Street Fighting Men Tone It Down

With rock and youth so intertwined, folks have been speculating for two decades that each successive Stones tour could just be the last time.

Such uncertainty is probably good for ticket sales, but the band’s second of two nights at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim on Thursday only ratified what Tuesday’s show shouted: The Stones will be viable as long as they desire to be. And that desire appears to be flowing strongly enough to carry them well into the next millennium.

Where Tuesday the band careened with the tachometer in the red for most of the night, Thursday they backed off the adrenaline to make the show more of a steamy, sultry cruise.

What the 21-song set lost in propulsion, it made up in mood and a heightened musicality, with Charlie Watts’ particularly cementing his status as rock’s most understatedly exciting drummer.

Both guitarist Keith Richards (reputedly laboring through the flu both nights) and Mick Jagger were markedly less antic onstage. Rock’s little Nijinsky opted for stylized Kabuki-like moves instead of Tuesday’s frenetic scamper.

“Are you relaxed? So am I; I’m just starting to warm my way in here,” Jagger told the capacity crowd seven songs in, as the band launched into 1972’s gospel-tinged “Shine a Light,” one of five songs not performed Tuesday.

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Other variants included Richards’ two vocal offerings, a resplendent acoustic slide-guitar rendition of “Let It Bleed’s” “You’ve Got the Silver” and “Bridges to Babylon’s” buoyant ska tune, “You Don’t Have to Mean It.” On “Memory Motel,” Jagger offered a tender, reflective vocal.

That’s not to say the Stones didn’t rock like mad when they chose. Tuesday’s leaden encore, “Sympathy for the Devil,” on Thursday was whipped into its former glory. And Richards’ opening chords to “Brown Sugar” and “Midnight Rambler” rang out with the drama and sense of expectation one typically accords the opening stanzas of Beethoven’s Fifth.

It might be worth noting that if they keep playing, in a couple of years, the Stones will have enjoyed a longer creative career than the classical master had. And unlike him, they can still fit into tight slacks.