With a combined age of 245 and multimillion-pound fortunes to match, the Rolling Stones could be forgiven for quietly hanging up their guitars.
But instead the original bad boys of rock’n’roll kicked off their latest world tour in front of a sell-out crowd at Boston’s Fenway Park on Sunday with a concert so loud it had policemen patrolling outside with sound meters.
Led by sinewy lead singer Mick Jagger, the band ripped through a selection of classic tracks and a sprinkling of songs from their new album, A Bigger Bang — although not the most controversial offering, Sweet Neo-Con, an overtly political song written by Jagger that appears to take direct aim at the Bush administration.
Regardless, the critics loved it. ”Whatever deal they cut with the devil, it was clear … that the deal is holding,” wrote David Hinckley in the New York Daily News.
”Weathered as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood look, their throats, hands and fingers still can produce rock’n’roll music that sounds as ageless as it did 40 years ago.”
”Enough with the jokes about how this worldwide tour should be sponsored by Depend [incontinence products] or Viagra,” declared the Boston Globe.
”It’s as simple as this — you will not be able to do in your 60s what you did so effortlessly in your 20s. The Rolling Stones can.”
The tour marks the 43rd anniversary since the Stones started performing — the longest uninterrupted run of any outfit in rock history.
The band was under strict instructions not to allow the sound level to exceed 70 decibels outside the stadium because of possible complaints from neighbours.
Despite the rockers’ age and propensity for hard living — people have been predicting Richards’s imminent demise from drink and or drugs since the 1960s — the only casualty of the evening was an unidentified 20-year-old woman who broke both ankles and a wrist after apparently climbing on to and then falling from the rafters of the venerated old baseball stadium. – Guardian Unlimited Â