Stones Open Tour in Boston

Mick Jagger was animated, Keith Richards less so according to reviewer Greg Frost in “Licks” tour debut in Boston:

“There’s nothing so exciting as starting an American tour on the first night,” the 59-year-old Jagger told the audience. “And there’s nothing so exciting as starting it here in Boston.”

The Stones plan to play some 40 shows across North America over the next five months — mixing 60,000-seat stadiums with arenas like the Fleet Center and throwing in a few intimate theaters to boot.

True to form, Jagger swaggered across the stage and gesticulated wildly as he and the band belted out 22 songs during a show that seemed aimed at Stones purists.

Over half of the show was drawn from the band’s heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

After opening with “Street-Fighting Man,” the band dusted off less-well-known tunes like “Stray Cat Blues,” “Loving Cup,” “Rocks Off” and “Rip This Joint.”

They followed these with mass-appeal favorites in the second half, performing “Honky Tonk Women,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Brown Sugar” before ending with an encore of “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

Along the way, they mixed in a cover of the O’Jays’ “Love Train” and the pounding blues song “Mannish Boy.”

“That was fun. We’ve never let that one out in public before,” Jagger, clad in a dazzling white trench coat and fedora hat, said after performing “Love Train.”

While newly knighted Jagger ruled the show like a cocksure regent, time appeared to be catching up with the ashen Richards.

It is a major victory and a latter – day miracle that he is alive at all: “ashen” is better than “green.”