Posted on 07/24/2012 5:11:25 PM PDT by mojito
So it’s official: The Rolling Bones – I mean, Stones — have turned 50. Can 50 really be so bad? Well, that all depends on who you are. To celebrate the “50th Anniversary” of the Rolling Stones, as the media have cautiously been doing, is really just a polite way of saying that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards & co. will turn 70 next year. And 70, in the context of “the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band,” sounds deadly. Grotesque. A car-crash you not only don’t want to rubberneck, you want to turn around and drive away from it at maximum speed in the opposite direction.
You can chalk that reaction up to the Stones having once been global ambassadors for youth culture. It’s also an unfortunate side-effect of the historical resilience of their uniquely powerful, raunchy, amoral, decadent, sex-drenched aura. While their fellow ’60’s idol, Bob Dylan, embraced geezerhood and mortality a good 20 years ago, wrapping it around himself in song after song, sucking it into his eyes and flesh as if to conquer it before it conquers him, no rockers have been as successful as the Stones at deflecting attention from just how old they are, and how old they have been, for so long. And now this “50th Anniversary” thing turns up like the Grim Reaper in a smiley mask to strip away the last vestiges of pretence. For the Stones, to cite the beautiful opening line of “As Tears Go By” (allegedly the first song Jagger and Richards wrote together), “It” (finally!) – “is the evening of the day.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
70 is the new 40.
Over-rated . Haven’t put out a great album in over 3 decades .
What a drag it is getting old.
Saw ‘em at NCSU, Carter-Findlay Stadium.
65,000 person sing-along with Mick.
He started “Sympathy for the Devil” standing on the top of the entire stage, up on the girders where the lights are all attached...
Saw them on the Steel Wheels Tour, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
Just saw the magazine today at a store...noticed the Stones on the cover and thought, they don’t look so bad for age 70+.
Then I realized how old the photo was.
The Beatles were smart, they picked the right time to quit.
Last good thing they did was “Some Girls” way back in 1978.
Since then, they’ve been the World’s Best Nostalgia Band. The kind of band where when they say, “And now here’s a song from our new album”, the beer line rapidly expands to a half a mile.
That’s the album I was thinking of .
Yup....they lost their fastball a long time ago.
What band wouldn't over the course of a 50 year career?
The Rolling Stones: Phoning it in since 1974.
These guys are older now than ancient figures from the 1920s were when they started — a lot older than the “older generation” of their day. But at least they weren’t the ones who sang “I hope I die before I get old.” Those guys are still around, too.
/like
Saw that show in Buffalo, Mick couldn’t sing and Keith was well, you know......Keith.
Well, they seem to have lost it when they were still thirty-something rockers back in the 1970s. They had a short prime, but they did some great stuff....Ill give them that. Everyone’s different. Look at Van Morrison: guy never lost it.
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