WHATEVER Mick Jagger is taking, I want some.
At 62, this guy is some miracle of nature, as he demonstrated yet again last night when he led the Rolling Stones through three songs at halftime of Super Bowl XL on ABC.
Performing on a huge stage, shaped like the famous Stones “tongue” logo, in the middle of the football field and surrounded by screaming fans, Jagger, drummer Charlie Watts, guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood, bassist Darryl Jones and keyboardist Chuck Leavell, opened with “Start Me Up.”
They followed by “Rough Justice” (from their newest CD “A Bigger Bang”), and ended with “Satisfaction.”
The performance was letter-perfect, right down to the judicious and seamless excising of two words – one each in “Start Me Up” and “Rough Justice” – that might have gotten the Super Bowl in hot water had they been uttered.
With the stamina of a 16-year-old and all his own hair, Jagger is still at the top of his game.
I wish the same could be said of Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin, whose atonal interpretation of the “The Star-Spangled Banner” before kickoff amounted to wholesale butchery.
Not only did they seem unrehearsed, as if they had never laid eyes on each other until that moment, but they delivered a version of our national anthem that was not even close to the stirring melody we all know and love.