It's difficult to conceive that these are the very same men who, mere months before, strained to expel A Bigger Bang from their vitals.

This was more believable, unfortunately, at the Pittsburgh 2005 show I attended.

Excellent Keith acoustic on Wild Horses at Saitama.  Experience marred only by the absence of Gimme Shelter with Lisa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btcy9t3jl7I

That Saitama show was a pretty good one, as I recall.

The Bigger Bang tour was an odd mix, quality wise.

I thought the first couple of months of gigs after it started in August 2005 were pretty hit and miss. Two terrific shows at the Hollywood Bowl early November was a real turning point and the rest of the US shows that year saw them on fine form, and that continued into the new year which included another leg of  US arena dates, the all too brief trio of South American dates which included the Copacabana gig (14 years ago yesterday), a few more US dates and then Japan and Australia which took them into April.

Keith's fall definitely hindered his performances when the Euro tour finally got started in July and Woody was at times struggling to step up to the plate although they were generally good shows and by the time they hit the UK in late August they were close to their best again.

In the three week gap between the end of the Euro leg and the start of the next US stadium leg, Keith was filming 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and something was clearly amiss by the time the tour recommenced because he was clearly impaired in some way (he had stopped playing guitar and singing at the same time), although again he was a bit more consistent after about a month.  He was pretty hit and miss in Europe the following summer tour too (I saw two shows in Lisbon and Madrid two nights apart and he was really good at the first one and at times all over the place at the second one). They were terrific at the final four shows of the tour though which I attended (Slane Castle plus the three London 02 gigs) and a very erratic tour thankfully concluded on a high