The Rolling Stones - The Biggest Bang

Plenty of Stones; all birds were spared

If you’re on the sympathetic side of the ‘Isn’t it great how much energy he’s got’/‘I wish that leatherface would just go away’ divide, then you’ll love this. Most of us sit somewhere in the middle, however, gawping in awe at their best work, scratching our heads over the prospect of the Stones today. OK, so they’ve earned the right to keep going for the sake of it (and, if you believe it, it’s touching to hear Keef recount how they do it out of childlike restlessness), but you have to be pretty steeled to sit through all seven hours of this. Two discs have full A Bigger Bang tour concerts, including the free gig at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, performed before about 1.5 million. Then there’s a bunch of selected highlights on Disc Three, including some tracks from the Stones’ epochal first gig in China, while the fourth is a behind-the-scenes documentary, which isn’t too revealing. They’re still charming in their way, but it’s essentially a really expensive promotional video that unblinkingly closes with Salt Of The Earth. Imagine how good four hours of Tour Of The Americas footage could be? Right now the Stones are about as rock’n’roll as Debbie Reynolds. Some cracking songs, though.

Universal Music | 1741630

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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