The Stones really are back with A Bigger Bang. It ain’t any surprise that it took sex, disease and death to shake the Rolling Stones out of their latest creative dry spell. Leading up to the making of A Bigger Bang, which is the production of Don Was, Mick Jagger endured a very public break-up with Jerry Hall, Charlie Watts battled throat cancer, and Ron Wood was confounded to bad health and dejection by the news of his ex-wife's suicide. Out of their collective struggles, the members of the esteemed British rock band managed to part together some of their best work in nearly two decades. It's a polished, somewhat a jagged affair springing from rude blues to MOR rock songs that sound suspiciously like they were left over from the Alfie soundtrack, but howsoever they sound their tracks sound vital at every turn. Even though they don't really need to, the jet-set hobo rockers have pitched the hot-button politics ("Sweet Neo Con"), looked through their dirty laundry ("Oh No, Not You Again") and dip guarded toes back into ridicule-tempting "Miss You"-style funk ("Rain Fall Down"), without making any major missteps unless one counts the ewwwww-factor of a 61-year-old Keith Richards singing "Come on honey, bare your breasts and make me feel at home" on "This Place Is Empty." Bigger Bang is a diverse set featuring 16 tracks varying from power ballad to a political rant thinly disguised as a song, with plenty of bright spots. You can't call these guys mocking schoolboys anymore but a dirty joke from these randy old goats is just as funny. But most important is their music. A real good use of guitars is there, although some of the verse-lyrics are stupid. The one major mistake on the album is Streets of Love.

The Rolling Stones will play a free concert on Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana Beach in February and up to 1.5 million people are expected to attend the concert. Now celebrating their 43rd year as a performing unit, the Stones are the longest-lived major band in rock history. The selection of Bigger Bang in the Grammy as the best pop rock album has revitalized their best new album in nearly 25 years and a largely sold-out concert tour that is earning rave reviews, the Rolling Stones are bigger, if not better, than ever. The members of the band are also older than ever, a fact that has led to the usual sneers about their ages (at 58, guitarist Ronnie Wood - a latecomer who only joined in 1976 - is the junior partner; drummer Charlie Watts, at 64, is the oldest). But a noteworthy thing is that passing of time have given the Stones a renewed sense of vigor and purpose, if it has not taken them to new heights. Also, the Stones' resilience of decades and generations, with time has surpassed their deserved bad-boy reputation for drugs and sexploits.