Mick Jagger says The Rolling Stones were ‘so nervous’ during reunion show it left Charlie Watts ‘sick’

The Rolling Stones struggled to hold it together on a reunion tour show when promoting an album that topped the charts.

Frontman Mick Jagger did not sound best pleased with his long-term bandmates, who were falling to pieces on stage despite extensive experience and time to practice. Speaking of the Palais Royale show in Toronto, Canada, on the Forty Licks tour back in the early 2000s, Jagger and Charlie Watts both suggested that the quality of the show was well off the mark. Speaking in the interview compilations book, According to the Rolling Stones, the veteran rockers slammed the show, and themselves, for not being ready to present a greatest hits showcase to tie in with their Forty Licks release.

Jagger said: “When we played at the Palais Royale in Toronto as a warm-up for the Forty Licks tour, the rest of The Rolling Stones were incredibly nervous. I had never seen them so nervous. I tried to calm them down because they were so intense. ‘It’s going to be great guys, we sound great.’ And they made tons of mistakes, tempos flying everywhere, which was the result of nerves, but you’re thinking, ‘How many times have we rehearsed this tune?’

“It was very ragged, but I guess that Keith and the rest of the band hadn’t been on stage in a long while. I do find it useful when we have time off between tours to go and walk onto someone else’s stage and do a couple of numbers with them, with somebody like Lenny Kravitz – it helps take the edge off the feeling that you haven’t been on stage for four years.”

Charlie Watts added: “The Palais Royale gig was awful! It was so hot and so loud my ears… I couldn’t hear a bloody thing. It was the most uncomfortable set I’d ever played in my life. I hit the drums, but I didn’t play a note. I had a headache after two numbers, a splitting headache. I was nearly sick up there.”

Despite the teething issues of the first show, the band pulled themselves together by the time they got to Boston for the full tour. Keith Richards says that the three shows they performed in Boston was a complete mood change in The Rolling Stones’ camp. He said: “From right out of the gate, from those first gigs onwards, there was an amazing feeling on this tour.

“Charlie Watts and Daryl Jones were on their third tour together and had forged this immense rhythm section – and the band as a whole was continuing to evolve, to find itself. I think the Stones are still looking for the ultimate Stones. It’s like the Holy Grail, whether we ever find it or not is immaterial; it’s the quest that’s important.”

Forty Licks, the album The Rolling Stones toured through 2002 and 2003, would top the charts in Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand while reaching second place on the US Billboard 200.