Keith Richards has revealed how The Rolling Stones keep their setlist and songs fresh during live shows.
The Mick Jagger-fronted group has toured for more than fifty years, and keeping their material fresh is a tall order. But Richards, who regrouped with Jagger and Ronnie Wood for the upcoming album, Foreign Tongues, says that the band are still thrilled by playing their oldest hits. Richards likened the experience of performing songs like Jumpin’ Jack Flash and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction to wearing a familiar shirt, but finding a new way through the song is what keeps it fresh for the band.
Speaking in the interview compilation book, According to The Rolling Stones, Richards outlined how the band keeps their tour fresh. He said: “Each song is a coat-hanger, and every night you can put a different shirt on it. I have still not discovered all the myriad possibilities of Midnight Rambler or (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, so I never have that feeling of, ‘Here we go again, what a grind’.
“I could play Jumpin’ Jack Flash all night if my hand would bear it. the songs are flexible enough to play them in a subtly different way every single night. Maybe only the band will recognise how a particular version differs, but it is enough to keep us guessing – though at the same time you’re thinking, ‘I wish I’d put that on the record!'”
While the band were keen to lean into their old material, a show to kickstart their Forty Licks tour in the early 2000s was, according to Jagger, disastrous. The frontman 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.”
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