Have Lips, Will Travel

Those old steel wheels are turning again. The Rolling Stones, celebrating their 40th anniversary as a rock ‘n’ roll enterprise, kicked off their latest tour here Tuesday night with searing energy and the always present subplot: How long can this go on?

From the reaction of the devoted at the 19,000-seat Fleet Arena here, the answer is: As long as the Stones want.

The quintet hit the stage with a vibrant take on “Street Fighting Man” and the sing-along in the stands almost drowned out Mick Jagger’s vocals on the classic 1968 hit. The crowd, which was dominated by people old enough to still have stacks of vinyl records in their garage, screamed with affection at Jagger’s every herky-jerky, praying mantis move.

After mining its 1972 “Exile on Main Street” album for the nugget “If You Can’t Rock Me,” the band played its newest single, “Don’t Stop,” and it was easy to imagine the song was a mission statement, not a random selection.

This one-year tour, which reaches Southern California on Halloween night, has an intriguing wrinkle. Instead of playing just arenas, as they did on their last tour, or taking the stadium route, as they have done again and again, the Stones will play in both, as well as select theaters. The latter has created great excitement among fans, as well as within the band.

Guitarist Keith Richards, who in recent days has turned his Four Seasons hotel suite here into a sort of rehearsal room for the band’s entourage, said the intimate theater shows give the Stones a breather from the strictures of the stadium gigs, which, because of their scope and special effects, are tightly choreographed.

“What I love about the small gigs is we can turn around and say, ‘Let’s do “Midnight Rambler,” ’ without being fixed into a whole show before you even start,” the garrulous guitarist said in an interview on the eve of the concert.

“Sometimes on the big stages you feel like you’re part of the mechanics, you feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the stage. You try to figure out how to bring some sense of intimacy into a football stadium. That’s always been one of our main quests.”

(The Southern California dates are Staples Center on Oct. 31, Edison Field in Anaheim on Nov. 2 and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on Nov. 4.)

Jagger said in a separate interview that the formulation of the three set lists remained a work in progress this week. He said the stadium shows will, with “no apologies,” veer toward the band’s more recognized hits. The arena shows will have a dash of lesser-known nuggets and “a thematic” midsection with songs culled from a particular album, say “Some Girls” or “Exile on Main Street.” The theater shows will include gems mined from deep in the Stones catalog, such as “Torn and Frayed” and “Winter.”

“All of this is total theory,” Jagger said with a chuckle as he outlined the approach. “If it works, it was my idea. If it doesn’t, it was someone else’s.”

Stones tours have been massive affairs in recent decades and the novel approach this time has created profound challenges for the band and its 125-member touring army, which is hitting the road with dozens of trucks, enough generator power to light up four city blocks and, literally, tons of gear.

But tour promoter Michael Cohl said those challenges were exactly what was needed. After all these years, it takes wild horses to drag these veteran rockers out again.

“It gets harder every time to get them to tour, and the standard this time became, ‘OK, let’s tour if we can think of something interesting, or let’s not tour at all.’ It was a huge, huge issue this time.... They are getting a little bit older, there’s wear and tear, the separation from home and all the other things in their life. There are, you know, other things in life.”

It also helps Cohl that he can point out the tour will gross a ton of money. The Stones hold the record for the highest-grossing U.S. concert tour ever with $121.2 million in 1994.

Reflecting on the band’s prowess through the years, Cohl, who has worked with them since 1974, says there is another deterrent to extending tours into the 21st century.

“How should I put it? Rocky Marciano is the only guy to retire undefeated, right?” Cohl paused and phrased his words carefully. “There’s always a little concern. Have we done enough? Should we even do one more?”

The Pretenders were the opening act in Boston, but they give way in upcoming weeks to other famous faces, both old and young, such as Elvis Costello, No Doubt, Sheryl Crow and the Strokes.

In Southern California, it will be often-overlooked R&B; legend Solomon Burke (tapped for the tour personally by Richards, a longtime admirer) for the sold-out Wiltern show. Accompanying acts have not been announced for the Staples and Edison performances.

Despite the triple-venue approach, the notion of another Stones tour will elicit groans from the vocal critics who dismiss the band as a creaky, overly mercenary exercise in nostalgia.

Others--including the sold-out Boston crowd--hear nothing but the deep songbook of classic rock and marvel at the longevity of the still-shining Glimmer Twins, Jagger and Richards.

“They still play great and every song reminds me of a moment in my life,” said Max Foley, a 41-year-old fan in from Philadelphia for the tour kickoff. “Why should they quit?”

Quitting is an unavoidable topic when you have enjoyed as many bows and encores as the Stones. If group members see any end in sight to their touring life, they are not giving any clues.

The group has assembled a new greatest-hits package with the remastered, two-disc “40 Licks,” which arrives next month and includes new tracks “Key to Your Love,” “Stealing My Heart,” “Don’t Stop” and “Losing My Touch.”

The studio time in Paris that yielded those new tracks also left them with chunks and concepts for two dozen other songs, Jagger says, and they plan to reassemble next year after the tour to convert that protean mass into an album.

Jagger and Richards, ages 59 and 58, respectively, have been described through the years as volatile collaborators and, considering the band’s legendary penchant for debauchery, it is somewhat amazing that the partnership is alive and kicking. It is not lost on Richards that the Beatles and the Who have seen one-half of their founding foursomes lost.

“It’s driven home more every year,” Richards said. “You see half of your generation dropping away.”

In this opening arena show, the Stones avoided many of the flamboyant props of the band’s stadium shows--a stadium sensibility even Jagger described as “almost ridiculous.”

One of Tuesday’s highlights was when the biggest band in the world crowded onto a secondary stage smaller than a single-car garage for a bluesy, three-song sequence that included “Mannish Boy” and “Brown Sugar.”

Richards was almost as much the center of attention as Jagger, drawing cheers every time he channeled another one of those classic Chuck Berry guitar riffs that excited him nearly a half century ago as a boy in England.

Charlie Watts, gentlemanly as ever at the drums, is the only other original Stone on tour, though guitarist Ron Wood has been with the band for so long now (since 1975) that many younger fans must assume that he, too, was with them at the beginning. Bassist Darryl Jones first toured with the Stones in 1994.

Richards offered a warm cackle when asked about the band’s health and stability as it threatens to present the world with a rock band that might play on toward a 50th anniversary.

“Mental health? You’re probably talking to a madman, anyway. It’s all a matter of degree. Emotional health? Hey, when we get down to work, there’s only one thing in our mind, and that’s to do it.

“You put things aside or turn around and laugh at each other, say, ‘That really isn’t an issue,’ and you get on with it. These guys, they ain’t no different than they were 20 years ago. Everybody’s got their chops and they wanna do it. After all, this is what we do, you know?”