I remember it like it was a bolt out of the blue. I was at a friend’s house and his older brother had just purchased a new album – Black and Blue by the Rolling Stones. The older brother also possessed Goat’s Head Soup and Exile on Main Street. The three albums were very different from one another but I was hooked. I would digest every album from that point on and through the years, have enjoyed much of their earlier albums though their period of the 1970s is my favorite. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of their first gig as The Rolling Stones. Consider this article a little tribute to the greatest rock n’ roll band in history.
When I was a kid, one was either a Rolling Stones fan or a Beatles fan. I never understood The Beatles but the Rolling Stones impacted me like no other band. There was something raw and rebellious about the Stones where the Beatles seemed to be pretending. I must have annoyed the daylights out of parents with singing and asking to buy this album or another. Of course, they had the right to suspect my musical tastes as I was once fond of KISS. The Stones are based on the rich tradition of the blues and as I grew older and more aware of their lyrics and complexity, it simply intensified my affiliation.
Of course, as a young teen, part of the Stones’ attraction was their rebel status and to think they had been ticking off parents for decades. It is quite impressive. I do enjoy some of their post 1970s material, most notably Tattoo You, Undercover (the title track is still amazing to hear) and Voodoo Lounge. Unlike some fans, I’m not as upset about the “newer” material as the progression of the band was both predictable and inevitable. After one achieves international stardom to become some of the richest musicians on the planet, it is hard to play the rugged, life-is-tough style. Though they are based on the blues (a great love of mine as explained in an earlier article), most of the older blues musicians are not much better off than they were when they began. They certainly do not enjoy the riches of the Stones so they remain tied in. What the Stones still bring across, however, is audacity and brashness. Brash might be a difficult adjective for men well into their 60s but it applies. Yet, they also represented danger.
As a young man, dangerous people and ideas were like a drug. I remember the first time I heard “Gimme Shelter” with its focus on the worst of mankind. I still get chills listening to Merry Clayton belting out that rape and murder is “just a shot away.” Similarly, songs like “Shattered,” “Midnight Rambler” and “Dead Flowers” drew me in. “Undercover” fits into the category. As dark as their music could be, their presentation was just as troubling to my parents with Mick’s serpentine movements and Keith’s death-defying existence. As an adult, I know most of their antics were part of a show (something the “rock-is-deviltry” folks never understood) but to a young boy, they were thumbing their noses at the powers that be and it is hard not to like that.
In honor of their 50th anniversary of existence, I’m spending a great deal of time listening to everything I have, from box sets to studio and live albums. In sounds trite but the Stones served as a soundtrack to my life and often, I remember certain events in conjunction with a new Stones’ album or a song. Though I’m well into my 40s and in lifestyle, far from my wilder years, I can pretend and remember my halcyon days when I was young and tough. Like the Stones, I’m not what I used to be but the music and the memories remain the same.
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