Ronnie-woodie Why have they played stuff like Sad, Sad, Sad so often then?
Your definition of so often would be completely different from my own. They’ve played Sad, Sad, Sad exactly 9 times in 34 years since the Steel Wheels Tour came to an end in 1990. Doesn’t sound like often to me. Sounds more like rarely played.
This is the ultimate destination of all the Stones songs (outside a few exceptions) from all their albums. After the tour is over, most are permanently retired or a few are very rarely played ever again.
Here’s my own experience. For a variety of reasons and close calls, was late to seeing the Stones live. Didn’t see them until 1981 during the Tattoo You Tour. Haven’t missed seeing them on their US tours since. They played 6 songs from the album (saw a 7th many years later Worried About You).
Steel Wheels - they played 6 songs at a couple of the shows I saw in 1989.
Voodoo Lounge tour in 1994- they played 6 songs
Bridges to Babylon 1997- they didn’t play as many so only saw 4 new songs
A Bigger Bang- saw them play only 4 despite seeing a number of shows
Hackney Diamonds- only 3 as Sweet Sounds of Heaven was on temporary hiatus
Those are 30 songs. If you missed the tours, most of those songs you ain’t ever going to see them live again. They’re permanently retired, gone forever. The ones that haven’t are very rarely played. Most of those songs were good songs to see live so from my point of view it’s a shame they don’t go deep more often but they’ve gone the Hot Rocks route on 66.
An added note in case anyone is interested (my guess is no one is

). Thru the years, they’ve also played new compositions to promote greatest hits packages (Doom and Gloom was one that was played for awhile). These songs also have already suffered the same fate and have now been permanently retired. Years where I’ve seen at least one Stones concert: 1981, 1989, 1994. 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2013, 2015, 2021, 2024.