Mick Jagger recently said rock’n’roll “isn’t supposed to be done in your 70s”, but he seems determined to prove this wrong. While Abba have returned as digital avatars of their young selves, the Stones’ frontman is his own living, breathing Jagger-tar. He turns 79 next month and has a replacement heart valve but sustains the stage energy of someone several decades younger. Alongside him, fellow grinning septuagenarians Keith Richards (78) and Ron Wood (75) sway elegantly like ancient trees in a breeze, playing their guitars with a swagger that suggests that time, however improbably, is still on their side.
Well, almost. Each show on this 60th-anniversary tour opens with a tribute to Charlie Watts, whose death aged 80 last year was a reminder that even Rolling Stones are mortal. Watts’s approved successor, American drummer Steve Jordan, is merely 65. He plays on the beat rather than behind it, but brings his own fills to Tumbling Dice and has clearly accustomed himself to the peculiarities of anchoring the Stones’ wayward, ramshackle glory and a catalogue brimming with copper-bottomed classics.
