Jumping Jack Flash - Let's Spend The Night Together - You Got Me Rocking - Oh
No Not You Again - Dead Flowers - Angie - It's Only Rock'n'Roll - Tumblin' Dice
- Night Time Is The Right Time - Intros - The Place Is Empty
Happy - Miss You - Rough Justice - Get Off My Cloud - Honky Tonk Woman - Paint
It Black - Sympathy For The Devil - Start Me Up - Brown Sugar - You Can't Always
Get What You Want (encore) - Satisfaction (encore)
OF COURSE it started with a bang. At exactly 9pm, fireworks erupted from
the highest point of the stage, and asteroids hurtled towards the audience on
the big screen.
Keith Richards appeared first, a black Stratocaster guitar slung around his
knees. He chopped out the dirty, distorted riff that introduces Jumping
Jack Flash, and people leapt to their feet, sending white plastic chairs
skittling behind them.
"Ah was ba-hn, in a crossfire hurricane," sang Sir Mick,
resplendent in a sparkly scarlet jacket and shiny scarlet shirt. He raced
across the stage, clapping and pointing at invisible demons like a Southern
Baptist minister in full flight.
The band barely drew breath before launching next into Let's Spend the
Night Together.
Charlie Watts looked as unhappy as ever as he pounded out the beats he has
played a thousand times before. The guitarist Ronnie Wood wore the permanently
surprised look of a man who cannot quite believe he is in the world's biggest
rock band.
Jagger waved at a section of the 58,000-strong audience, who had paid up to
$399 for tickets. "How ya doin' - all right?" he asked in that
pantomime Cockney accent. "Fanks for givin' us a big Australian welcome."
Richards lurched and they were off again, another grinding lick introducing
a live favourite, You Got Me Rockin'. You can see why they call
Richards the Human Riff. Part man, part guitar, it is impossible to imagine
him doing anything else but cranking out dirty blues riffs in front of
thousands of people.
Jagger looked and sounded sensational. His unfeasibly lush hair swung
around his face as he rushed from one end of the stage to the other. "You
got me rockin'," he screamed as men with old tour T-shirts stretched
around their middle-aged bellies grinned like schoolboys.
Only three songs into the set, Ronnie Wood had already lit a cigar and
Richards had a cigarette dangling from his grinning cartoon lips. These boys
still rock, and they know it.
Halfway through the set something odd happened. The chunk of stage carrying
the band detached itself and began moving into the crowd. The Stones were
performing their disco hit Miss You at the time, Jagger having
reappeared wearing a guitar and what can only be described as a gold blouson.
The result looked very much like a Mardi Gras float.
When the mini-stage finally came to rest, Jagger told the audience how
"laaverly" they looked for the 20th time and launched into Get
Off Of My Cloud. It was a neat trick, and the sound never faltered. Watts
then struck up the distinctive backbeat of Honky Tonk Woman, and the
Mardi Gras float began its stately progress back to the mothership. Watts
still looked unhappy.
Dayna Flavin, 9, and her brother Tom, 6, were taken to the show at Telstra
Stadium by their father, James. His wife, Carol, was also there, armed with a
family pack of ear plugs. "I want my children to be able to tell their
grandchildren that they saw the Stones," Mr Flavin said.
Heidi Voss, of Dee Why, said it was her first Stones show. Is she a big fan
of the band? "Medium," she said. "I'm amazed by what they can
still do when you look at their age." Asked if Jagger was still sexy at
62, she frowned. Hmm. "Well, he's fit," she said. "I wouldn't
call him sexy."
It is unlikely that many fans were there to hear songs from the band's new
album, A Bigger Bang. They came, as they always come, to hear the back
catalogue of classics. Perhaps they had also come to see whether Jagger was
still the inspiration for every brattish, camp frontman from David Bowie to
Jarvis Cocker. And to see if Richards could still wring magic from his guitar.
They can, of course - because, to borrow one of the titles of their own
songs, it's only rock'n'roll but they like it. As Richards once said:
"Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get the older you want
to be."
THE Rolling Stones made a defiant
statement to take rock 'n' roll further than it's ever been with their concert
at Telstra Stadium last night.
The moment of triumph came halfway through the show when the band glided
above the audience on a hydraulic stage to the centre of the arena during the
classic song Miss You.
It was possibly the coolest concert gimmick an Australian audience has ever
seen.
And they knew they were doing it bigger and better than anyone else from the
huge grins that spread across their faces.
The Stones have more ammunition than anyone else to keep going, and proved it
by playing a string of hits which spanned their four-decade career including Sympathy
for the Devil, Painted Black, Start Me Up, Get Off My Cloud, Brown Sugar and
Dead Flowers.
Front man Mick Jagger was in superb athletic form covering every millimetre
of the stage and playing the crowd perfectly.
Behind him, Richards, Ronnie Wood, Charlie Watts and bassist Darryl Jones
enjoyed the easy camaraderie of seasoned musicians.
Telstra Stadium, Sydney, Australia
