Stoned and Rolled in Texas

The Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World Live Post-Pandemic and Other Recent Gigs

The Rolling Stones, or what is gloriously and inexplicably left of them, kicked off their new tour in Houston on Sunday night and even if it's only rock & roll, the enormous crowd at NRG, including your intrepid reporter, very much liked it, to say the least. Mick Jagger remains a strutting, peacocking force of nature which most 20 year-olds couldn't pace, while Keith Richards and Ron Wood have lost none of their blistering dual guitar chops and rock god presence. This despite Mick and Keith's octogenarian status (both turned 80 last year) and Ronnie fast approaching the same (76) and the band's Hackney Diamonds tour being sponsored by none other than the AARP (seriously). Perhaps these old white bluesmen did in fact make some deal with the devil at the crossroads back in the Sixties at their Satanic Majesties’ Request, a debt they are still unwilling to pay off in full (although they’ve been on the installment plan at least since the death of Brian Jones and the Altamont fiasco in 1969).

I last saw The Stones in November 2021 and I scribbled the following notes the day after that monumental show in Austin:

Rolling Stones: No Filter Tour

The greatest rock and roll band in the world. Who could have imagined this would be as accurate in 2021 as when the group was first introduced as such following the death of its leader Brian Jones in 1969. The same year also saw the tragedy of the band's infamous concert at the Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco. The ghost of Altamont seems to hover above us on this full moon eve of red lights and sirens and as we sit in stalled traffic making the long slow commute to see the Stones at another race track 52 years later, the specter of Covid casts a dark pall over the Circuit of the Americas. Miles before the entrance to the speedway, we are at full stop, moving only a few inches every minute. You can’t always get what you want. At this rate we will likely miss the whole show. Judging from the cars in front and behind us, only half or so of the 60,000 ticket holders have made it inside. Finally we are rerouted to a freshly opened parking lot almost an hour after the stones were to have hit the stage. It's as though Mick and the boys waited until we were at least on the premises; as soon as we park fireworks erupt and the crowd roars as the opening strains of “Street Fighting Man” pierce the night air. But we remain delayed throughout the early set- “It's Only Rock and Roll”, “19th Nervous Breakdown”, “Tumbling Dice”- as we deal with the overloaded Ticketmaster app (navigation apps also crashed completely due to concert traffic and poor venue management) and have to join a separate queue until our tickets magically appear on my phone, then we have to walk the better part of a mile to our assigned lawn section, catching only snippets of the show on the enormous screens as we dash madly for a decent vantage point.

We finally arrived in the middle of “Let it Bleed”, apparently a special audience request and one of my personal favorites. We move around quite a bit during the first half of the show, keeping a close eye on the multimedia live feed on the huge pillar-like screens jutting from behind the stage. But how to actually see the stage? We trek up the side incline at the so-called bronze field but just can't get to a crest, the lawn and the crowd seems to be eternal, spectral. Finally, standing atop my toes, I can just spot Jagger's tiny bobbing head and red jacket. the distance from where we stand to the stage is shocking- must be a half mile or so- and there is little point in bothering to try and see the live action unfolding on it from our less than lofty perch. I quickly readjust my expectations; this will be an elaborate experimental IMAX screening with a live score by the greatest rock and rock band on Earth. Multi-panel live feed footage of the performance is mingled with film clips, video collage, and optical effects in real time. There's a nifty mix of visuals- a tattoo playing card and Catholic art for “Honky Tonk Women”, psychedelic effects and extraordinary live editing of the performance in high contrast black and white for an incredible and haunting “Paint It Black”, then all hellish red flames as Jagger dons a sparkly full length jacket probably borrowed from Lord Byron for “Sympathy for the Devil” ( Jagger is supernatural, nearly 80 and still with the voice of a fallen angel and the well-oiled limbs of a precocious 10 year-old hyperactive child obsessed with show business and showing off for his mother, dancing and prancing madly and never missing a beat). Late in the evening Mick shares some Austin yarns - drinking two local brands of vodka at the Broken Spoke and waking up sometime later at Scholz Beer Garden, etc. Keith Richards is in full experimental punk rock mode, creating strange sickly grinding noises that are several decibels above the rest of the music as he trades off cranky solos with Ron Wood. Richards sings two numbers solo and gives a choking heartfelt thanks to the fans that brings tears to my eyes.

Jagger and Richards: What sort of magical forces came together that allowed these two guys to create the best songs of all time, immediately and completely reinventing rock and roll just a few short years after Elvis arrived on the scene? The Stones’ discography of the '60s and ‘70s is incomparable to anything else of the period or any other, an astonishing act of long-term Alchemy, producing a body of work so rich and diverse that it would be hard to come up with a 50 best songs list; too many cuts would have to be agonizingly thrown out. Even focusing on the radio hits alone would prove overwhelming, so many perfect songs that it seems impossible that these two old men could have penned them all. Boggles the mind. Now they stand here together again, no Brian Jones (RIP), no Bill Wyman ( quit 1993 ), and now in 2021, no Charlie Watts (RIP), leaving Mick and Keith as the only original Stones on the stage with Ron Wood on board since 1975. Hand-picked by Watts as his replacement, Steve Jordan raises total hell on the drum kit and along with their musical chops exudes the good-looking primal charisma of a Ray Charles or Taj Mahal. Backup belter Lisa Fischer is likewise brilliant and exceedingly attractive, and the combo sound is further augmented by horns and keyboards. But ultimately it all comes down to Mick and Keith; without them there would have been no Bowie and Ronson, no Reed and Cale, no Johansen and Thunders, no true real dirty rock and roll as we know it. They invented the damn thing.

As the stage darkened near the show’s end, either Wood or Richards fired off an accidental single note on guitar followed by several moments of silence. I whispered to Sherry, “That sounded rather suspiciously like the opening note of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’”, just as that song's first salvo erupted at full crunchy volume. Throughout the encore of “Gimme Shelter” and “Satisfaction”, I marveled that for the first time in many years here was a show I wish would never end. It was a healing and transcendent experience, holy even, and deeply moving. After the curtain call, the core trinity of Jagger, Richards and Wood remained a while on stage together, embracing each other and thanking the crowd with their extended presence. It was a moment of mutual need fulfilled: We needed the Rolling Stones but they needed us as well. 

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After being so far from the stage in Austin that the supernatural human beings upon it were nearly impossible to make out, I splurged on pricier “fan pre-sale” tickets for the Houston show, which was appropriately opened by young Austin blues-rock legend Gary Clark Jr. and his band, who were stellar despite an unfortunately muffled sound mix. We were center stage on the third tier and were infinitely closer to the Stones spectacle than before; however the stage was set far back even from the punters on the floor to allow for the extensive catwalk required for Mick to work his nonstop stutter-step magic. Jagger exploded onto the stage and immediately assured the audience that if you start him up, he will never stop, never stop. As always, he made no secret of his love of the Lone Star State, which occupies a mythical old-blues space in the world of The Stones (I wondered if Mick’s big cowboy-style belt buckle acted as a similar tribute to Texas). Jagger was hyperactive, kinetic, spastic, still maintaining the lithesome athletic figure of a teenage girl with a lot of confidence.

By the third high-energy classic, “Rocks Off”, the all-ages crowd began to finally settle into their seats, although many of us remained standing and dancing. A guy probably a decade younger than me sitting directly behind us tapped me on the shoulder and proudly brandished his medical boot as he politely asked us to sit down so he could “see the show too.” I acquiesced to his request but with reservation. I try to always be mindful of and courteous to those with obvious disabilities of one kind or another, but this dude struck me as a weird example of “privileged” and my first stifled reaction was to tell him that having an ankle injury didn’t make him an authentic cripple and that he shouldn’t take advantage of the situation and rain on everyone else’s Stones parade. He didn’t have a cane even, and how had he gotten all the way up here anyway? He could certainly have stood on one leg and rested his boo-boo on his seat and not complained. What can I say, I have anger issues and a rather despicable sense of entitlement myself at times; I’m working on it.

The fourth number was a special treat for me. “Out of Time” lives up to its name and is one of the all-time great Stones songs. It holds a very nostalgic place in my heart, having played a central part in the soundtrack of my Iranian boyhood, forever on the tape deck of my father’s little red Citroen in Tehran. Not long after those paradisiacal days, I saw the film Coming Home and the same beautiful and melancholy song played over the opening credits, providing another layer to my deep association with the song; it is almost impossible for me to not envision Bruce Dern out for a morning jog intercut with a montage of disabled Vietnam Vets when I hear the first strains of “Out of Time” and I vacillate between those images and a whole host of childhood remembrances of a foreign land (the importance of Brian Jones-era Stones to my early pop awakening abroad cannot be overstated; see my four-part memoir of the period beginning here if interested).

The Beatles were ancient history by the time I was aware of them; The Stones were evergreen, ever relevant to me. Be that as it may, “Out of Time” was apparently not the well-known Stones hit I imagined it to be. Mick declared that this was the first time he had ever sung the song in Texas or even in the US for that matter, and after a stellar rendition, he gently chided the rather subdued audience for obviously not even knowing it, adding that now they did. “Beast of Burden” was soon offered up as a cut that fans had most requested online.

Beginning with “Angry”, The Stones offered up three cuts off their most recent album Hackney Diamonds, which is a far better record than it would seem to have any right to be. As its title signals, Diamonds revisits the group’s raw punk era that began with Some Girls (Mick even sported a Vivienne Westwood Sex Pistols T-shirt with swastika on his Fort Worth stop on that tour) and raged on at least through 1981’s Tattoo You (if not all the way into their underappreciated Dirty Work in 1986). In fact, the guitars and sneering vocals on the Hackney Diamonds track “Bite My Head Off"“, which was not played in Houston, very nearly comprise a cover version of the Pistols’ incendiary punk classic “Liar”, while “Whole Wide World” (also not performed) similarly channels Iggy Pop’s “Five Foot One” and “New Values.” Kids today who are unfamiliar with The Stones (if that is even possible) could be forgiven for thinking Hackney Diamonds is the creation of some new young group of post-punk revivalists.

As with the astonishing Houston renditions of “Tumblin’ Dice” and “Gimme Shelter”, Jagger shared vocals on Diamonds’ “Sweet Sounds of Heaven” with an incredibly beautiful and talented soul-sister chanteuse he introduced as Chanelle Haynes, who more than delivered the goods as she alternately squared off with Mick like an enemy combatant and held hands and boogied down the catwalk with him. She was an uncanny conjuring of a young Tina Turner, who of course had a long history with The Stones, and I whispered as much to Sherry (As it turned out I was extremely spot on in my estimation, as I read up on Ms. Haynes the next day and discovered she had in fact portrayed the late Ms. Turner on stage and was rather ironically fired from the London production for mysterious reasons related to her performing with the Stones). Steve Jordan was back on drums again in the wake of dear departed Charlie Watts, and as he threw his head back and beamed beatifically, he resembled no one as much as Stevie Wonder, like Turner another African-American music legend who had simultaneously influenced The Stones and went on to collaborate with and be championed by them. During the band introductions, Mick also wished longtime Stones keyboardist and musical director Chuck Leavell a happy 72nd birthday. Like Haynes and Jordan, a mere spring chicken on this stage.

Keith took over vocals on the rollicking “Little T & A” and further rocked the full house. Richards seemed to play very little lead throughout the night, ceding most of the solos to Ronnie Wood, who also seemed to have a lot more energy and frequently danced around with Mick as he grinded out heavenly infernal noise on his axe. The controversial classic “Brown Sugar” has of course been excised from the band’s greatest hits repertoire for a number of years now, as even the Luciferian, fiercely non-PC Rolling Stones are not immune from the lures and snares of misguided wokeism and cancel culture. As always, the Stones’ most sinister concoctions, “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Paint It Black”, were the highlights of an incredible evening of live music, still able to effortlessly conjure the dark side of the 1960s counterculture the band had defined.

As you may have guessed, I am no casual fan of The Rolling Stones but a deep-cuts diehard devotee. That said, I could go the rest of my life without ever again hearing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (which was of course included near the end of the 18-song two-hour Houston set) or “Satisfaction” (which closed out the show as a matter of routine). One is left to wonder what it will take to ultimately satisfy Mick and the boys. The beauty is that they don’t ever stop striving to maintain their status as the world’s greatest rock & roll band, forever struggling to attain that elusive realm of Satisfaction we all crave.

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Here is the set list as scribbled in the dark of the stadium as the concert unfolded on April 28th 2024 in Houston, Texas:

Start Me Up
Get Off My Cloud
Rocks Off
Out of Time
Don’t Get Angry With Me¹
Beast of Burden
Mess It Up
Tumblin’ Dice
Can’t Always Get What You Want
She’s My Little Rock & Roll²
Sympathy for the Devil
Gimme Shelter
Honky Tonk Women
Miss You
Paint It Black
New Heaven Song³
Satisfaction

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It’s been a great 2024 all around for music thus far, if not for much else other than some unique travel opportunities. Here are some pictures of a few of the gigs I’ve attended so far this year, all here in Austin, Texas unless otherwise noted.

The Alarm Gathering, Cardiff, Wales (Photos by Sherry D.)

DJ Paulette, Skating Polly; Manchester, UK (Photos by Sherry D.)

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band

Derek Warfield and the Young Wolf Tones

Caleb Landry Jones (x2)

Bill Nace

Brian Setzer’s Rockabilly Riot

Hollows UK (SXSW)

Gruff Rhys (SXSW)

Waco Brothers (SXSW)

Alejandro Escovedo (SXSW)

Black Flag

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Also: Charlatans UK/ Ride, Bevis M. Griffin, and Eli Josef among others. In April alone and in addition to the mighty Stones, I have been most fortunate to see some of my most revered musical elders and many other great artists here in Austin, including:

TSOL

Rickie Lee Jones

Terry Allen (once again, this time at a performance and book-signing for the incredible new biography Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen by Brenden Greaves)

My New Wave hero Adam Ant (whose opener The English Beat set the bar impossibly high).

Before The Stones kicked off their Hackney Diamonds tour in Houston in late April, Bob Dylan ended his current Rough and Rowdy Ways tour in Austin early in the month, a show I was also fortunate enough to attend (no photography was allowed and phones were secured in sealed lock-bags; fine by me).

Back in early March, just a month before seeing Bob play for the fourth time, I had traveled to the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the first time in order to attend the opening of the new exhibit on Shane MacGowan and the Pogues, fresh from its premiere in Dublin and the first ever show at the Dylan Center not devoted to Bob himself.

I was honored to spend a bit of time there with Shane’s delightful wife Victoria Mary Clarke and also Niall Stokes, one of the great scholars of rock and roll and Irish music and founding editor of Dublin’s whip-smart and still extant punk era magazine Hot Press.

Just down the block from the Dylan Center was the Woody Guthrie Center. A short drive away was Leon Russell’s legendary Church Studio, which we were also able to tour.

I look forward to sharing more about our wonderful trips to Wales and Tulsa (it’s truly a city on the rise these days) here in the near future. Sadly, my next great concert, scheduled for this Thursday May 2, has now been postponed for one of the worst possible reasons…

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A Prayer Request:

There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the Light gets in. ~ Leonard Cohen

Speaking of The Alarm and in addition to the whole damned troubled, shattered and crumbling world, please keep Mike Peters in your hearts and prayers. I learned on Monday morning in Houston that the great singer-songwriter, musician and humanitarian is once again battling the aggressive cancer he has waged war against for decades, leading him to cancel his upcoming tour, including a much anticipated stop here in Austin this Thursday night. At The Gathering in Cardiff which we attended in January, he played at least four extensive concerts in two days, including the entire catalogs of his early Alarm iterations Seventeen, The Toilets and Alarm Alarm as he bounced around to three different microphones to give equal face time to his audience and also jumped from the stage to sing among us fans on the floor. Like The Stones, Mike remains an unstoppable force of nature. I predict that someday the songcraft of Mike Peters will be spoken of with the same reverence accorded Bob Dylan, and that Mike’s ’s status as arguably the great poetic and prophetic genius of the punk generation will be assured. He is also among the kindest, most considerate, charitable, and inspiring people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Get better dear old Mike. Love, Hope, and Strength to you. We love you and we will see you soon!

1. Actually “Angry”

2. Actually “Little T & A”

3. Actually “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”