SAN DIEGO — Buddy Guy is surely not the first blues legend and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee to launch a farewell tour and retire, only to then change his mind and hit the road again (and again).

But this nine-time Grammy Award-winner and Kennedy Center Honors National Medal of Arts recipient is likely the first legend in any music genre who was 88 when he began his short-lived retirement, following the conclusion of his “Damn Right Farewell Tour” in 2024.

That extended international concert trek included a more-miss-than-hit San Diego farewell concert in late 2023 at The Shell with young blues dynamo Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. That’s the same bayside venue where Guy (now 90) and Ingram (now 27) again shared the stage on Friday night, a year after Guy launched his “Damn Right Encore Tour.”

Thankfully, Friday’s up-and-down “BG90” tour stop here was less uneven than Guy’s 2023 show at the same venue. He was in strong voice throughout, whether belting out the show-opening “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues” with searing intensity, romping through the innuendo-filled 1971 Bobby Rush chestnut, “Chickenheads,” or sizzling during an oh-so-sultry version of the 1956 Little Willie John’s classic, “Fever.”

Guy’s instrumental work remains a more challenging proposition.

One of the most fiery and original guitarists of the past 70 years, he has profoundly influenced numerous other six-string practitioners, past and present. They include Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer, Marcus King, Quinn Sullivan, Ally Venable and Ingram, whose sublime opening set Friday was a marvel of skill, pacing, deep feeling and finely calibrated precision.

All these guitarists have been inspired by Guy’s searing tone, the galvanizing physicality of his playing, his nimble touch and his ability to perform with electrifying abandon one moment and goosebump-inducing sensitivity and restraint the next.

At his best Friday, Guy’s guitar work was terrific. His whisper-soft solo on the B.B. King staple “How Blue Can You Get?” was a gem of finesse and soulful nuance. And there were moments during his rendition of the Denise LaSalle-penned ZZ Hill hit, “Someone Else Is Steppin’ In,” where his playing cut through the balmy night air with surgical accuracy.

But, too often, Guy sounded sloppy and erratic, seesawing in and out of tune as he played enough clams — musician’s parlance for bum notes — to almost stock a seafood diner. In multiple instances, he bent his strings out of tune with alarming frequency. It was a sharp contrast from his heyday, when Guy bent his strings any and every which way while staying consistently in tune.

Of course, it is not realistic to expect any 90-year-old musician to match the lofty standards and fervor that they did in their prime. And Guy has accomplished so much in a 69-year career that any time he performs now provides an opportunity to celebrate the legacy of this hugely influential guitarist and singer.

But Friday’s concert also provided the opportunity to contemplate the pros and cons of retiring and unretiring, of acknowledging the passing of time and then trying one’s best to defy it.

“I’m old,” said Guy, who nevertheless remained on his feet for his entire 71-minute performance. That he spent nearly as much time talking between his songs (and, sometimes, during them) as he did performing them may be a reflection of age. Ditto his propensity for profanity — he twice implored the audience to “Get your minds out of the (expletive) gutter.” He unleashed even more f-bombs Friday than at his 2023 Shell concert, sometimes with a twinkle in his eye, sometimes not.

Listening to Guy reflect between songs on his life provided a real-time portal to a largely bygone era. He referenced 78 RPM records, laboring on a Louisiana cotton plantation in his youth, and the dearth of the rural juke joints he cut his teeth playing music in for almost entirely Black audiences — much like the one in the Oscar-winning film “Sinners,” in which Guy pays a short but key role.

“They got only three 90-year-old blues players still alive,” he told the audience. “Willie Nelson, Bobby Rush and you’re looking at the third.”

Nelson is 93 and Rush is 92, but the point was well-taken. The end of an era is nearing for Guy and his still-active nonagenarian peers. All three are clearly eager to continue doing what they love, even if doing so — at least in Guy’s case — yields increasingly bumpy returns.

What prompted him to announce his farewell tour several years ago?

“I watched all the old guys like B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters go until they got old,” Guy told Guitar Player magazine three years ago this month. “Often, when you watch older people playing shows, you think, ‘Man… they just don’t sound the way they did when they were younger.’ I remember listening to some of my heroes when they got older and thinking it wasn’t the same.”

What prompted Guy to unretire, beyond a likely craving to get back in front of audiences eager to connect with a musical pioneer while they still can?

“I thought about all those great blues players who are no longer with us — B.B. King. Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys,” Guy told Guitar Player last year.

“And they used to tell me: ‘You need to keep playing and keep representing the blues,’ ’cause they don’t play it on radio or anything anymore. So I said to myself: ‘Well, Buddy, you better hang on a little longer. My health ain’t doing too bad, so I’m still doing what I’ve always done … every time I get on stage, just try to play the best I can.”

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