Laurence Mackinenjoys the Rolling Stones - a circus of truly rock 'n' roll proportions at Slane Castle.
The Rolling Stones, Slane Castle
The shapes are thrown a little less frantically, the chords are flung a little less aggressively, but far from being a shadow of their former selves, the Rolling Stones put on a credible rock'n'roll circus of truly rock'n'roll proportions.
The stage was a sight in itself. Squatting amid the Slane hills and trees, with the swollen river Boyne flowing sluggishly behind, it looked as if Norman Foster had designed a small, elegant office block and dropped it off next to the castle.
Steel grey ribbons curved over a black metal structure that was part lighting rig, part screen, with a massive central display hanging over the centre of operations. The support acts did their best to fill the space, with the Hold Steady faring best in the face of drizzling rain, but the big screen and the big theatrics were always on hold for the headliners.
The show started, inevitably, with a bang. The rain held its fire as streaming graphics pulled the crowd through space, before the band launched into the business at hand with Start Me Up. Mick Jagger seems to have invented the front-man formula - hips swivelling, arms flailing, his three-quarter-length coat flapping elegantly in the wind as he struts and pouts with a razor-sharp balance of showmanship and nonchalance.
But if Jagger commands attention, Keith Richards attracts it effortlessly, his dishevelled suit-jacket rolled up at the sleeves, cigarette teetering precariously on the edge of his lip, his hair kept at bay with the trademark headband.
Richards appears to barely move on stage; he fingers the chords and licks so slowly with the merest of movements, it's almost as if time flows slowly round him. But maybe it's just the contrast with the crackling energy of Jagger, running from one wing of the stage to the other, that makes Richards seem all the more languorous.
But if Jagger leads from the front, and Richards has the devil-may-care element locked down, there is no doubt who is driving this tour: Ronnie Wood looks delighted to be on stage, and it is his riffs and licks, with the in-the-pocket impeccable rhythms of Charlie Watts, that carry the show.
Seats got used for all of five minutes; once that first firework exploded into the sky, there was no chance of the aisles being used for anything but dancing. You Got Me Rocking followed hot on the heels of the opener, and got the whole hill jumping. This is the Stones at Slane, and suddenly the ticket prices, car-park queues, mud and rain were a fleeting memory in the headlamp glare of the juggernaut Bigger Bang tour.
The sound, though, was rough and patchy, bursting forth in squally jumps and starts, but there was always the thousands singing along to fill in any gaps.
To their credit, the band still wear their blues-rock roots on their sleeve. Jagger straps on a guitar for a gravelly, country-infused version of Dead Flowers. Midnight Rambler is all blues inflections, with Jagger swapping the guitar to draw deep on a mouth organ beneath blue-tinged backdrops.
Richards even takes over vocal duties for a while, revealing a voice rough and warm as freshly-turned soil. However, it's impossible to create the earthy, homespun atmosphere that grounds these songs, and made them vital so long ago, in an arena that has its own castle.
In these conditions, and with this crowd, it is anthems that work best, and in the last hour of the show they come thick and fast.
A lone steward's attempt to get people on the Slane Hill to use the VIP seats they paid through the nose for is dashed on the rocks of You Can't Always Get What You Want. A James Brown tribute, complete with pictures of a youthful looking Brown and some smoother looking Stones, is an odd detour, but it isn't long before the band are back on firmer ground.
Miss You funks and struts, as the band anchor themselves around the kit. The stage rises and tracks maybe a hundred metres out into the crowd. The big screen is redundant, the core members working in a tighter space, bounded on all sides by screaming fans, before the stage is reassembled and blood-red graphics herald an elongated intro to Sympathy for the Devil. The crowd whoo hoos, Jagger incites, Richards smokes, and Watts and Wood make the whole thing bounce and shake, rattle and roll.
Then it's Richards up front on his own, picking chords gently as if trying to find the key, before he hits a seam and opens up Paint It Black. The band finish the set proper on Jumpin' Jack Flash, with huge flames scraping the sky from the top floor of the tower-block stage, and Wood in particular is in no hurry to leave.
A one-song frantic encore of Brown Sugar sees the band clock off in a round two hours, having covered all the bases, as fireworks burned the night sky and the crowd headed from the hill. The Stones came, the Stones conquered, and the crowd wouldn't have had it any other way.
