Age cools the Chilis

Not least as Stadium Arcadium, their sprawling 28-track current album, is a potentially great record in search of a great editor and the moment their star in the studio began to fall.

Last night, the third of four Earls Court sell-outs hinted that changes may be afoot. Prodigiously gifted drummer Chad Smith remains the hardest hitter of his generation and if John Frusciante increasingly resembles an even more benign Catweazle, his guitar playing is a wonder of our era.

Age is beginning to catch up with the all-too-human Flea, no longer a blur of febrile on-stage energy, while singer Anthony Kiedis, a dervish of yore, moved as if his sneakers were coated in treacle.

And they bookended their two-hour set with unspeakably dull and unforgivably interminable jazz-funk instrumentals.

Even so, if they are losing the battle of 2006, the war has long been theirs and whole sections of last night were staggering and not merely because Stadium Arcadium was carefully plucked, allowing Dani California, Tell Me Baby (the most gorgeous chorus surrounded by the most tired verses) and Snow (Hey Oh!) to shine.

The centrepiece of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' career as well as their live set, in years to come the title track of the Californication album will be the yardstick by which the possible magnificence of late-Nineties popular music is measured.

Last night, with the song taken slightly slower than the recorded version, Kiedis was at his most watchably feral; Smith - as ever - beyond reproach and Frusciante on another, far superior, planet. Somehow, the whole was better than the parts.

Even then, By The Way, Scar Tissue and Wet Sand ran it close and at such times, The Red Hot Chili Peppers were unstoppable. They even slipped in a few seconds of The Clash's London Calling before Don't Forget Me.

Those parts and a frothing, worshipful audience ensured the evening was a triumph, but after tonight's finale it may be some time before they return.

Red Hot Chili Peppers