Seeing the Stones

START ME UP! For the first time in many years, I am considering the possibility of going to a Rolling Stones concert. There is no hurry, I have plenty of time to make my decision. The immortal greatest rock n roll band in the world will be touring for at least a few more decades, enabling me to pick and choose, all the way to the end of my life.Over the decades I hace seen them several time, in various venues. In St.Louis I got sprayed by Mick, with a fire hose, from on high. Unlike other die hard fans, I do not harbor the illusion that they are "better than ever". Time takes its toll, on all of us. The first time I became aware of Mick and the boys, I was a little kid, and they were in their early twenties. Now I am long retired, and they are in their early eighties, and one of them, the beloved drummer Charlie Watts, has passed on to rock n roll heaven. Ironic, in a sense, that Charlie should have been the first to die. Of them all, he maintained the quietest, least destructve lifestyle, having been content to simply go home to his family after coming off the road, which they seem to have alomst never come off of. The eternally touring Stones. That's the secret behind the band's legendary longevity, their ability to harmonize their disparate personalities without breaking up. They didn't act like they had to spend their entire lives, inluding free time, together, unlike the Beatles. outside the studio, off the road. They still don't. When not recording or touring, they go their separate ways, and are therefore happy to see each other again when reunited for work. That's what doomed the other world's greatest rock band, the Beatles; too much familiarity, which, as we know, breeds contempt.Mick the sex addict, Keith the heroin addict,and never the twain shall meet offstage. Mick's "real name" is "Mike", which is precisely what Keith calls him. This annoys Mick, but, as Keith says, his mate Mike, who he has known since they were fourteen year old blokes strolling the streets of nineteen fifties blue collar London, tells those who ask that if he chooses, Mick is perfectly free to find another lead guitar player. So far he has not. When Mick is dating a women, Keith respectfully calls his bro "Mike". When Mick is dating a man, Keith calls him "Brenda". Again, the lead guitar thing. Keith seems to like and feel confident in his job security. Since Mick, with his avaracious appetite for bi sex, is ever and always dating somebody or other, by the dozens, one wonders how Keith can ever call him anything but "sex god" for very long. Mick has "dated" Leonard Bernstein, Linda Ronstadt, and a veritable bevy of very young pretty things, and another question arises as to whether age is a factor, or whether Jagger ever bothers to verify the formal adulthood of his paramours. The craziest thing Keith ever did was to go to Switzerland for a full and complete all body blood transfusion, all nine pints. When Keith gets clean, he gets clean. Arguably, it is not unreasonable to object to the Rolling Stones on moral grounds, for a wide variety of reasons, and yet somehow,nobody ever seems to. Their music and on stage presence is far too compelling to let small things like personal behavior stand in the way of a good time, and, in any event, stuffy sanctimonious conservative Christian types have split the scene long before ever looking at rolling Stone resumes. The best book about them is Keith Richard's autobiography, "Life", which he wrote with a surprising lack of help. The book begins with a good story. They were driving in their limo early in their careers, through rural Arkansas. They stopped in at a local country diner to grab a bite. Sensing that they didn't fit in, they ate fast, and hit the road,too fast. A public servant with flashing lights pulled them over, as they threw thousands of dollars of valuable drugs of various sorts out the windows. At the station, they called their regional fixer, a Little Rock attorney, who had them out, fast. Outside, in the police parking lot, they were met by five thousand screaming teen agers. Word had gotten out and spread,fast.