The Rolling Stones, O2 Arena, London, 25 September 2012

By rights the Rolling Stones should be part of a Sixties nostalgia package, pitching up at Preston Guildhall once a year and running through their number one hits in a 20 minute slot before making way for Gerry and the Pacemakers or Herman's Hermits. Instead they are charging £375 for tickets at the O2 in Greenwich, which singer Mick Jagger wryly noted isn't that far from Dartford, where they started out fifty years ago.
Their ticket prices generated headlines when they were announced, and the Stones have always been about headlines, whether it's drug busts or inappropriate use of a Mars bar. And the reason why they're not relegated to touring as a Sixties act in municipal venues across suburban England but can still sell out arenas around the globe is because they have a treasure trove of rock classics and a mastery of the craft of putting on a rock show that few bands can match.They also, despite their ages, love what they do. Guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were in fine fettle and drummer Charlie Watts, resplendent in white tee shirt, was captured on the big screen that was projected behind the stage grinning from ear to ear.

The band's delight at being back on stage shone through in their performance. From the opening bars of their second ever single I Wanna Be Your Man, written for them by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, through to a thunderous Jumping Jack Flash, the band were on fire. Hits from Get Off My Cloud and It's All Over Now through to Start Me Up and a note perfect Brown Sugar came in wave after wave, reminding the audience that as well as being rock's perennial bad boys the Rolling Stones have recorded a juke box full of great songs.
But they also have a slew of album tracks from the late sixties and early seventies on which their musical legend is built and Wild Horses, Gimme Shelter and Sympathy for the Devil all get an outing as does a pulsating Midnight Rambler with Mick Taylor, who is officially the only past or present member of the Stones to look more like a building labourer than a rock star, making a guest appearance on lead guitar and stalking Jagger across the stage.

Honky Tonk Women, Miss You and a Bill Wyman backed It's Only Rock'n'Roll added to the occasion, the group knowing exactly which buttons to push to get the audience up dancing and singing along.

The highlight of the show was undoubtedly the encore, with the anthemic You Can't Always Get What You Want played to the accompaniment of a full choir sending a collective shiver down the spine of the audience. Were the ticket prices outrageous? Yes. Did the band give value for money? Yes. Can you put a price on seeing the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world for what could be the (very) last time? Absolutely not.

At the end, Mick Jagger stayed on stage bowing to the audience long after the rest of the band had left, so perhaps this really is the last time and perhaps the Stones will finally just make headlines for what they'll always be remembered for - their music.

Rolling Stones - Crossfire Hurricane

Crossfire Hurricane
Director:  Brett Morgen
Cert 15

Crossfire Hurricane, the new documentary about the Rolling Stones, premiered at 300 cinemas worldwide including The Odeon, Preston.

It is difficult to find something new to say about a band which has probably featured in more books, magazine articles and TV programmes than any other.  But director Brett Morgen has managed it in this fasicinating trawl through the vaults of TV stations across the world.

Culled from TV and cinema footage, much of which is previously unseen or unshown since it was first broadcast, the film is both a treasure trove for hardened Stones followers and an education in the band’s history for the uninitiated.

The heavy bias towards the 1960s reveals the chaos of the early days of the Stones, when the band strummed Popeye The Sailor Man because the girls at their concerts screamed so loudly that the audience could not hear a note that was being played.  So too are the darker days of the group, including their descent into serious drug abuse in the late 1960s, with the death of guitarist and founder member Brian Jones touchingly remembered.

The horror of the Altamont concert, when an audience member was stabbed to death by the Hells Angels hired by the band to provide security at the gig, and guitarist Keith Richards' arrest for heroin possession by the Canadian police in 1976, are also examined in detail, giving a warts'n'all picture of the self styled greatest rock'n'roll band in the world.

The current day opinions of the band are voiced over the soundtrack, interspersed with the more youthful images of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards et al, and only at the very end - with an outtake from Martin Scorcese’s Shine A Light which featured the band in concert in 2008 - do we get to see the wrinkled old rockers in anything like their present state.

What carries the film along is the music, from Route 66 by way of I Can't Get No Satisfaction and Honky Tonk Women through to Miss You, with contemporary footage of the band performing numbers on TV shows that in some cases has not seen the light of day in more than 40 years.

Crossfire Hurricane will be available on DVD before Christmas.  Stones fans unable to make it to view the film on the big screen should start writing that letter to Santa now.