rolling stones - time to stop?

I've been watching some of the recent footage of the Rolling Stones, stuff from the latest tour and the much feted Cuban concert. And for the first time ever, the band seem old.

 

Jagger, still unfeasibly skinny, prances and struts around as usual, and his vocals are still pretty strong, but he'll be 73 in the summer, so it's not surprising that he's lost some of that irrepressible bounce. Some are saying that Jagger’s stage moves look somewhat ridiculous for a man of his age – but frankly Jagger’s stage moves looked ridiculous and undignified 50 years ago and that never stopped him, so he’s not going to change now. It’s just astonishing that he still has any energy at all.

Ronnie (the youngster, he'll be 69 in June) bounces about a bit too, but doesn't seem to be as chirpily animated as usual.

Charlie does the business as always, he's utterly dependable, but he’s showing his age too - he'll be 75 in a couple of months. Oddly, it seemed like the whole band isn’t really having much fun. They all look rather fed up - even Jagger, who was working the crowd hard and really putting on a show, didn’t look like he was enjoying himself much. 

But it was Keith who really surprised me. Where was that cackling piratical demeanour? In the past the band would feed off Keith’s impossible energy, and it was Keith who directed proceedings. Everything used to centre around Keith. Despite Jagger’s natural front man exuberance the audience would frequently watch Richards just as much, because he had this dangerously wicked, unpredictable quality. But recently he comes across as something of a bewildered old man (seemingly older than his 72 years), shuffling about rather aimlessly and with little of his usual outlaw swagger. I found that quite sad.

 

Whilst I'm mightily glad that we still have the Stones - and Ronnie hinted the other day that they've been recording new material, which is tremendous news, as I love this band - they are starting to appear mortal, rather than the truly immortal, untouchable group they've been for over 50 years.

 

Maybe the new recording sessions will rejuvenate the band, but I'm beginning to wonder (Alert!! Alert!! corny sentence ahead) - is it finally time for the Stones to stop rolling? 

rolling stones - altamont

OK, so millions of words have probably been written about the Rolling Stones fateful gig at the Altamont Raceway in the dying days of the 1960s. The night of 6 December 1969 was cold and the assembled crowd was estimated at nearly 200,000 strong. For complex, and with hindsight, stupid reasons the Stones decided to use the local Hell's Angels as security, and it seems they were at least partly paid in wine, beer and narcotics. If anyone had been sober that day it would have been obvious that this was not a good combination...

 

I've come across an excellent matrix of two or possibly three audience recordings of the show, skilfully mixed together to recreate the whole gig. All the source tapes are very good, especially for 1969 recordings, and considering that this was late into the night, cold and dark, the tapers were probably hungry, tired and stoned, and also when you consider all the violence that was going down.

 

Only the first song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is muffled - you can hear Mick's vocals and Keith's guitar very clearly but the rest of the band seem to be absent. But when "Carol" gets going the sound dramatically improves and is a perfectly good listen from then on. The tapers appear to have been near the front, where the audience was squashed against a low stage with 200,000 other hippies behind them. And this places them right in the midst of all the violence. It makes for a frightening listen at times. "I wanna get out" mutters a scared, confused guy. "We got nowhere to go" is the equally scared sounding reply. When scuffles break out and halt "Sympathy For The Devil" you can hear various audience members screaming and shouting. The sheer confusion is actually quite disturbing to hear. Jagger tries to calm things: "Why. Are. We. Fighting? Brothers, sisters, who's fighting and what for?" It's clear what he's trying to do, but it's equally clear that his heartfelt words have little effect. 

 

Throughout the gig there's lots more of Jagger (and Richards: "look, if those cats don't cool it, we're splitting") exhorting the crowd to calm down, much more than I was familiar with from the Gimme Shelter movie. And also lots more from the Angels, who periodically grab the mic to angrily shout stuff like "Everyone sit down and shut up or you won't hear any more music" which really doesn't help. At one point Stones road manager Sam Cutler (who does all the intro announcements) comes back to the stage and orders everyone except the musicians off the stage, as by the middle of the set the stage was almost full of Angels, swigging beer and whacking anyone who came near with broken off pool cues. 

 

Then there's the horrendous bit halfway through "Under My Thumb" where the song grinds to a halt as Meredith Hunter is stabbed to death only yards from the stage. High on goodness knows what, he was waving a shiny pistol around, like the sort you'd see in cowboy films. Apparently it wasn't loaded, but a couple of equally high Angels simply took Hunter out, stabbing him five times and then stomping on him. The Stones couldn't see what exactly was happening, but it was clear very quickly that something very awful had happened. In the break Jagger sounds scared and extremely worried as he relays messages: "er, we need a Doctor. What's that, we need an ambulance down here? Oh… we need an ambulance... I really don't know what's happening." 

 

Later on the crowd seems to calm down a bit and Jagger nervously tries a few "Whooo, you're great, what a fantastic audience" type announcements. But you can clearly hear that his heart isn't in it and it's all false bonhomie, simply trying to cool things down. Oddly though, despite all the trouble, or perhaps because of the trouble, the Stones play superbly. The version of "Gimme Shelter" is incredible, arguably the most powerful I've ever heard, and songs like "Live With Me" and "Street Fighting Man" are shot through with genuine desperation and anger. 

 

It's not the best Stones recording by any means, though for an audience tape from 1969 it's pretty strong. But it's a valuable recording - on a par with something like Iggy and the Stooges' Metallic KO as a brutal slice of music history.

rambling thoughts - rolled gold

I recently played a chunk of Rolled Gold (a marvellous compilation of the best Rolling Stones songs from the 1960s). What a band, what songs, what attitude!!!

Early Stones songs walk, or should that be strut, a fine line between politeness and all out snarly swaggering.

Even really early stuff like “Tell Me” seems a little subversive for all it’s clean production and nice playing. Tracks like “Around and Around” almost catch fire, but maintain a weird air of restraint as if the producers just had to hold the band back for fear of scaring the Great British Public.

But then “The Last Time” hints at what’s to come, and then “Satisfaction” utterly throws caution to the wind and the Stones never looked back. Simply brilliant.

My favourite – “Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing In The Shadows” which not only has a wonderful title but is quite bonkers, has oodles of feedback and distortion, and then all that loopy brass too.