The Rolling Stones performing in 2019
Photo Credit: Taylor Hill/Getty Images
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“If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.”
― James A. Garfield, 20th U.S. President
The Rolling Stones, the ageless English rock band, and once considered the greatest rock n’ roll band in the world, are set to embark on a 15-city North American tour beginning May 8 in San Diego and ending July 9 in Atlanta.
They’ll be performing at First Energy Stadium (the home of the Cleveland Browns) on June 19.
I recall, vividly, telling someone I worked with at The Plain Dealer 26 years ago (1994) that the Rolling Stones were on their last leg.
Here we are in 2020 and they're still kicking.
The last time they performed in Northeast Ohio was 18 years ago.
The Stones have been rocking for 58 years. Their first paid gig was at the Marquee Club in London on July 12, 1962, when the band consisted of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, Dick Taylor, and Mick Avory.
Only the animated Jagger, the bands frontman and Richards, a blues rhythm guitarist (both 76 years old) are the original members still plying their trade well into the 21st century. Charlie Watts replaced Mick Avery on drums in January, 1963 and guitarist Ronnie Wood became an official member of the Rolling Stones in February, 1976.
One lingering question that members of the iconic band have had to confront for almost 40 years now is whether they’re too old to be performing. Their age factor has become even more pronounced now that the band members are well into their 70s, when others their age might be limited to watering plants or confined to an assisted living facility.
With lucrative corporate sponsorships fueling their tours, the Stones are bringing in buckets of hard cash, performing usually in front of packed stadiums, with fans all too willing to plunk down $500-$700 a ticket.
Just last year, for example, the Stones performed at 17 shows in the United States, grossing $177.8 million. Many argue the Stones are well beyond being just a rock n’ roll band, they’re a profitable corporation, and have been for a number of years.
Victor Coelho and John Covach, editors of “The Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones,” point out that promoters are guaranteeing “enormous artist fees in return for revenue streams from licensing and the sale of official merchandise – not just T-shirts and tour posters, but intimate apparel, high-end Globetrotter luggage, and even a franchise of the Trivial Pursuit Collector’s Edition board game.”
In 2002, Money Magazine reported that since 1989, the Rolling Stones had generated more than $1.5 billion in gross revenues, including sales of records, song rights, merchandising, sponsorship money, and touring--enabling them to make more money than U2, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, or Britney Spears.
So, the question is, are the Stones still about rock n’ roll or is it more about a big fat payday?
Dave Bauder, television and music critic for the Associated Press, says he gives the Stones heaps of credit “for staying in shape, keeping up their chops and delivering shows that are satisfying to their fans. They perform the hits and do some deep dives into their catalog to keep things fresh. That’s no small thing. If they mailed it in, they wouldn’t be playing stadiums anymore.”
“I am romantic or naive enough to believe they really do it for the love of the music,’’ Glenn Gass, Professor of Music at Indiana University told me. “Their legacy, their addiction to having an audience, the sense of purpose everyone needs in life. What else would Keith Richards do?”
Gass additionally points out the Stones have other contemporaries who don’t let wrinkled skin push them to the exit door. Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and Fleetwood Mac, among others, are prime examples.
“I think they love their band and their songs and the thrill of each show,” Gass said. “I think I would enjoy playing “Start Me Up” when I was 80! especially if I could do it in a stadium full of excited fans. And I think they view it as a life’s work, not finished until they are, like Muddy Waters and their other blues heroes and role models. I’m sure they would not do it if they were not getting paid, but I really don’t think money is the real draw. Asking why the Stones keep playing is sort of like why asking why Stravinsky kept composing until he was 90, or Picasso kept painting.”
Jack Hamilton, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and author of “Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination” also subscribes to the opinion that rock n’ roll still courses through the Stones veins, even at their advanced age.
“I think they seem to genuinely like touring,’’ Hamilton observes. “I’m sure the money plays a part in that. In Keith Richards’ autobiography he definitely gives the sense that he still just loves playing music and wouldn’t know what to do if he retires. In terms of performance level, I don’t think they’re what they were at their absolute peak but it seems like their fans still enjoy it, given the amount of money they are making.”
“Time is not on the Stones’ side: for all the loyalty they have gained since the 1960’s, they’re not immune to anti-incumbent fervor, especially when they pretend to have nothing more on their minds than sexual prowess,” New York Times music critic Jon Pareles wrote on August 3, 1994 , in his lukewarm review of the band’s first tour since 1990 at RFK Stadium in Washington D.C.
Mick Jagger was confronted with the question whether he (and the Stones) are too old to play as far back as 1981. When told by a New York Times reporter that many believe the Stones are “too old to rock and roll,” Jagger shot back that such a ludicrous observation is a “bunch of rubbish.” “I’m sure we’ll be carrying on for years; it’s quite easy to,” Jagger told the New York Times. “People think that because you’re white and it’s rock and roll, somehow it’s different. But all the performers I love and admire, who are mostly black, went on until they literally died,” citing Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne. “Sometimes they weren’t very beautiful dying, but a lot of them had health problems that I’m not going to have because I didn’t grow up in poverty the way they did. I can’t foresee the Stones breaking up in the foreseeable future.”
Journalist and author Bob Spitz, writing for the New York Times in 1989, asked Keith Richards if he’s ever “considered whether the Rolling Stones might, in the near future, find it more prudent to retire than lapse into self-parody.” The iconic Rolling Stones guitarist was quick to shoot down such a suggestion. “Look around,” Richards told Spitz, “and you’ll see that there’s very little out there with our feel for the music. Nobody cooks. Today, everything is computerized. The kids think it’s O.K. to sit in a little room by themselves and push buttons to get Boom-PAH. But their music’s not going to go anywhere except for that. “There are absolutely no dynamics involved, no feeling, no passion, Richards explained. “You can’t get those things out of a machine.”
The fact that the Rolling Stones are still together and still performing at such a high level (by anyone’s standards) well into the 21st century is amazing in itself. Their journey from 1962 through 2020 has been filled with mines and traps, to be sure, they stumbled along the way in certain periods of their career--but they always managed to pick themselves up, regroup, and keep plowing forward.
The Rolling Stones are shown during rehearsal on April 8, 1964 at an unknown location. The British band members, from left, are, Brian Jones, guitar; Bill Wyman, bass; Charlie Watts, drums; Mick Jagger, vocals; and Keith Richards, guitar.
Photo Credit: Associated Press
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There first steps on American soil wasn’t a pleasant one.
In giving readers a taste of the types of reviews the Stones received in 1964 during their first American tour, Jack Hamilton, writing for Slate Magazine wrote, “huge swaths of American coverage focused on their physical appearance, particularly their hair. The Los Angeles Times compared the band to cavemen, chimpanzees, and “very ugly Radcliffe girls.” The New York Times ran two lengthy articles on “androgynous” hairstyles and reported that Cleveland, citing destructive effects on “the community’s culture,” would soon prohibit rock-and-roll performances at that city’s Public Hall.”
Similarly, in 1964, Hamilton noted that the Chicago Tribune greeted the British rockers with a chilly welcoming, which read: “Thank you, Rolling Stones. You have been able to convince the world that no one, not even the Beatles, could be more repulsive than you.”
To fully appreciate the Rolling Stones, it’s fascinating to look at how they evolved over almost six decades.
After a string of pop hits in the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones, musically, reached a major turning point in the release of the song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash" in 1968, with its inflection of Delta Blues. It was at this point when music critics contend that Keith Richards began to take over the sound of the band.
About the same time as “Jumpin Jack Flash” the band was struggling, mightily, keeping band member, Brian Jones, knee-deep in drug addictions and arrests in the fold. The band was left with little choice but to fire him (June 8, 1969), from a band, ironically enough, he created. Jones drowned in his pool less than a month later.
Many observed that as the Stones segued from rhythm and blues toward a more rock and roll sound, Jones felt he lost control of his band. In 1968, the Stones hired a new producer from the United States: Jimmy Miller who began to give the band a more trans-Atlantic sound.
Jones quick replacement was Mick Taylor, a young talented blues guitarist. Music historians assert that the addition of Taylor brought the Stones “level of musicianship up a few notches until he quit in 1975,’’ and musically ushered in a period when the Stones had never been stronger. The addition of Taylor gave the Stones their first “true lead guitarist.”
Taylor left the Stones in 1975.
The 1980s would mark a decade when the Stones would barely be seen at all; except briefly for tours in 1981 and then eight years later, in 1989.
It was during this decade that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were at each other’s throats for control of the band. And it was also during this period, when members of the band ventured out with brief solo projects, including Jagger and Richards.
Their induction into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, according to music historians, brought the Stones back into relevancy, which coincided with the history of rock n’ roll becoming part of many curriculums at American colleges.
With the release of the album “Steel Wheels,” in 1989, the Rolling Stones acquired a sharper understanding of the economics of the music industry and the public’s insatiable thirst for classic rock and roll bands.
That’s when the Stones developed a lucrative business model with the hiring of Canadian promoter Michael Cohl, who according to The Guardian came up with a new strategy: central booking. “He offered a set fee for the Steel Wheels tour to the band, then booked every show himself, cutting out local promoters. He also upped the merchandise operation, sought corporate sponsors and maximized every revenue stream a tour could offer.”
Additionally, an essential ingredient of the Rolling Stones appeal over the last few decades centers on their global outreach.
According to Victor Anand Coelho, Professor Music at Boston University, “The last few years saw the Stones playing to a million fans in Brazil; and a history making show in Cuba, marking a cultural breakthrough, not just a concert.” “The upcoming tour,” Coelho explained, “is carefully planned to include cities that have been missed on previous tours, or as with the case of Cleveland, where the Stones have not appeared for over two decades.”
Further describing the staying power of the Stones, Coelho expressed to me that “while fans will not hear the long searing solos of the Mick Taylor period, the interplay between Richards and Wood continues to be tight and inventive, and Jagger and the rest of the band are in excellent shape physically.”
Imagine, in just a couple of months, the original bad boys of rock will be exploring the highways and byways of North America with its bouncy frontman, Mick Jagger, (fully recovered from a heart valve replacement) brandishing his signature rolling of his shoulders, wagging his finger, throwing off his clothes, and clapping his hands high over his head, only four years shy of his 80th birthday.
Only in America!
--Bill Lucey
March 8, 2020
Rolling Stones Fast Facts
- Many claim the formation of the Rolling Stones can be traced back to 1949 when Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, both from Dartford, England, went to school together.
- The band was originally called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. It was Brian Jones, the band’s lead guitarist, who came up with “Rollin’ Stones” in tribute to a Muddy Waters song by the same name. The Stones manager subsequently convinced them to call themselves, “The Rolling Stones,” adding a “g” at the end of Rollin.
- June 7, 1963: First single, “Come On’’ (a Chuck Berry song) released in England.
- The 1963 single, “I Wanna Be Your Man” was written for the Stones by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
- March 6, 1964: First U.S. single, “Not Fade Away’’ (a Buddy Holly song) released.
- June 5, 1964, first U.S. tour, kicked off in San Bernardino, California.
- October 25, 1964: First appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
- In the summer of 1965, recorded a worldwide Number 1 smash hit, "Satisfaction."
- In 1967, Allen Klein replaced Andrew Loog Oldham as the new manager of the Stones.
- Keith Richards threw an acid party at his Redlands estate (country house in West Wittering) on February 12, 1967. The police were tipped off there was drugs at the house, including acid. Richards and Jagger were arrested for possession of drugs.
- June 13, 1969: Mick Taylor introduced as the newest member of the Rolling Stones.
- The Stones stopped touring for a long stretch after the tragic free concert at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, (December 6, 1969) where four people died; a disastrous night, when the Stones foolishly hired members of the Hells Angels (motorcycle club) as bodyguards.
- Due to crippling taxes in the U.K., The Stones moved to the South of France in 1971.
- In 1971, formed their own label, Rolling Stones Records.
- March 26, 1971: Unveil their new logo, officially called “Tongue and Lips,” designed by artist John Pasche in 1969 after Mick Jagger approached the Royal College of Art. The original artwork resides at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
- February 28, 1976: Ronnie Wood announced as an official member of the Rolling Stones.
- During the bands 1981 tour, it was the first time they embraced a corporate sponsor. The fragrance maker, Jovan, reportedly paid one million dollars to have their name associated with the tour.
- Movie director Martin Scorsese has used “Gimme Shelter’’ in four of his films.
- Inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
- First concert over the Internet came in 1994.
- The Stones 1994 world tour set records, bringing in more than $300 million.
- Mick Jagger was knighted in 2003-he is known as Sir Michael Philip Jagger
- Current ages of the Rolling Stones: Mick Jagger, 76, lead guitarist Keith Richards, 76, guitarist Ronnie Wood, 72, and drummer Charlie Watts, 78.
--Researched and Compiled by Bill Lucey
Source: The Rolling Stones." Encyclopedia of World Biography, “The Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Rock” by Howard Kramer; “101 Amazing Rolling Stones Facts” by Jack Goldstein; “The Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones,” by Victor Coelho (Editor).
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