As some here already know, I'm a big Rolling Stones fan, at least a fan of their work through the early 1970's. I spend a fair amount of time listening to their music, and also search Youtube for videos I haven't seen before. Anyway, I've just been thinking of different things about them.
The first is Ron Wood's marriage a few days ago. He's 65, just three years older than me, but he looks like he's in his 80's. My dad looked younger when he was in his 80's. She's 34. Do you think money may have something to do with it, or did she marry him for his intellect? (He never struck me as being all that brainy).
I can't figure out why all of the band members look so leathery. Maybe it's from 50 years under hot stage lights.
The group's song-writing talent and guitar work was best in the very late 1960's and early 1970's, especially when Mick Taylor was playing with the group. Taylor had a style that was very different from Keith Richards, using more blues techniques and more complex fingering. Richards used repetitious chord patterns to create riffs that are classic, but for the most part simple. The two of them together made for some fantastic songs. Ron Wood's style is more like Keith Richards, and there wasn't much stand-out guitar work after Taylor left. ("Start Me Up" opens with what has become an iconic Keith Richards riff, but most of the remaining guitar work on the song is ho-hum).
While the group's early work wasn't as sophisticated technically or in terms of song-writing ability, their performances were more exciting. They didn't rely on gaudy costumes, elaborate sets or pyrotechnics to get the audience in high gear. This Youtube video is an example of what I mean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulxQv9WKzHU Their 2005 tour was a return to simplicity, with no props or tricks. Just the group playing. It was refreshing.
I ran across an interview from 1970 with John Lennon discussing Mick Jagger and the Stones, and was struck by how bitter Lennon seemed. His liberal used of the "f" word was unusual for that time, and unnecessary. It reminded me that I've never heard any of the members of the Stones use any swear words at all. Lennon accused the Stones of copying the Beatles with the album title "Let It Bleed", but I've read that the Stones came up with that title to be a bit of a dark stab at the Beatle's insipid "Let It Be". By 1970 the Stones were really hitting their stride, while the Beatles were becoming almost irrelevant. Maybe that's why Lennon seemed so bitter. The interview is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-b3fRisu50 (I never cared for that two-faced multi-millionaire socialist "man of the people", anyway).
Over the last 50 years, the Stones have generated well in excess of $30 billion in record sales, concert ticket sales, and sales of licensed merchandise. Whatever their cut of all that has been, they've certainly earned it. I saw a list of all of their concert dates going back to the 1960's, and they've maintained a brutal schedule right up until the last very few years. They'd do a concert almost every night for a year or two at a time, with jumps from continent to continent, and their rest periods were never long.
The Stones pretty much kept politics out of their music and their interviews. There were hints of political messages in some songs, but I don't know that I was ever able to pin them down politically (Mick Jagger comes from an active politically conservative family, and Keith Richards from a politically liberal family). By point of contrast, I was a huge Springsteen fan until he started ranting onstage at a Milwaukee concert about George W. Bush, just months before the 2004 election. That's the last time I saw him in concert, and I haven't listened to his music hardly at all since then.
There are better vocalists than Mick Jagger (although his voice is/was distinctive), there's better guitarists than Keith Richards, and better drummers than Charlie Watts. There's been better song-writing teams than Jagger and Richards. I think the reason they've been so successful for so long is just plain hard work.
So much for my thoughts.
