Members of the band The Rolling Stones (L-R) Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, and Keith Richards perform at the Barclays Center in New York, December 8, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]

Fifty years since their first London jam sessions, the Rolling Stones kicked off the US leg of a brief anniversary tour with a vibrant show in New York on Saturday that belied their years - wrinkles and nostalgia aside.

Drummers wearing gorilla masks warmed up the crowd packed into Brooklyn's Barclays Center as black-clad women swung their long tresses in rhythm.

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Mick Jagger pranced, shimmied and howled his way through the 2-1/2 hour show, pausing to reminisce about the band's history and its first New York concert at Carnegie Hall in 1964.

For a group whose early years were punctuated by quarrels and occasional brushes with the law, the biggest controversy ahead of Saturday's show was the price of seats - up to $800, and as much as 10 times that amount on websites offering last-minute tickets.

In those days, milk was cheaper and "tickets to the Rolling Stones was - well, I'm not going to go there," Jagger acknowledged.

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The band's last major tour was in 2007 and the latest reunion almost didn't happen, owing in part to a spat between Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards over comments Richards made about the singer in a 2010 autobiography.