| October 3rd, 2005 07:58 AM |
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| Gazza |
Do the Stones still matter? - Yes
They are a direct link to the source energy of rock
By THOMAS GOLDSMITH, Staff Writer
"She says, 'You can't repeat the past.' I say, 'You can't? What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can.' "
-- Bob Dylan, "Summer Days"
Of course the Stones matter. Receiving the wisdom of their contemporary Mr. Dylan and taking into account the joy certain teenagers of my acquaintance feel when hearing "Beggars Banquet," the debate seems cleanly settled.
But here's the larger point: Music made by the Rolling Stones, from 1964's "Not Fade Away" to this season's "Back of My Hand," strikes priceless particular notes not heard elsewhere in pop music. Timeless doesn't always mean safe, old and no longer relevant. Consider Picasso, or bluegrass founder Bill Monroe, both of whom created memorable work at far more advanced ages.
"Time is on my side," Mick Jagger pronounced in 1965, in the words of a hit by New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas.
And time remains on the Stones' side because they represent the real thing: hard-life rock 'n' roll arising right out of the music's roots of blues, gospel, soul and country. Reports from the "Bigger Bang" tour, which visits Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium on Saturday, show that Jagger and company have been pulling out Otis Redding's soulful "Mr. Pitiful," as well as Ray Charles' "Night Time is the Right Time," amid their own classics. And the DVD set "Four Flicks," filmed a couple of years ago, shows the band prancing through Smokey Robinson's "Going to a Go-go," Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" and Redding's "That's How Strong My Love Is." And they nailed them all.
Another great soul man, William Faulkner, talked about the past being "never dead. It's not even past." That notion of ideas that can't die occurs because of the positive high Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood get from returning to the well of rock 'n' roll.
"It's an addiction," Richards told the New York Daily News, "and addiction is something I should know something about."
The Stones seem as consumed with what they do as when they first came raging out of London in 1964, reminding fans here, even in the South, of the firestorm of sound created by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Redding, Jimmy Reed and Wilson Pickett. They listened to country music, too: check out the rampaging version of Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On" from "December's Children" and the alt-country inspiring "Country Honk," "Wild Horses" and "Sweet Virginia."
Yes, a lot of the music cited here is from back in the day. But that hard-core quality of touching the originating fire has endured throughout at one level or another. It's certainly present on "A Bigger Bang," which has garnered some of the band's best reviews in recent decades.
A request for reader response on the Stones' relevance created some interesting notes: Everyone who took the time to get in touch voted yes.
"Well, let's make it quick: anyone who dismisses and/or leaves 'Some Girls' out of 'relevant' music albums, let alone relevant STONES albums, is an idiot, and should go and relisten to that album again," wrote Ana Jeremic, 24, checking in from Canada. "I would not be a Stones fan, I would not be a music fanatic, I would not pursue music as an all-encompassing interest that I have now, if it was not for that album. ...
"The Stones have had some stinker songs since these two albums (who hasn't?), but they have yet to make an embarrassing album. Ageism among rock historians and the short attention span of most music 'fans' are the only reasons why their post 1981-albums are universally dismissed."
Ah, ageism. That band members are in their 60s comes up a lot. They're gleefully branded as geezer rockers who'll come on stage in wheelchairs.
"People laugh at the Stones because of their age," wrote Bill Hicks, 47, of Southern Pines. "Mick, Charlie, Ron and Keith can still play with the best of the young bands today."
Based on some responses, even the Stones' sex appeal is timeless.
"Want to know why they are still great?" wrote Susann Hood, in her 40s, of Wilson. "No body fat! Nothing flops or jiggles, except Keith's cigarette. ... And the real secret is, we all know Mick Jagger sold his soul to the devil 40 years ago, for fortune and fame. And it looks like he got a pretty damn good deal so far."
There's another anti-Stones argument that says the band is simply recycling worn-out music for dollars.
"I don't believe for a minute they need the money, especially Jagger and Richards," wrote Edward Starke, of Raleigh. "They enjoy entertaining and giving people what they want."
Sure, the world needs new music, new bands, new fire. But no one is forcing 37,000 or so folks into Wallace Wade Stadium Saturday night. If and when the Stones no longer matter, the crowds will just stay home.
Features editor Thomas Goldsmith can be reached at 829-8929 or [email protected].
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Do the Stones still matter? - No
They are cruising on the fumes of past glory
AFP/Getty Images
Jagger performing in 1973, at a concert in London's Wembley Stadium.
By DAVID MENCONI, Staff Writer
Fittingly, you can pinpoint the moment the Rolling Stones irrevocably crossed the line from present to past tense at a funeral. Not a real one, but a funeral in a movie, 1983's "The Big Chill."
The funeral was for a character whose motives for committing suicide were never explained. And it concluded with a song announced as the favorite of the departed, played by one of the mourning college friends on the church organ. It took a few bars for the song to take shape; but the tune finally revealed itself as the camera cut to each friend of the deceased smiling privately for "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Then the full-band version kicked in for the graveside part of the service.
"The Big Chill" wasn't the first time director Lawrence Kasdan used that particular song for a Greek chorus effect (1981's "Body Heat" also featured it). And in 1979, Francis Ford Coppola used "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in "Apocalypse Now" for a scene where a U.S. patrol boat took a water-skiing expedition that swamped the locals' fishing boats in their wake. By movie's end, casual ugly-American nihilism was revealed as the hubris that it was.
Time was, Stones songs were a highly effective device to signify transgressive attitudes. But "The Big Chill" was something quite different -- a movie about the energetic, impractical idealism of youth hardening into middle-age complacency -- and it encased every reference point in the amber of nostalgic narcissism. Sadly, the Stones suddenly sounded as stuck in the past as the Motown oldies on the rest of the soundtrack.
A few months after "The Big Chill" opened, the Stones released an extaordinarily slight album called "Undercover." Whether the timing was coincidental or not, that album marked the start of the Stones' long but extremely lucrative slide into the artistic irrelevance of an oldies act. They've been in that same rut ever since.
Understand that this does nothing to diminish the legacy of what came before that. The Stones hit peaks as high as anyone else in the rock 'n' roll pantheon during the 1960s and '70s. But it's been 24 years since the last arguably great Stones album (1981's "Tattoo You") and even longer since the last inarguably great one (1978's "Some Girls"). Yet every couple of years, they fire up the touring machine for another round of high-priced roadwork as "The Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World." The media dutifully play along with fawning coverage, and the public snaps up the obscenely expensive tickets because, you know, this might be the last time.
By now, the Stones might be the most perfectly symbolic baby-boom icon left. Grandiose, self-satisfied, coasting on the fumes of past glories while pretending their present still matters and sucking up lots more resources than they should, they're the musical equivalent of a tricked-out Hummer SUV -- a garish display of conspicuous consumption. They're less a band than a tourist attraction. Going to their show is like visiting Graceland or the Taj Mahal, something to do while you still can (if you can afford it, of course).
This has nothing to do with age. Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Van Morrison, among other peers, have all maintained a healthy amount of artistic vitality into a ripe old age. And it's not that the Stones' last 22 years' worth of new music is completely without merit. Every Stones album has its moments, even stink bombs like 1997's "Bridges to Babylon," and this year's "A Bigger Bang" is actually pretty decent.
But even "A Bigger Bang" adds nothing to the Stones' legacy. Indeed, the most notable Stones performance of recent years wasn't even by the Stones themselves. Johnny Depp's performance as Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean," playing a pirate modeled on Keith Richards' wiseacre swagger, was positively inspired. As for the Stones' last 22 years of new music, it might as well have never existed at all even though every album was lavishly, reflexively praised at the time as "their best since 'Exile on Main Street.'"
Two certainties in life are that Rolling Stone magazine will give every new Rolling Stones album at least four stars and that nobody will still be listening to said album a year later. Returning to our tourist-attraction analogy, those albums are souvenirs of the tours they accompanied, with a shelf life not much longer than your tickets to the show. Honestly, when the Stones roll into Durham on Saturday, will you be just dying to hear anything off of 1994's "Voodoo Lounge"? Or 1989's "Steel Wheels"?
No doubt, the show will be highly professional, entertaining and lots of fun, even though most of the memorable moments will be songs that are at least 25 years old. There's nothing wrong with that, of course.
But let's not make this out to be more than it is: pure and simple nostalgia for the way they used to be -- and the way we used to be.
Staff writer David Menconi can be reached at 829-4759, http://blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or [email protected].
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If You Go
WHAT The Rolling Stones.
WHERE Wallace Wade Stadium at Duke University, Durham.
WHEN Doors open at 5 p.m. Saturday. Trey Anastasio plays at 7 p.m. The Stones play at 8:30 p.m.
TICKETS Available at press time for $60, $95, $160 and $350. Contact Ticketmaster at 834-4000, www.ticketmaster.com.
If You're Going
PARKING A space in one of a dozen Duke lots will cost $15; follow the signs on campus. About 1,300 off-campus parking spaces will be available at the American Tobacco Historic District's north parking deck downtown off Pettigrew Street north of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park for $12, cash only.
Shuttle buses will be free from the American Tobacco lot and Duke's parking garage III; elsewhere, the ride will cost $5. Bus service will run from 4:30 p.m. until two hours after the concert.
ONLINE Detailed parking and stadium info: http://aux03.auxserv.duke.edu/ parking/rollingstones.
AVOID THE CRUSH Arrive early -- Duke parking lots will open as early as 2 p.m. Last-minute arrivals should allow at least 15 minutes to walk from designated campus lots to the stadium. A food court and the area around the stadium will open at 2 p.m.
[Edited by Gazza] |
| October 3rd, 2005 10:31 AM |
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| corgi37 |
And whats the bet David Menconi has a free ticket!!! |
| October 3rd, 2005 07:17 PM |
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| Soldatti |
Very true points of view, both. |
| October 4th, 2005 12:04 AM |
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| Bloozehound |
the both make solid points.... |
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