The Rolling Stones
From the Vault: Hampton Coliseum (Live in 1981) (Eagle Rock Entertainment)The Rolling Stones
From the Vault: L.A. Forum (Live in 1975) (Eagle Rock Entertainment)Recent gut punches of losing Rolling Stones sidemen Bobby Keys and Austin adopted son Ian McLagan serve as a poignant reminder that time waits for no one. All the more reason to fire up this pair of DVD/2-CD archival concerts: an indulgent Seventies set from Ron Woods’ maiden tour, and an amped-up corker from 1981 in Virginia. The ’75 set is a pharmaceutical reverie, hazy blue light bathing mascara-caked dervish Mick Jagger, while Keith Richards initially sports a bandana that resembles head-wound dressing. The frontman barks and slurs bizarrely during the first half, consonants vanishing in a rapid-fire word salad where “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” becomes “ainooprowaBEYY”! That suits the sleaze and halting blues of “You Gotta Move” and “Fingerprint File,” while the show ends strong – keyboardist Billy Preston leading the assemblage through his boogie-woogie funk bomb “That’s Life” before Keef and crew bring the dual menace of “Midnight Rambler” and show finale “Sympathy for the Devil.” Six years later, the Stones were riding high on a No. 1 album, Tattoo You, and the set list and energy indoors shows it. “Shattered,” “Neighbors,” and “When the Whip Comes Down” pack a manic punk intensity, drummer Charlie Watts driving warhorses “Brown Sugar” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” with similarly jacked tempos. Final show of the tour, with McLagan on keys, it’s the Stones at their leanest, Jagger inexhaustibly running through a 26-song set in aerobic wear and a New York Jets jersey. It was also Richards’ 38th birthday, and the whole show feels like a hard-earned coronation. Biggest surprise: a jazzy, soaring, and elegiac “Waiting on a Friend.”
This article appears in December 19 • 2014.