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\u201cThis song\u2019s for Manhattan!\u201d Mick Jagger told the crowd on Thursday night at MetLife Stadium, before launching into a punchy rendition of \u201cShattered,\u201d that agitated ode to late-70s New York City that closes out the band\u2019s 1978 album \u201cSome Girls.\u201d In the ensuing 46 years, the city has changed in some superficial ways but somehow remained essentially the same \u2014 much, as they showed throughout an impressively energetic two-hour set, like the Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n
The Stones\u2019 first New York-area stadium gig in five years was sponsored, without a hint of irony, by AARP. It was appropriate: At times what transpired onstage felt not just like a rock concert but a display of the evolutionary marvel that is aging in the 21st century. (Albeit aging while wealthy, with every possible technological and medical advantage at one\u2019s disposal. I\u2019ll have whatever vitamins the Stones are taking, please.)<\/p>\n
Ronnie Wood, the core group\u2019s baby at age 76, still shreds on the guitar with a grinning, impish verve. Eighty-year-old and eternally cool Keith Richards pairs his bluesy licks with a humble demeanor that seems to say \u201cI can\u2019t believe I\u2019m still here, either.\u201d And then there is Jagger, who turns 81 a few days after the Hackney Diamonds Tour wraps in July. Six decades into his performing career, he is somehow still the indefatigable dynamo he always was, slithering vertically like a charmed snake, chopping the air as if he\u2019s in a kung fu battle against a swarm of unseen mosquitoes, and, when he needs both hands to dance, which is often, nestling the microphone provocatively above the fly of his pants. Sprinting the length of the stage during a rousing \u201cHonky Tonk Women\u201d \u2014 the 13th song in the set! \u2014 he conjured no other rock star so much as Benjamin Button, as he seemed to become even more energetic as the night went on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Last year\u2019s \u201cHackney Diamonds<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the Stones\u2019 first album of new material in nearly two decades \u2014 was the nominal reason for the tour, but they didn\u2019t linger on it, and the crowd didn\u2019t seem to mind. Across 19 songs, they played only three tunes from the latest release, including two of the best: The taut, growly lead single \u201cAngry\u201d and, for the first part of the encore, the gospel-influenced reverie \u201cSweet Sounds of Heaven.\u201d Mostly it was a kind of truncated greatest hits collection, capturing the band\u2019s long transformation from reverent students of the blues (Richards\u2019 star turn on the tender \u201cYou Got the Silver\u201d) to countercultural soothsayers (a singalong-friendly \u201cSympathy for the Devil\u201d) to corporate rock behemoth (they opened, of course, with \u201cStart Me Up\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Jagger, Richards and Wood all still emanate a palpable joy for what they are doing onstage. But those joys also feel noticeably personal and siloed, rarely blending to provide much intra-band chemistry. That is likely a preservation strategy \u2014 the surest way to keep a well-oiled machine running and to continue sharing the stage with the same people for half a century or more. But when Jagger ended a charming story about a local diner that had named a sandwich after him (\u201cI\u2019ve never had a [expletive] sandwich named after me! I\u2019m very, very proud\u201d), I did not quite buy his assertion that he, Keith and Ronnie were going to go enjoy one together after the show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some of that fractured feeling is likely due to the absence of the great Charlie Watts<\/a>, the band\u2019s longtime drummer who died in 2021; the Hackney Diamonds Tour is the Stones\u2019 first North American stadium tour without him. His replacement, Steve Jordan, does about as good a job as anyone could \u2014 like Watts, he balances a rock drummer\u2019s power with a jazzy agility \u2014 and his presence never overwhelms. Though they are surrounded by plenty of talented backing musicians, the staging makes it clear that the Rolling Stones are now a trio.<\/p>\n The night\u2019s breakout star, though, was Chanel Haynes, a backing vocalist who took center stage to sing with Jagger during two of the night\u2019s best performances. Haynes \u2014 who played Tina Turner in the West End production of the jukebox musical \u201cTina\u201d before joining the Stones\u2019 touring band in 2023 \u2014 ably filled the shoes of the mighty Merry Clayton<\/a> on a blazing \u201cGimme Shelter,\u201d and sat in for Lady Gaga on \u201cSweet Sounds of Heaven,\u201d matching the megawatt intensity of her \u201cHackney Diamonds\u201d cameo. Though Haynes could be velvety soft when the song called for it, at her most impressive she sang with a low, grumbling hunger that often swelled into ferocity, as if she were taking big, meaty bites out of the songs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Jagger, for his part, delivered many of his lines in his signature bark: The second song, a somewhat slowed down and blues-ified \u201cGet Off of My Cloud,\u201d was transformed by his almost scat-like delivery. But in fleeting moments \u2014 including a few falsetto runs \u2014 he showed that a certain tenderness in his tone remains intact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That was most apparent on a gorgeous rendition of \u201cWild Horses,\u201d the song that gained inclusion in the set by winning the nightly online \u201cfan vote.\u201d For so much of this show, the Stones effectively proved they could outrun age, irrelevancy and all the other indignities that time brings to mere mortals. But here they settled into something more contemplative, elegiac and vulnerable, and the show was better for it.<\/p>\n At a time when their few remaining peers are wrapping farewell tours and bands that have been together for half as long are running on fumes, the Stones are an anomaly. It\u2019s not that their show is devoid of nostalgia, but it\u2019s not coasting on it either. They don\u2019t look like they did in the \u201970s \u2014 who does? \u2014 but when their sound is gelling they are able to tap into some kind of eternal present. For better or worse, they seem intent to be the last band of their generation standing, to ride rock \u2019n\u2019 roll all the way to its logical endpoint. Astoundingly, they don\u2019t sound like they\u2019ve reached it yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n