Only the most deluded fan would argue that The Rolling Stones’
were at their most vital in 1998, or that their most recent album—Bridges to Babylon—was one for the ages.
Still, there’s always something to be said for catching a band of the Stone’s
magnitude live, and they certainly put on a polished show. Granted, polished rock isn’t too electrifying, but the band still had their moments
even at the end of the fifth leg of
their Bridges to Babylon tour. Just
when I was ready to nod off while watching the new Bridges to Bremen DVD, the Stones slammed into a vital version
of “Paint It Black” that woke me right up.
Nevertheless, the majority of the September 1998 concert lacks much in the way of surprise. The Stones sound
tight. Their supporting vocalists, keyboardists, and horn players play their
charts correctly. Mick still chews every lyric like it’s an
extra-large wad of Hubba Bubba (he finally makes good on his Ed Sullivan-era
insistence that he sang “Let’s spend some mmmm
together”). Keith Richards still exudes a supreme intoxication with both the blues
and Keith Richards. Charlie Watts is still rock solid. The new songs are still a grab bag of the good (“Thief in
the Night”, “Flip the Switch”) and the bad (“Saint of Me”, “Anybody Seen My Baby”, which has
lost none of its power to elicit cringes).
Yet, there are times when the Stones get caught up
in the music despite the absurdly huge crowd, silly stage special effects, and Mick’s rote roll call of all
the countries watching the show’s original broadcast. Their version of “Memory
Motel”—a song selected by fans via the then-novel Internet—is fresh and lovely, the vamping on “Miss You” actually yields some pretty hot music (as well as
Mick’s wacky impulse to start quoting Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the
Money”), and the decision to pull out the fabulous “Wanna Hold You”—my bid for
the band’s best eighties track—is inspired.
Bridges to Bremen arrives in several formats with DVD/CD and
Blu-ray/CD combo sets, as well as a triple-LP edition of the audio. I watched
the DVD, and it was clearly shot on video, so I’m not sure how much there is to
gain from a Blu-ray edition of this show aside from possible audio improvements
(though the DVD audio sounds perfectly fine). The DVD also contains a bonus
quartet of songs captured in Chicago, which yields another jumble of clunkers (even a mere nine
years after its original release, no one needed to hear “Rock and a Hard
Place” again) and refreshing selections. The Chicago set’s lithe rendition of “Under My Thumb” and the Bremen version of “Paint It Black” build a pretty strong case that the Stones should have based their entire setlist on stuff they recorded in 1966.
