The Rolling Stones at Western Springs

Rolling Stones guitarists Ron Wood (left) and Keith Richards haven't lost any of their energy or style on stage. Picture / Greg Bowker

On the gas-gas-gas scale, it was just a gas-gas. Or maybe a gas-gas-and-a-half.

Yes, when the Rolling Stones - here for the fifth time in their 40-plus year history and 11 years to the day since last playing Western Springs - delivered almost everything that could be expected of them in their 20-song sub-two-hour show.

It even came with a gig-within-a-gig - a stage which rolled the entire band out into the middle of the Western Springs arena for a four-song bracket during the second half.

Pretty funny if you paid megabucks for the front row, only to see the band heading towards the Portaloos, huh?

Earlier, it did take a while for the band to prove this Auckland concert before 55,000 fans wasn't just another line on the tour T-shirt.

That proof came a good half a dozen songs in, having already dispensed with classics such as Jumping Jack Flash as opener (with Keith Richards straight into its pivotal riff with no mucking about on the original intro), Let's Spend the Night Together, and It's Only Rock'n'Roll.

Those songs might have well been the triumphant closing over on any other night. Played early on, this one sounded as if the whole show risked going through the motions.

But just as a dashed-off Ruby Tuesday threatened to stop any sense of momentum then came a higher gear with an extended, tension-and-release work through the band's blackest blues Midnight Rambler.

It was the night's first great performance, one which evoked the Stones' dangerous past rather than just plain old nostalgia. And fortunately, there was plenty more of those to come - especially Sympathy for the Devil, Paint It Black and Get Off Of My Cloud - on a set which predictably relied heavily on 60s and 70s material, along with a few numbers from last year's return-to-form album A Bigger Bang.

Individually, the core Stones - all sexagenarians except Ron Wood - appeared hale and hearty.

Complete with wardrobe in which nothing was too disco or too small, Sir Mick Jagger still risked inducing fatigue just watching him go-go-go. Charlie Watts remained the zen master behind his kit; Richards looked to be enjoying himself, his two Dylan-ish solo songs adding something unpredictable.

Talking of predictability, Canadian pop-metallers Nickelback were an incongruous opener, one bullshit power ballad after another which supports the rock-is-dead argument more than the ancient headliners.

As for the Stones, they were great when great and when they weren't they were the Rolling Stones on a fairly good night. Which 40 years on, is still one of rock'n'roll's greatest circuses.