In ancient times, what happened last night at the Wanda Metropolitano was described as a miracle.
Antiquity not in the sense of 1982, when the Rolling Stones gave their first heroic concert in Madrid under a violent summer storm, but in the Ancient Age, when something so extraordinary and exciting seemed to escape the laws of nature and was attributed to a supernatural phenomenon.
Because it was formidable and also inexplicable and, since you are thinking about it, the analogy with Real Madrid's last Champions League or with certain Rafael Nadal victories is perfectly acceptable.
Let's start by saying that their drummer, Charlie Watts, human glue in the group's complex balance of personalities, died in August 2021 from throat cancer.
The concert began with a nice tribute in his memory and Mick Jagger recalled that it was his "first concert in Europe without Charlie".
"We miss him so much," he said.
Let's also say that Mick Jagger is happy to be on his way to 79 years after his 2019 heart operation, when his aortic valve was replaced.
That Ron Wood, who just turned 75 last night, overcame his second cancer last year.
And about the health of Keith Richards, 78, how many times have you heard, or even told, the joke about donating his body to science when he dies?
And all this after a pandemic that seemed to have ended the great world tours forever.
You will understand from all of this that last night seeing Mick Jagger dancing, jumping, spinning and shaking his ass while singing bravely entered into the realm of thaumaturgy or, at the very least, mysticism.
Something better than all the movies of improvement that we have swallowed in our lives.
But it wasn't just an athletic thing: there was the swarm of intertwined guitars from Keith Richards and Ron Wood, that electric current that flows like a spell and that they executed once again until it became an underground mantra during each song.
So in the end no one gave a damn about them and they sounded like the best rock band in the world.
Not the best rock group for its legacy, which is consistent and influential like few others, not because of nostalgia, not because "it could be the last time", but because of its present.
Here and now.
At 10:17 p.m., when the image of Charlie Watts appeared on the screens and immediately Keith Richards's guitar cracked in the voluptuous spring night like a whip amplifying the riff of Street Fighting Man;
at 10:21 p.m., shaking 19th Nervous Breakdown like a hornet's nest;
at 10:30 p.m., with the creamy sound of Tumbling Dice; and even more so when they played “for the first time live” Out of time, one of their first great singles, nice, playful, as pop as it is malicious; at 11:00 p.m. 24, pumping Miss You with the bass pounding disco-funk in the chest;
and of course at 23:37, with a long (12 minutes) and very incendiary Midnight Rambler, core of the concert like an impenetrable diamond.
No, it wasn't the miracle that they were just still alive, but their glorious present.
Almost all the songs that the Rolling Stones performed last night were written more than 50 years ago (most notably between 1968 and 1972, the period of the stonian canon).
The question is how they play them, because anyone can play them, but nobody does it better than them.
This is not an opinion.
Here and now they do it in a portentous way, you feel that nobody in the world at this moment could offer a better rock and roll concert.
This is an opinion, but it is also a dogma of faith.
The backbone of the repertoire were seven songs that they always perform.
But always, always.
All of them sounded at his seven previous concerts in Madrid, in 1982, 1990, 2003, 2007 and 2014: You Can't Always Get What You Want (last night with the final acceleration more New Orleans than ever), Tumbling Dice (what a joy, what an enjoyment), Honky Tonk Women (Keith Richards's breathy, cubist guitar playing incredibly loud, absurd, excessive, screeching: wonderful) Brown Sugar (arms in the air), Start Me Up (a party, a big party!), Jumpin' Jack Flash (awesome, saturated with electricity and adrenaline) and of course (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction in a cathartic extended version with which the concert ended (supreme happiness, the chorus breaking the atmosphere ).
And it could be extended with one more, which they have performed on all their visits except the first: Sympathy For The Devil (people jumped like a spring as soon as the lascivious rhythm of the bongos began to sound).
The pagan hymns of this fabulous liturgy that culminated in a marvelous final stretch.
The fact that little was left of the usual script allowed the more or less faithful fan to establish comparisons and contrast their memories (probably emulsified in sentimentality) with the harsh reality.
And the reality was raw, but raw in the form of an intense and powerful amalgamation of blues, rhythm and blues, funk and rock and roll (a concoction particularly noticeable in Beast of Burden and Gimme Shelter, during which images of the bombings in Ukraine and a flag of the country attacked by Russia was displayed).
Bassist Darryl Jones, pianist Chuck Leavell (musical director of the band) and drummer Steve Jordan, a 65-year-old boy used by Richards in his solo career who has less swing than Charlie Watts (nobody has had more swing than him),
The 54,000 people who filled the Metropolitano stadium celebrated every detail with the amazement that follows a magic trick.
Thus began the first concert of the Sixty tour, a tour very similar to the one they offered in the US last year and which they now use to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Rolling Stones; it consists of only 14 concerts spread across Europe during June and July , on comfortably spaced dates.
Of that quintet from 1962, only two remain, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who, as in Diez negritos, have seen all their companions disappear.
Unrivaledly charismatic antagonists, they have unbelievably managed to remain the last and greatest vestige of rock's golden age.
Praised be.
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