When a band has entered its fifth decade and its name is virtually synonymous with rock ¡®n¡¯ roll, it needs no introduction. The Rolling Stones are the Stones. And ¡°Forty Licks,¡± released this year to mark the band¡¯s 40th anniversary, is simply a collection of their hits. ¡°(I Can¡¯t Get No) Satisfaction,¡± ¡°Let¡¯s Spend the Night Together,¡± ¡°Start Me Up¡± -- they¡¯re all classics. Oh yeah, there are also four new tracks. Any questions?
Thursday¡¯s press event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo to kick off the Japan leg of the ¡°Forty Licks¡± world tour was, therefore, despite its rather stuffy venue, appropriately ¡°loose¡± and the audience unsurprisingly reverential. An hour late? No problem, that¡¯s just ¡°the Rolling Stones¡¯ style,¡± as one of the more visibly enthusiastic (and curiously barefoot) rock journos asserted. (A further delay actually received applause by virtue of its messenger -- a self-identified band rep).
Even the serious tone of the brief intro providing the rough details of the album and the tour -- the former has proven the best-received since 1989¡¯s ¡°Steel Wheels¡°; the latter sold out 50 of its first 59 shows -- was undercut by the sound of the Stones laughing in the corridor. And for a moment, it seemed possible that those wiry, shaggy-haired boys spotted earlier around the peripheries were not simply Mick and Keith look-alikes, hired to help recall the band¡¯s more glamorous youth, but somehow their true selves, unchanged from the mid-¡¯60s, ready to walk in and relieve themselves on the giant ¡°Forty Licks¡± placard erected for the event.
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