Last month at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, I saw my first Rolling Stones show in 30 years.
Back then in 1989, critics mocked the ages of the members of the so-called “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” The Stones were in their 40’s; they were too old to rock. Having infamously defied the Grim Reaper for so many years, surely guitarist Keith Richard’s nine lives were close to running out; how much longer could he possibly last? And how well? Surely, time and hard living will have taken its toll.
A popular assumption at the time, and oft-repeated since, suggested their real motive: they were “just doing it for the money.”
Who knows, maybe they were?
But now, after seeing them perform in 2019 on their “No Filter” Tour, I don’t think so
Because they were spectacular.
*****
From the beginning of the “rock and roll band” era in the early 1960’s, great bands periodically emerged from the musical landscape to complement the already established, ground-breaking bands like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Stones, and The Who, whom all began to take on an iconic status.
Some of the new bands went on to become iconic in their own right, and left lasting marks upon music before flaming out, e.g. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Doors, etc., but other bands continued to appear and replace them: The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and so forth. The torch was always carried, if you will.
This phenomenon continued well into the 1980’s, when MTV introduced hundreds of bands to the rock and roll audience, while artists that had emerged in the mid and late 1970’s like Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Van Halen used MTV to cement their own legacies as icons.
We assumed that this comfortable chronological continuum would last forever. But it didn’t.
New bands continued to emerge into the 1990’s. However, these bands had tendencies to either quickly flame out (Nirvana), have a hit song or two and then vanish (numerous examples, look em up), or carve out a strong niche following, but without any kind of universal appeal (Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band).
Perhaps pop culture and music had become so fragmented into separate sects that it was just no longer possible for bands to achieve that widespread icon status.
But all this time, while the rest flashed, crashed, and burned, Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie would strap it on again and again, and head out on the road. Each time a little older; each time perhaps with a little more to prove.
Why? They don’t need the money, right?
******
Blues men don’t retire. They play ‘till they die.
In their later years, afflicted by the usual tormentors of old age (arthritis, diabetes, heart disease), they still chose the tour bus over the retirement village. They are helped onstage, use crutches or a cane to move around, and sit rather than stand. Some of these artists both influenced the Stones, and at the same time were their slightly elder peers; all at one time or another shared the stage with them. And they all performed right up to within months of their passings.
Muddy Waters died at age 70.
Bo Diddley passed at 79.
Hubert Sumlin, the great guitarist for many blues performers, died at age 80. (The Stones not only paid for his funeral, but staged a memorial concert for him.)
Harp player James Cotton died at 81.
John Lee Hooker lived to age 83.
Buddy Guy, perhaps the last of that generation that grew up in the Segregated South, and packed their guitars and headed north for the greener pastures of Chicago, is still alive and well at 83, and still on the road as of this writing. (Go see him while you still can. You will not be disappointed.)
B.B. King passed at age 89; in the year prior to his death, despite enduring high blood pressure and diabetes, he performed 72 times.
*****
I first saw B.B. King when he was headlining the 1991 River Blues Festival on the Delaware River in Philly, just a few miles up the river from Lincoln Financial Field. It was hot and muggy, the temperatures in the mid-90’s at dusk. B.B. and his band paid the weather no heed, taking the stage wearing tuxedos. He was 65 years old.
Dripping with sweat before he played a single note, he might’ve been the happiest man on earth.
As he led his band through their set, he danced, he postured, he laughed, he strutted, he swayed while he played, and never stopped smiling; that is, until he did a slow blues. Then, his eyes shut, perspiration pouring down from his gray hair, B.B. King dug down deep, searching for the right notes, the right note: the one you hit when things are bad… when you’re feeling down… or lonely. But when he plays, when he hits that note… he’s telling you that he knows… that you’d better believe with all your heart and soul that B.B. King has been there too, he understands, he knows how bad it feels… but things are gonna get better. It’s gonna be all right.
This is the blues.
The same kind of note would strike a nerve for teenagers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards back when they listened to each other’s record collections, back in those early days after their chance meeting on a train platform, when they decided that they should form a blues band of their own.
When he finally left the stage, exhausted and drenched but smiling angelically, there was no doubt that at that one moment in time, B.B. King WAS the Happiest Man on Earth.
“The storm is threatening… my very life today
If I don’t get some shelter… I’m gonna fade away.”
75 year-old Keith Richards squints out into the rain and the adoring Philly crowd as he steps forward and begins the solo for “Gimme Shelter.” The giant video screen reveals his gnarled hands, belying the ease and smoothness which which he attacks and bends the strings, shaking them to apply vibrato, not at all unlike B.B. King.
Mick Jagger, soon-to-be 76, and just a few months removed from a heart valve surgery that delayed the tour and threatened his very life, struts, dances, exhorts, and shimmies all over the huge stage like an 18-year-old, all while singing 50-plus-years worth of beloved songs.
Charlie Watts, 78, sits straight up behind his drums, a smile cracking his otherwise serious visage whenever Keith or 72-year old Ronnie Wood happen by. One can only wonder how much fun they’re having playing a football stadium full of some 69,000 fans instead of doing whatever properly retired Brits usually do.
The Rolling Stones are the longest running rock and roll band — not solo performer, or a vocal group backed by anonymous and interchangeable musicians for hire — but an actual collaborative band — in history.
So why are they still doing it, and doing it at such a high level? After Mick’s heart scare, it would be understandable if they decided touring and performing were no longer worth the risk, or the effort. Time to enjoy the fruits of their labors, because time certainly isn’t on their side any more.
But just like the old blues men who inspired them, they play because that’s what they do. The music is in your DNA: you can no more stop playing than stop breathing. It’s that simple. You play ‘till you die, because if you stop playing you’ll surely die.
In his 2012 autobiography “Life,” Keith writes:
“I can rest on my laurels. I’ve stirred up enough crap in my time and I’ll live with it and see how somebody else deals with it. But then there’s that word “retiring.” I can’t retire until I croak. There’s carping about us being old men. The fact is, I’ve always said, if we were black and our name was Count Basie or Duke Ellington, everybody would be going, yeah, yeah, yeah. White rock and rollers apparently are not supposed to do this at our age. But I’m not here just to make records and money. I’m here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: “Do you know this feeling?”
In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone magazine (4/9/15), Keith was asked, “What do you hope to see The Stones accomplish before you guys wrap it up?
Showing more interest in this particular question than any of the others that preceded it, he responded:
“That’s a good question. I’d like to see just how far they [The Rolling Stones] can evolve. I have no demands or particular visions for them, but you’re just part of this thing and I want to see how far it will go.”
They’ve already gone farther than any rock and roll band has ever gone, and they want to push it as far as they can.
I’m sure the money ain’t bad either.
*****
Post Script
One Sunday when I was 17 or 18, I drove up to New York City with a few high school friends to explore. We wound up wandering around the Village, watching the street performers at work on a sunny day in Washington Square.
One group in particular caught my attention. With acoustic guitars and percussion, they were signing an unfamiliar (to me) song with a bittersweet chorus that went:
“And you can
send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won’t forget to put roses on your grave”
The sheer joy with which the performers sang this tune touched me; if I knew the wordS I would have sang along. Back home later that evening, I pulled my uncooperative guitar out from under the bed to give it another go.
Not long thereafter, I purchased a cassette of the Stone’s classic “Sticky Fingers,” and popped it into my Walkman… and there it was on Side Two: “Dead Flowers,” that song I heard up in The Village that sunny autumn day.
Seeing its authors, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, perform it center stage in Philadelphia, acoustic just like back in Washington Square, was a dream come true.
“Gimme Shelter” words and music by Jagger / Richards
“Dead Flowers” words and music by Jagger / Richards
