I wasn’t planning to see the Rolling Stones this time
around, even though they were playing a few miles from my house. Tickets prices
from 150-600 seemed exorbitant beyond the pale, and the ‘cheap’ seats sold out
right away anyway, so I initially gave it a pass. A couple of weeks before the
show, I learned from one of my colleagues that one of our university choral
groups would be backing the Stones on one song, which piqued my interest. Then
I watched as the top and middle tier tickets for the preceding show, at the
Oakland Arena, gradually decreased in price, so I began monitoring availability
for the San Jose show, and a similar pattern emerged. The day before the show,
I went to the venue and asked for the best seat $150 could buy, which turned
out to be in the 8th row of the lower section immediately facing the
right side of the stage. Although it still pains to think of $150 tickets as
reasonable, that price point worked for me, so I plunked down my card.
The next night, I got to the pavilion about 730, just as
people were being let in for the 8 PM show. Getting inside, I learned that my 8th
row seat was actually the first row, as the lower seats had been removed to
allow for an ample pit between the stage and the seats. From that vantage point
I was able to watch the rich and famous wander in and out of the ‘tongue pit,’
the general admission area situated between the stage and the circular runway
that stretched well out into the audience.
The 8:00 starting time proved to be quite optimistic, and I
watched some of the Stones ensemble musicians wandering around down in the pit
and, watched as the light crew made their way up a precarious rope ladder to
their posts on the lighting rig about 100 feet above the stage. Finally, near 9
PM, a video started playing with various celebrities sharing their earliest
memories of the band A tape of martial drumming started playing as the
musicians picked up their instruments and took their places onstage and,
following an introduction, the group slammed into “Get Off My Cloud.” From the
start, Mick Jagger was all over the stage, gesticulating with his hands and running
from one side of the massive stage to another while singing. At 70, Jagger remains
in remarkable shape, and his energy throughout the entire 2 ¼ hour show was a
marvel to behold.
The band plowed through the hits, with Ron Wood picking up
an electric sitar for “Paint it Black” and picking out country riffs on his lap
steel for “No Expectations” and “”. The guest stars were well chosen for the
bay area – John Fogerty trading vocals with Jagger on “It’s All Over Now” and Bonnie
Raitt singing and playing some mean slide guitar on “Let it Bleed. As on other stops on the tour, Mick Taylor
came out for guitar turns on both “Midnight Rambler” and the final encore,
“Satisfaction.” Chubby and weathered, Taylor shows his years much more plainly
than his former bandmates, but his blazing, if sometimes overly busy, solos
showed that his remarkable chops are still intact.
Charlie Watts remains one of popular music’s treasures, and
his crisp drum work, as devoid of showmanship, melded nicely with the equally
understated, but brilliant bass playing of Daryl Jones. Chuck Leavell, now a
Stones veteran, knows just what is needed to embellish each Stones song with
keyboard ornamentation and drive. The brass team of Bobby Keys and Tim Reis
trotted onstage as needed, and added that extra punch to songs like “Bitch” and
Keys inevitably added his signature solo to “Brown Sugar.”
Additional singers Lisa Fisher and Bernard Fowler mostly
just added depth to Jagger’s vocals, although Fowler was given a chance to show
her solo chops on a couple of tunes, notably through a very sexy duet with
Jagger on “Gimme Shelter.”
With the exception of one newly recorded tune, the workmanlike
rocker “One More Shot,” pretty much everything the Stones played was recorded
between 1965 and 1980. From what I could see, the audience was pretty evenly
split between those who were old enough to have seen them during those
formative years and those who weren’t yet born then.
It was an energetic show, with Jagger showing no signs of
slowing down, although an inconspicuously placed lyrics teleprompter was
clearly visible from my stageside vantage point. The same can’t necessarily be said of
Richards, who played with fire, but mostly hung out on the same place onstage,
finally taking a relaxed lap around the tongue pit near the end of the
set.
The show’s high point for me was the first encore, when the
San Jose State University Choraliers joined the band for a gorgeous version of “You
Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
The fact that the core four of the Rolling Stones are alive,
together and performing 50 years after the group formed is remarkable. That
they can still deliver world class rock and roll with conviction is nothing
short of miraculous.
