#John Hiatt and Chris Smither are their age and put on a much better acoustic show

[waugh-bao]

I see one of your tags mentioned that you noticed Mick was struggling to keep up when you saw the Stones last year. Something I noticed when I would take a look at a few recordings of the show, and to be fair it was only a few so I could be way off base, but to me it felt like his movements were more...scripted? I'm not sure if that's the right word but it felt like it would be a "ok now I"m going to run the length of the stage" moment that was pre-planned to show he's still got it and not a natural response to the music that is evident in their best shows of the past. I guess it felt more like going through the motions of being Mick Jagger but not really feeling it. Maybe he's just not able to keep up that act as well as he used to.

Like I said, I could be totally wrong. And this isn't at all a slam against Mick because he is still amazingly in shape and though his voice has changed it hasn't changed nearly as much as other singers of his era. I guess I just don't want them to become a parody of themselves and I worry that is going to happen if they don't stop soon. At the same time, I know that people were probably saying the same thing in 2006 or even 1996.

Keith complained in Life about Mick using choreographers, I think it’s something he’s done to one extent or another since the mid-1980s. That said, I know exactly what you mean. What really caught my eye when we saw the show was that Mick moves a lot less in general (he rarely went more than a few feet down the catwalk on stage) and it’s much rarer for him to sing and dance or sing and run, or to jump around at all.

Mick in 2021 singing “Midnight Rambler” (my footage):

Vs Mick in 2024 singing “Satisfaction” (also my footage):

The few times he did run across stage did feel like they were more about proving he could do it than anything to improve the song or spur of the moment impulse. He was also just struggling at our show to hit all his queues and stay in key. Honestly, I think when Charlie died was when it should have ended, or finishing up the No Filter tour and then calling it a day. These last two tours and Hackney Diamonds didn’t show that they’re just as much the Stones without him, it proved the exact opposite.

As to whether they’ll quit before it becomes a bad parody of itself, I don’t know. I saw some reporting that they may not have canceled the proposed 2025 European tour but instead ‘just’ postponed it. At the end of the day, Mick is an old man with a huge ego who has been famous effectively his whole life and with those types it comes to an internal fight between not wanting to be embarrassed/deteriorate on stage and innate arrogance that they’ll always be more amazing than anyone else, so anyone telling them to quit is just jealous or stupid.