Hyde Park, london - 3rd July 2022

The Sixty Tour - Gig 2

Support by Sam Fender, Courtney Barnett, Christone Kingfish Ingram, The Dinner Party, The Flints

By Pav Salgado

The stage is ready, the sun is out and here they come… Hyde Park is buzzing!

It all started with a lovely tribute to Charlie Watts, loads of images, sounds and videos. It really warmed the awaiting crowd, then the band. Kicking off with ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ in style, from the first minute you can tell the caliber of the band, the musicianship is top notch and the sound is so well balanced that you might think is all playback, but no! no! no!, this is the real deal, real people, real music.

Quickly they launch into ‘19th Nervous Breakdown’ and a fan fave ‘Tumbling Dice’ with the screens adding a new dimension to the song, then ‘Out of Time’ but it is the early surprise of the evening, the magnificent ‘Angie’ that took the diehard fans by surprise but a very well received one, beautiful song and a beautiful rendition right there. After recovering from the surprise we get ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ it is a quick fire line of awesome songs that transcend time and space, especially the beautiful cover of that Dylan song that you might know about ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, what a joy and very touching that Mick mentioned the “Poet” and his Nobel Prize, great stuff. Another first this time round is ‘You Got Me Rocking’ followed by the timeless classic ‘Honky Tonk Women’, this is like the playlist of playlists.

After this, Mick proceeds to introduce the band leaving Mr. Richards last so he can deliver a couple of songs in ‘You Got the Silver’ and ‘Happy’, and happy we are indeed, his raspy bluesy growl is a perfect contrast to Mick’s everlasting tone.

Then the groove… It is ‘Miss You’ time, with every punter dancing to the funky bass lines and Mick’s slightly adjusted lyrics we dance into the night. ‘The Midnight Rambler’ and the ever fantastic ‘Paint in Black’ keep us going. By this point the band knows that they have everyone in their pocket, therefore they launch into ‘Start Me Up’, yes, they are just getting started (if there was no curfew in Hyde Park that is, but you get the gist) the next one pull our strings as ‘Gimme Shelter’ means that extra little more this days, as the Ukrainian flag is shown in every inch of the huge screens.

‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ is next and with that they bring us back to earth with a rocker.

Lights out but everybody knows that there’s a couple more in store, so many songs, so many options but they re-enter the stage to the opening sounds of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, with the crowd engaging in “whoo whoo’s” the song takes on a life of its own , quite simply, rock n’ roll at its best.

And for the final song the famous opening riff of ‘Satisfaction’ blast through the speakers and we are off, it is such an unique track that we soak it in note by note. What a high point, the ecstasy is complete.

Once again the Stones have delivered in Hyde Park, they are still on top of the world, we miss you Charlie.