The Rolling Stones Have Been (Mostly) Great For 60 Years
Over the past few weeks, my social feeds have been filled with friends flipping out over how great the Rolling Stones’ concerts have been. My posts have been among them. I went to see them – will it be the last time? – recently at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
I’ve seen almost every Stones tour at least once since having my mind blown by them in October of 1989 at New York’s Shea Stadium on the Steel Wheels tour. I remember that even that tour felt like a gift of sorts. And it seemed worth the admission price. Hey, $30 was a lot for a concert ticket at the time! But it was their first tour since 1981, and we felt it might be their last. They didn’t tour for 1983’s Undercover, and they didn’t tour for 1986’s Dirty Work, which is their weakest album. Were they circling the drain? Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were both doing solo albums by then, and most fans were aware that the Glimmer Twins weren’t getting along. Keith’s 1988 solo debut, the excellent Talk Is Cheap, felt like a huge shot at Mick. The music was unapologetically Stonesy, as opposed to Mick’s records, which clearly eyed the latest trends and the pop charts. And the lyrics to songs like “Take It So Hard,” “I Could Have Stood You Up,” and – ouch! — “You Don’t Move Me” pulled no punches.
1989’s Steel Wheels was an exciting return to form, but could the band hold it together much longer? How could they? Mick was 46, and Keith was 45! Who’d ever heard of a rock band still making records and touring in their 50s? In a Rolling Stone feature that year, David Fricke wrote, “Richards is confident that Steel Wheels and the fall tour constitute a second chance for the Stones, not a swan song.” The feature ended with a quote by Keith, saying with his characteristic swagger, “This is the beginning of the second half.”
That sounded like an insane claim. It wasn’t the first or last time that Richards and the Stones have defied the odds. And hey: he turned out to be right… sort of. It turns out, they weren’t even at the halfway point. The Rolling Stones formed in 1962; in 1989, the band was twenty-seven years old. That was thirty-five years ago. Fun fact: Andrew Watt, who produced their excellent new album, Hackney Diamonds, wasn’t even born at the time: his date of birth is October 20, 1990.
The Stones’ “second half,” admittedly, hasn’t been as good as the first half. Their four-album streak of Beggars Banquet (1968), Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile on Main St. (1972) is pretty unbeatable. And that era also had Some Girls (1978), not to mention their early albums on London Records (including their debut, England’s Newest Hit Makers, which just turned 60!).
But the band’s output since ‘89 has been unreasonably and unnecessarily good – we say “unnecessarily” because people will pay tons of money to see the Stones regardless of their new music. The Stones know this. They have nothing to prove. But they’ve consistently been cranking out great jams: “Mixed Emotions” (which is being used in the new trailer for The Bear), “Sad Sad Sad,” “Almost Hear You Sigh,” “Love Is Strong,” “Saint of Me,” “Out Of Control,” “Stealing My Heart,” “Rough Justice,” “Laugh, I Nearly Died,” “Oh No, Not You Again,” “Doom and Gloom” (used in a little film called Avengers: Endgame) and “One More Shot.” Even the songs that Keith sang during that era would make a solid greatest hits EP: “Slipping Away,” “The Worst,” “Thru and Thru,” “You Don’t Have To Mean It,” “Thief In The Night,” “How Can I Stop,” “Losing My Touch,” “This Place Is Empty,” “Infamy.” And what rock and roll album in 2023 had as much swagger and was as much fun as Hackney Diamonds?
Of course, when you have great producers like Andrew Watt or Don Was, you will get great performances on tape. But what does it sound like when a rock and roll band led by two octogenarians (Ronnie Wood, the new kid in the band, is a mere septuagenarian) hits the stage for two hours?
I’m here to tell you that, in this case, it sounds (and looks) like the great rock and roll band I’ve loved for decades. I never thought I’d see the Stones without Charlie Watts behind the kit; I believe Mick and Keith always felt that when Charlie said it was over, it would be over. But Charlie started ailing as shows were on the books: the crew and musicians stood to lose money if the gigs were canceled. He suggested that Steve Jordan fill in, decades after he suggested Jordan to Keith Richards for the guitarist’s solo project.
Jordan does an incredible job filling some big (and dapper) shoes. He deserves some credit, as do the other musicians that accompany Mick, Keith and Ronnie: notably bass player Daryl Jones and singer Chanel Haynes. (Haynes is so great that we nearly forgot who sang on “Sweet Sounds of Heaven” on Hackney Diamonds; the live version is better).
But we know that it all comes down to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood. Keith and Ronnie, as ever, seem to have a telepathic connection and still seem to take delight in every riff and solo. And Mick Jagger? He’s a force of nature. The man clearly is focused on being the best frontman in music, no matter what decade it is. From the way he maintains his voice to his physical fitness to every last detail of every Stones concert, he wants to blow your mind. As far as I’m concerned: mission accomplished.
