Paul Thomas: Why I can't get no satisfaction any more

The adage "once bitten, twice shy" flatters us, because it exaggerates our capacity to learn from experience. Most of us have to be bitten several times before we say never again, and even then we hardly ever stick to it.

Bitter experience informs our eating habits ("That's the last time I'm having takeaways"), our cultural forays ("I'm never going to another Sylvester Stallone movie") and our big-picture, life-shaping decisions ("I'm never getting married again").

But then we see someone sitting in the sun on a seawall eating fish and chips out of newspaper and that hard-earned wisdom flies out the window. And we have to learn the hard way all over again.

A few years ago I vowed never to buy another Rolling Stones album.

Since Some Girls (1978), they've released one turkey after another, but people like me, who clung to the hope that the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world still had one shot left in the locker, kept forking out for them.

But one day as you scan your CD shelves, your gaze falls on Turkey Corner, the no-go area housing 20-odd years of Stones output, and you realise you've been kidding yourself.

Years pass. Out of the blue someone whose musical taste isn't entirely execrable says, "Hey, have you heard the new Stones album? It's actually pretty good."

You take no notice and make a mental note to cross the street next time you see him coming.

But you can't help yourself: you check out the reviews and they're uniformly positive. The Stones have got their mojo back, they say; best album since Some Girls.

Hope stirs. You recall those very same critics calling for the Stones to be hunted down and put to sleep before they inflicted another steaming pile of crap on society. They can't all have gone soft.

So you fall off the wagon. You buy A Bigger Bang. You take it home and slip it into the CD player with a touch of the giddy anticipation with which you placed Sticky Fingers on the turntable back in 1971. And pretty soon you start to hate yourself.

It's not that bad. But it's not that good either. It's another mediocre album in a long line.

Why did the critics go overboard? Perhaps they felt that after so many slaggings, the old boys deserved a break. Perhaps it was out of grudging admiration for their sheer cussedness in shrugging off all those critical hammerings and that chorus of advice to lay down their instruments and act their age.

There is something heroic about Mick Jagger at 62, still with the hair, the androgynous figure, the model girlfriend and the manic stage presence.

There's something awe-inspiring about the imperviousness of Keith Richards to a lifestyle that has claimed so many victims. As the old gag goes: why is Keith Richards like a cockroach? They're the only things that would survive nuclear war.

But it's not enough. The latest National Geographic has a photo of a 100-year-old man water-skiing. As a demonstration of water-skiing, it's remarkable only insofar as the skier is immensely old. We can admire the Stones' durability but their music must be judged on its merits.

A Bigger Bang is rowdy enough, but it's the forced, brittle din of a party failing to get off the ground.

Jagger was never a great lyricist but he had good ideas and came up with some great lines. A great hook-line is enough to base a three-minute rock song on when it's performed by the world's greatest rock'n'roll band.

But Jagger's world has become staid and he doesn't do great lines anymore, while Richards no longer produces memorable riffs.

The result is songs that leave nothing behind, the musical equivalent of Chinese food: half an hour later you're hungry again. Even the best albums contain one or two fillers we rarely bother with; A Bigger Bang is all fillers.

And there are a couple of moments that suggest the end is nigh, whether they like it or not.

On a track of stupefying banality Richards vocalises like someone who should be on a life-support machine, while Jagger's lurch into political comment has all the wit, eloquence and intellectual rigour of a rhyme in a cheap Christmas card.

If you're going to make a statement, it helps to have something to say. In the right hands (Bruce Springsteen, U2) the rock song can be a powerful vehicle for protest; in the wrong hands - one thinks of Paul McCartney's dramatically feeble-minded Give Ireland Back to the Irish - it's simply embarrassing.

One of Jagger's great strengths and a factor in his longevity has been his immunity to embarrassment, but like all strengths it can also be a weakness.

There's evidence to suggest that most artists have only so much creativity in them, whether it comes out in a rush early on or trickles out over decades.

The Stones ran out of creative steam some time ago but they keep rolling, fuelled by ego, nostalgia and diehard fans who keep paying for it even though it provides no satisfaction.