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| © Simon Poulter 2022 |
If there’s one thing about the Rolling Stones that remains unfathomable, it’s not that they’re still going after 60 years - there are plenty of “legacy” acts doing that - or that the loss of three original members hasn’t prevented them continuing. No, it’s that, simply, they can still put on a rock and roll show like nobody else. Literally, no one else.
That might sound hyperbolic (Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine in 1995 that he found the “greatest rock and roll band in the world” epithet “stupid”). But the unassailable truth is that, simply, they still are. In Hyde Park on Saturday - two weeks shy of the 60th anniversary of their debut gig and almost exactly 53 years since they played the same park for free in front of half a million hippies) - the evidence was compelling, from start to flamboyantly pyrotechnic finish.
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| Picture: Twitter/Rolling Stones |
For all their reputation as the ’70s’ louchest band, there was plenty of the intricate beat pop that evolved them from being a purely British blues boom outfit, with sprightly renditions of 19th Nervous Breakdown and She’s A Rainbow, Tumbling Dice and You Can’t Always Get What You Want harking back to their industrious origins, plying the music clubs of London, including that famous first gig at the Marquee on 12 July 1962 (an anniversary Jagger happily reminded Hyde Park of).
With an 80-year-old Paul McCartney headlining on the same evening down at Worthy Farm, Saturday provided a valiant night for the oldies. Twitter, inevitably and depressingly, erupted into a minor culture war, with the knuckleheads calling for a compulsory retirement age for rock stars, and those - like me - simply revelling in the joy of seeing proper legends like Macca and the Stones still able to give electrifying performances, the very thing that founded their existence to begin with.
There was no pretentious, sidelining to focus on obscure album tracks. This was the Rolling Stones everyone assembled wanted: a breathless Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?, Honky Tonk Women, Miss You and Midnight Rambler - one slammer after another. Even the 2020 lockdown single Living In A Ghost Town demonstrated that the Glimmer Twins still have a catchy bit of contemporary rock up their sleeves. But that song, and 1981’s Start Me Up aside, you could easily think that this was the Rolling Stones of 50 years ago, in their Nellcôte swagger, the Stones of Exile On Main Street and Let It Bleed, not a group with three elder gentlemen at their core (and the delightfully, bonkers cackling Richards having turned merrily into rock music’s own Rowley Birkin QC).
And here is the remarkable thing: plenty of the negative comments about McCartney’s Glastonbury set reflected on his voice struggling a little (give the guy a break - he’s 80!), but Jagger, in particular, parades elastically about the stage no differently now at 78 than he did at 28. Nor has the voice suffered. In fact, musically, this Stones show was technically brilliant, the sound booming out crystal clear over Hyde Park.
As they reached for the finale, with the obligatory Jumping Jack Flash, a mesmeric Sympathy For The Devil, and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction to end with, you were reminded - for the fifth time in my life - that you had just witnessed something that, as I stated in the opening of this post, literally no-one else can do.
To the following evening, then, and back to Hyde Park for a continuation of the heritage trail with a billing of Robert Plant (with Alison Krauss) opening for the Eagles. Plant has settled nicely into his groove as custodian of a form of Americana that is neither country or ‘world music’, but which evokes an Appalachian vibe log cabins in smokey remote valleys. Well, that’s at least what wafted across the vast open expanse of Hyde Park as Plant appropriately performed on the Great Oak Stage.
In fact, the Midlander was the only Brit on stage, with a band exclusively drawn from the four corners of the US provinces, providing the early evening crowd with extracts from the Plant/Krauss albums Raising Sand and Raise The Roof (including the Plant/Jimmy Page composition Please Read The Letter and a couple of Everly Brothers covers), as well as richly devoured reinterpretations of Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll, When The Levee Breaks and The Battle Of Evermore.
In Plant was another reminder of an undisputed ’70s behemoth still making epic statements, though clearly without the gargantuan bombast of his once former band. His approach with Krauss these days is somewhat understated, that Valhalla scream of his lowered by an octave or two. But it’s worthy music, and in Hyde Park, providing an unspoken bridge to the main draw.
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| Picture: Twitter/British Summer Time |
When they emerged from the LA canyon scene in the early 1970s, the Eagles were part of that city’s wider collage as rock central. Down on the Sunset Strip, where Zeppelin’s John Bonham rode motorbikes up and down corridors of the ‘Riot House’ hotel (the Hyatt), you had the Troubadour, where future Eagles Glenn Frey, Don Henley and their friend Jackson Brown hung out with The Byrds and Linda Ronstadt, and worked their way into a scene that was, to quote Donny Osmond, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. But it was London where it all came together: Frey had wanted their debut album to be recorded by Glyn Johns, who’d produced albums for the Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin, so in the freezing cold of February 1972, the perennial West Coasters set up shop at Olympic Studios in Barnes. It wasn’t, by all accounts, a happy experience, with Johns having one view of the band’s direction, and Frey and Henley having another. And, as Henley will recount to the Hyde Park crowd, Britain was in the midst of a coal strike, so the power to the studio would frequently cut out.
51 years later and the Eagles have been through countless changes of personnel, and have broken up and reformed. Six years ago they lost Frey, leaving the idea of any sort of continuation a little bit moot (rock’s legacy circus is now full of bands missing their original members, to such extent that some resemble Trigger’s Broom). Smartly, though, the Eagles brought in American country legend Vince Gill, who on last night’s evidence, has slotted perfectly into the vocal space vacated by Frey’s tragic death at the age of 67. The core line-up continues to be staffed by Henley, bassist Timothy B. Schmitt and the livewire guitarist Joe Walsh, along with a phalanx of supporting musicians, who last night blew through a 23-song set of their five decades, spanning the countryfied, harmonised vocals of that first album, through to the edgier, bluesy rock hinged on Walsh’s slide guitar.
I saw the Eagles a few years ago at Madison Square Garden in what was a clear attempt to tell the story of their career through each song. There was even a little gentle engagement with the audience. But not here. Instead, it was businesslike, with brief pauses between songs only occasionally broken by one of Henley, Schmitt or Walsh (in his slightly incomprehensible drawl) making proclamations to the crowd. “So, this is British Summer Time,” Henley said at one point. “In case we don’t pass this way again, I want to thank you all for embracing these songs, taking them into your hearts and your homes – we appreciate it,”. Woah - “in case we don’t pass this way again”…?
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| Picture: Twitter/British Summer Time |
If this was, then, to be the last time a British audience experienced this most storied of American megabands, then it certainly got its money’s worth. One Of These Nights, New Kid In Town, Witchy Woman, Take It To The Limit, Lyin’ Eyes, Tequila Sunrise, Best Of My Love, Peaceful Easy Feeling, Take It Easy - they kept on coming. As did the solo hits - Henley’s Boys Of Summer and Walsh’s autobiographical and highly ironic Life’s Been Good. There were more Eagles live highlights - the James Gang cover Funk #49, Heartache Tonight, Life In The Fast Lane, Walsh’s Rocky Mountain Way and Desperado. And, of course, the song probably 90% of the crowd had come for, Hotel California.
Just like the Rolling Stones the night before, it was all technically pristine. Sometimes when you write that about a live performance you make it sound sterile, but while personality-wise the Eagles come across as a little cold, the music was anything but. They can rock out, but it’s with a sense of arch control. Perhaps the one wild card of the night came at the end, with a performance of Already Gone, at which they were joined on stage - bizarrely, now I think of it - by one John McEnroe. Obviously in town for Wimbledon (and to visit his mate Boris Becker in pokey), it was hard to tell what contribution the once Superbrat of tennis made to proceedings, other than to render the audience slightly agog at the somewhat random sight of him mingling with one of rock’s most carefully considered supergroups.
This had been the weekend that sparked the perennial debate over ‘how old is too old’?. As someone nearing his 56th year, I’m of the “age is just a number” fraternity. Yes, it’s sad to see your musical heroes getting old (my review of Phil Collins’ last hurrah with Genesis back in February will serve testament to that), but I can genuinely say that between the Rolling Stones (and Macca at Glasto) on Saturday night, and Robert Plant and the Eagles last night, the law of diminishing returns was proven wrong. My motivation for buying the Stones tickets to begin with was that no one can tell how long they’ll go on for (age and diminishing health didn’t defeat the blues greats like BB King and John Lee Hooker towards their ends). And as Don Henley appeared to confirm, there was every chance that this would be the last time the Eagles would play the very city where their recorded career began. Take It To The Limit (one last time) may have been the most fitting sentiment of the entire weekend.
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