones, still the new man in
the band after 12 years.
Jagger played harmonica and strummed acoustic guitar for "Sweet
Virginia," the countrified classic from "Exile on Main
Street" that had Richards chiming in with his unique harmony vocals,
wonderfully ragged on top of the three-voice background chorus. Richards
laughed his way through his own solo spot, the plaintive soul ballad,
"Slipping Away."
But it was Jagger's fiercely focused performance that gave the show its
molten core. Charlie Watts, who lends dignity to the entire profession of
drumming, provides the elemental wheelhouse of the big sound, and Richards,
with his buccaneer antics and swashbuckling guitar exploits, never far from
Chuck Berry, is the engine. But this time around it was Jagger who made the
songs come to life.
He let the always-impressive Lisa Fischer steal the show momentarily on
"Night Time Is the Right Time," an unusual Stones tribute to Ray
Charles ("a blues pianist we very much followed," Jagger said),
but stepped back up to reclaim the song with a searing soul man scream the
very next verse. In plum-colored velvet hat and three-quarter length coat,
he climbed inside "Sympathy for the Devil" and made its menace
fresh, its leer hanging deliciously understated in the highly charged air,
as Richards squeezed a pair of high-voltage solos into the mix.
Jagger found the anthemic heart of "Paint It Black." And,
miracle of all miracles, he sang "Satisfaction" like he still
meant it, no matter how many bad wedding band versions, inept parodies or
other musical atrocities have been committed over the years in its name.
But that goes for Jagger himself. No matter how many of those other guys
come and go -- Robert Plant, Steven Tyler, whoever -- Jagger remains the
one. Rather than rest on his laurels, he is going for the throat. Most sane
men his age would be thinking about early retirement. The autumnal Jagger,
it would appear, has given up caricature for detail, abandoned the broad
stroke for the fine point. He has discovered nuance and found somewhere in
his own third act a new source of meaning and inspiration.
He can do this as long as he wants to.
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