What a difference a night makes. After shaking off the rust from the opening concert of their 1997-98 world tour, the Rolling Stones returned to Soldier Field on Thursday for Round 2. And Mick Jagger, jabbing his fists like a bantamweight boxer in a mesh muscle shirt, was in fighting trim.
Though Jagger was certainly animated at Tuesday’s opening performance, his mood was even more buoyant Thursday, his dancing more ferocious, his singing more committed. Perhaps the warmer weather had something to do with it, but this time the singer and the band were at full speed from the opening bell. “I wanna get my satisfaction,” Jagger growled, improvising at the tail end of the Stones’ 1965 breakthrough hit.
Perhaps Jagger’s more pronounced appetite for the battle was just an act, but it was an effective one.
The show’s pacing was tighter, and the band’s muscular riffs and syncopated rhythms rang out with clarity over the $3 million sound system, which sounded terrific after some opening-night tweaking.
Although the band still relied heavily on oldies, the choices were more idiosyncratic–this was a show for Stones’ connoisseurs. “Sister Morphine,” a sinister junkie’s lament culled from the “Sticky Fingers” album, and “She’s a Rainbow,” from the band’s brief dalliance with psychedelia in the ’60s, were performed for what Jagger said was the first time ever in concert.
As with Tuesday’s concert, Keith Richards’ “Wanna Hold You,” plucked from obscurity on the 1983 “Undercover” album, was a button-busting, horn-flavored delight. And the new “Out of Control” effectively built from rumination to rage.
But the band should lose the new ballad “Anybody Seen My Baby?,” which for the second straight show dragged. And the Stones otherwise kept the bulk of their 24-song set intact–opening with “Satisfaction” and “I Know It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It),” adjourning to the mini-stage midset to play “Let It Bleed,” “The Last Time” and Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie,” and closing with an encore of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Brown Sugar.” Although no one could deny the Stones’ desire to please the fans by offering a heavy dose of hits from the ’60s and ’70s, the concert gave little indication that the band has much faith in the material it has released in the last 15 years.
But the Stones still define what it means to be a guitar-based rock ‘n’ roll band, and though they may be out of fashion they never plod. The way Richards teased the beat on “Honky Tonk Women” and “You Got Me Rocking” while Charlie Watts plowed the groove was still something to hear. The Stones may be graying, the hair lines receding, the set lists becoming more conservative, but not a single rock band sounds sexier.
