| October 24th, 2005 06:22 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
The Stones keep rocking ... until they're nailed under the boardwalk for good
October 24, 2005
Cape Times
By Michael Stent
The Rolling Stones have reached a certain age and are getting older. We've known it for some time. The physical evidence is overwhelming. Their faces show lives exuberantly and extravagantly lived. That they've made it this far might seem a miracle.
Now, though, they have taken one more faltering step towards the inevitable. The Sun newspaper has reported that they will have a defibrillator backstage on their next tour. The Sun, of course, is known to be scrupulous in its presentation of facts.
A spokesman for the band said he had never seen a defibrillator backstage, which rather backs up the report. There is a subtle difference between the existence of a defibrillator backstage and seeing the machine. Just because one doesn't see atoms, doesn't mean they are not there. The spokesman captured this subtle nuance, which is why he represents a great rock band and makes the big bucks.
For those six readers who haven't watched E or similar hospital series, and are not doctors or nurses, a defibrillator is used to shock a delinquent heart back into a regular rhythm. It is the device which makes the patient writhe on the trolley while the doctors mutter medical incantations and frown. Some might think Mick Jagger is already attached to one while on stage.
This new addition to the roadies' burden does suggest prudence, an attribute one does not always associate with the Stones. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are 62, and Charlie Watts is 64. Only Ron Wood has yet to pass 60 and he has less than two years to go.
The Sun's report, though, did say it was their managers who had insisted on the defibrillator. Prudence on their part is thoroughly understandable. It would surely grieve them if one of their charges were to stop rocking and instead be inclined to start to shuffle off this mortal coil while performing, and if help were not immediately at hand. A good percentage of an extremely large income requires the best medical care.
That the Stones (or their minders) are acknowledging the perils that come with age is no bad thing. They have been going, and going hard, for more than 40 years and bodies do wilt.
Age is like failure. It will happen, but how one reacts to it is what matters.
One can curl up and wait for the worst, for the joints to stiffen and the mind to drift, or one can take that failing body into another battle, another challenge, another world tour - even if you have to have a defibrillator at hand.
Take the Stones, for example (although they would not be the role models of choice for most parents). They are all fabulously wealthy and certainly do not need to subject themselves to the rigours of a world tour to pay the rent. They could quite easily pop on the carpet slippers and lead lives of perfectly satisfactory indolence and fading celebrity.
They choose rather to carry on rocking. Retirement, tending the roses and sweet peas and recollecting all those good times gone by before quietly embracing death, is not their choice.
In a way, it is similar to those women and men who choose cosmetic surgery to try to keep the destructive hand of time from touching their bodies. They are saying that age might be inevitable, but its effects are not.
Too bad that the surgery tends to make them look like refugees from a wind tunnel who have been punched in the mouth. The results might be shoddy, but the effort is properly heroic.
Of course, Mick Jagger and the lads don't appear to have submitted to the scalpel and botox. Their well-travelled faces have been allowed to capture all the phrases and paragraphs and chapters of lives, if not lived well by a moralist's account, at least lived fully.
And that full life rocks and rockets on, defibrillator and all. Their tour will surely produce great concerts and better parties. There might well be lurid reports of the Stones behaving like, well, the Stones.
Their audiences might comprise men whose hippie tresses have lapsed into baldness and women who have swopped beads for diamonds. They might be executives, lawyers, doctors and even a few journalists, if they can afford the tickets.
But what the hell. Life's game ain't over until the skinny dude with the thick lips stops singing.
Stent is a freelance journalist. |
| October 24th, 2005 07:13 AM |
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| Jumacfly |
thanks TTM for this article...I wonder what will be next Sun's scoop....may be we should send them the famous RO crack pipe 
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| October 24th, 2005 09:07 AM |
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| corgi37 |
If they do retire, i want Keith and Mick to open a corner shop like on the tv show "Stella Street".
I love that show. I watched about 1/3 of the movie version last week, but had to go out. Funny shit!! |
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