Rolling Stones

There’s a lot to be said for the charisma of premature death. And the manner of his particular dying – turning blue on a motel floor at the age of 26, his heart fatally faltering, ice cubes being stuffed up his ass in a pathetic attempt to bring him back from the brink after one binge too many – booked Gram parsons an automatic place of honour in a rock’n’roll Valhalla already overcrowded with dead young heroes, Jimi, Janis, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and more already among its spectral population when Gram died in September, 1973.

The Rolling Stones played the final scheduled performance of their 50 And Counting run of gigs at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday night (December 15). The band kicked off with "Get Off Of My Cloud" and then played "The Last Time", "It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It)" and "Paint It, Black" before introducing the first of the night's special guests, Lady Gaga, for "Gimme Shelter".

The 12-12-12: Concert For Sandy Relief took place last night (December 12) at Madison Square Garden in New York, with Sir Paul McCartney performing with Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic.

The Rolling Stones have announced that Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen and Black Keys will join them onstage at their gig at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on December 15. "We're excited these extraordinary artists, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga and the Black Keys, had agreed to help celebrate our 50th anniversary as we share the night live with our fans all over the world," the band said in a statement on the their official app. "Now the fun begins of trying to figure out the best songs to perform together."

The Rolling Stones played the first of their three American shows on Saturday (December 8). Fresh from two outstanding performances in London last month, the legendary group kicked off their gig at the Barclays Arena in Brooklyn with "Get Off Of My Cloud" before launching into the Lennon/McCartney-penned "I Wanna Be Your Man". After "Last Time", the band were joined onstage, just like they were on the first night of their O2 Arena gigs, by Mary J Blige who performed "Gimme Shelter" – you can watch fan-filmed footage of the performance below.

The Rolling Stones documentary Crossfire Hurricane is set for DVD release. The film, which premiered in cinemas across the UK on October 18 and was subsequently broadcast on BBC2 to coincide with the band's two date stint at London's O2 Arena last month (November 25 and 29), will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 7, 2013. The film, directed by Brett Morgen, documents the band's career from their early road trips and gigs in the 1960s, via the release of 1972's seminal 'Exile On Main Street' right up to present day.

On my way home last week from The Rolling Stones at the O2, still a-buzz with excitement, I ended up chatting to a group of similarly exhilarated fans, who between them didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of Stones shows they’d been to, Brian Jones still a Stone the first time a couple of them had seen them.

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger have spoken about their working relationship, revealing that they are somewhere between brothers and a married couple.

After all the hoo-ha, huff, hysteria and hot air, here, finally, are The Rolling Stones doing what they do even better than raising the collective temperature with impertinent ticket prices, something they seem to have been doing at least since their 1969 American tour, nothing new in the Stones being accused of commercial banditry and the cynical exploitation of their fans, on whose behalf so many complaints have been indignantly voiced since the 50 And Counting dates in London and New York were announced. Why don’t they celebrate their half-centenary with, say, a free concert, the cry went up in some quarters, and let more people have a chance to see them, and for nothing too? Well, when they tried that in 1969, look where it got them: Altamont.

The Rolling Stones last night (November 29) played the second of two shows at London's O2 Arena in celebration of the band's 50th anniversary. As per their show on Sunday, this was to be a hit-packed, guest-filled evening, with the return of Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor plus first-time guests Eric Clapton and Florence Welch of Florence And The Machine. Scroll down the page to see fan shot footage of Florence performing 'Gimme Shelter' with the band.