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Most bands would struggle, at least a little, to put together a nineteen-song, two-hour set that didn’t include even a small amount of filler. But most bands aren’t the Rolling Stones.

As the sun set over Mount Smart Stadium, Keith Richards chopped out Start Me Up, and for two hours thirty-six thousand fans were reminded of why the Rolling Stones are still performing. The music is legendary, of course — Sympathy for the Devil remains one of the most magnificent, powerful spectacles any band has ever produced, while Gimme Shelter is a masterpiece of brooding, sinister and tense. Brown Sugar is as perfectly-constructed a classic rocker as you’ll ever hear; It’s Only Rock And Roll, an unexpected addition to tonight’s set, is anything but — it was a tight, sharp number with more depth than its title lets on. Sympathy was almost absurdly overblown — of course it was; that’s part of the joy of it — but this is a song that sounded every bit as fresh, and as intimidating, as it did when it first emerged almost fifty years ago.

The setlist offered few real surprises — the omission of Paint It, Black was a touch disappointing, but Brown Sugar, which hadn’t been performed in other shows on this tour, was a fine replacement. What’s worth writing about, then, is the performance. And what a performance it was.

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Mick Jagger is, of course, the frontman, the focus of the show, but he’s just one member of an astonishingly tight, slick and professional outfit. He minced — oh, dear Lord, can the man mince — and skipped and twirled around the stage like a little girl; his trademark “shrug the jacket off the shoulder” move is a little overused, and moves like Jagger aren’t really anything to brag about. But he can sing. His voice was in exceptional form tonight, powering Miss You and Tumblin’ Dice and, of course, Gimme Shelter, to new heights. And on Midnight Rambler, when he pulled out his harmonica and traded licks with Mick Taylor, he reminded the fans who stood — there was alarmingly little dancing among the crowd — in the rain on an early-spring Auckland evening that he is much more than just one of the great rock singers of our age.

The heavy guitar lifting, as in increasingly the case at Stones live shows, was done by Ron Wood. The man is a superbly talented guitarist; gone are the days when Keef’s and Ronnie’s guitars were extensions of each other, and Wood is, quite clearly and quite deservedly, the band’s lead guitarist. His soloing on Gimme Shelter was fluid and effortless and a thing of beauty, as was his pedal-steel work on Happy, cigarette never out of right hand.

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Charlie Watts is, of course, the beating heart of the Rolling Stones, and he was, of course, on form tonight. No drum solos, please — Charlie provided what he always does, a perfect, understated, exquisitely restrained drumline with precisely the flourish that each song needs. When Jagger brought him up to the front of the stage to take a bow, he heard the biggest cheer of the evening, and there’s a good reason for that. Even on a song as rhythmically straightforward as Miss You, Watts slipped in, almost subliminally, fills and details that made the song soar.

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But Miss You needs a bass player, and the Stones found a master of the instrument in Darryl Jones. When Bill Wyman — the Ringo Starr of the Rolling Stones; there’s a reason why Keith Richards recorded the bass lines to Sympathy For The Devil, or Live With Me — left the band in 1993, he left much less of a gap to be filled than Mick Taylor did eighteen years earlier. He might not be an official Stone, but Jones’ bass solo in Miss You is proof that he’s an essential part of their sound. “Sometimes I want to play bass like Darryl Jones,” Mick Jagger sang before Jones let rip; don’t we all, Mick, don’t we all?

The Stones have assembled a remarkable backing band to round out their sound. Lisa Fischer is a remarkable backing singer, and Gimme Shelter offered the perfect showcase for her power and range — she delivered the “rape, murder” line so famously sung by Merry Clayton on the original recording on 1969’s Let It Bleed with an intensity that makes it quite clear why she’s in the band. Chuck Leavell, long one of the most sought-after session keyboardists, played some remarkable organ on Like A Rolling Stone, the audience choice song (I’d voted for All Down The Line; Jagger teased us with the possibility that they might play Lorde’s Royals, shameless crowd-pleasing tart that he is), and a boogie-woogie piano roll that Ian Stewart himself would have approved of on the play-out to the first song in the encore, the fabulous You Can’t Always Get What You Want, which had been introduced by the wonderful New Zealand Youth Choir. Bobby Keys, the Stones’ long-time saxophonist, was absent tonight, but Tim Ries and Karl Denson showed, on Happy, that they were quite up to the task.

And then there’s Keith Richards. What can one say about Keef? Well, we can start by admitting that he’s not the guitarist he once was. The Ancient Form of Weaving, as he’s labelled it, the legendary interplay between his and Ron Wood’s guitars, is a thing of the past, Wood taking care of lead guitar quite adequately. There were a few mis-steps tonight, most notably at the beginning of Satisfaction, which saw Keith screw up a riff that he can, quite literally, play in his sleep — screw it up so badly that Charlie, that most unflappable and reliable of timekeepers, could be seen on the giant screen behind him holding his sticks in confusion before realising that Keef was pressing on. Sympathy For The Devil, as it’s arranged for the stage, has Richards supply some chiming guitar before the line “Pleased to meet you,” but tonight his guitar was harsh, and he sounded like he was playing just a tad off the beat. Gimme Shelter felt similarly slack, Wood keeping the song together and Richards, after he’d picked out the intro, dropping in a few lines here and there just to keep his hand in. When Mick Taylor, looking old and jowly and slightly uncomfortable, joined the band for Midnight Rambler, three of the Rolling Stones’ four guitarists played together, and Taylor showed quite convincingly why the band chose him, at the age of 20, to replace Brian Jones. He’s a phenomenal blues guitarist, a lead player who gave Keef the space to create remarkable riffs and rhythms, and tonight he and Wood almost made Richards irrelevant as the two jammed with Jagger, unbeatable on harmonica, through one of the show’s many highpoints.

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There is a degree, then, that Keef — the human riff, the walking laboratory, the winner of the Ugliest Man In The World title for the last 427 years in a row — is trading on goodwill. He is, after all, the Rolling Stones. He wrote the songs that had the audience on their feet tonight — this is, let’s face it, his show. He played a few duff notes tonight, but it would take a lot more to lose the sympathy of the audience, and a Stones show without Richards would simply be unthinkable. Remarkable, possibly; quite enjoyable, perhaps. But it wouldn’t be the Rolling Stones.

But when Mick left the stage and Keef walked up to the front and the microphone stand, all was forgiven. You Got The Silver was a gem, a throwaway little thing of a song elevated by the warmth of Richards’ voice and the simple joy of the song — and, of course, Charlie Watts’ wonderful drumming. But then he strapped on Micawber, his fabled butterscotch Telecaster, and let rip on Before They Make Me Run. A sinfully-underproduced number on Some Girls, live it rocked, with Richards’ voice rich and full, and, more importantly, Keef on rhythm guitar, where he belongs, where he shines, where he excels, cranking out a riff that was only equalled by the next song.

Happy almost didn’t make it on to Exile On Main Street. The original recording didn’t even feature Charlie Watts — he wasn’t in the studio when Richards tinkered with a riff that evolved into Happy. It’s a song of great joy and simple passion, and tonight Richards put his heart and soul into it. Happy? Yes, I was indeed.

After ten minutes of Satisfaction, bum notes in the intro forgotten, the show ended. And what a show it had been. The Rolling Stones have been playing for more than fifty years; they’ve been putting on shows like tonight’s, massive, spectacular stadium events, for well over forty. The production was superb; the sound was exceptionally clear. There has never been a band to equal the Stones; there may never be again. And with their average age well over 70, it’s unlikely that they can maintain this momentum too much longer. They’ll likely never play Auckland again; it was a joy to be there tonight when they said goodbye to New Zealand.

Set List
Start Me Up
It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)
You Got Me Rocking
Tumbling Dice
Like A Rolling Stone
Doom And Gloom
Out Of Control
Honky Tonk Women
Band Introductions
You Got The Silver
Before They Make Me Run
Happy
Midnight Rambler (with Mick Taylor)
Miss You
Gimme Shelter (with Lisa Fischer)
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Sympathy For The Devil
Brown Sugar

ENCORE
You Can’t Always Get What You Want (with the Auckland members of the New Zealand Youth Choir)
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction