They’re always playing ‘START ME UP’ somewhere …

Being a fan of old-style Rhythm & Blues – rather than the modern hip-hop variety – I’ve been a fan/follower of the Rolling Stones down the ages ever since they first crossed my radar, probably at some point in 1963 a few weeks or months after the Beatles.

I won’t provide here a summary of their career, or a list of about the four or five occasions that I’ve actually seen them in concert, or an anorak-style detailed statement of how they’ve shaped my life (or indeed vice versa) down the decades. Far better men than me have written millions of words upon their lifestyles, their music, their importance, their influences and indeed who in turn they’ve influenced.

I’d just say that Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile On Main Street (1972) are two of classic rock music’s greatest-ever achievements and that by choice, if ever I was about to be left upon a desert island, or even in the unlikely event I was ever a guest on Desert Island Discs – that the latter (a double album) would be one of the items that I’d take with me.

Over time they’ve progressed from devils-incarnate pariahs (as far as middle England was concerned); to admired musicians; to ‘past it’ dinosaurs; then totally irrelevant ‘past it’ dinosaurs; to, finally, ‘national treasures’ in the Noughties.

Here in 2016, with now – if I can count – three successive generations united only in perhaps one opinion, i.e. that they’re not quite sure whether the Stones are still ‘The Greatest Rock Band in The World’ or just a bunch of old geezers still trading on their myth, still somehow persuading people to part with hard-earned money to listen/watch them peddling music they originally wrote fifty years ago. Can anyone name a track they’ve composed since 2000 that is worth listening to? I can’t.

I have a confession to make. About two months ago, when its launch was first announced in the media – and after I had also learned what an Amazon ‘pre-order’ was – I ‘pre-ordered’ a copy of the Rolling Stones forthcoming new album Blue & Lonesome which is due out in December.

Like many people of a certain age, I very rarely listen to music at all these days but occasionally catch snatches of what passes for ‘the latest’ on TV magazine shows or radio programmes and instantly forget it, whilst simultaneously in a vague fashion waiting for notifications of new releases by any of the artistes or bands that I used to follow to one degree or another forty years ago – this in the vain hope that (against all logic and expectation) that it might somehow match the creativity and excitement-factor of their ‘classic’ period.

Two points on this: (1) invariably, you have to wait a long time – sometimes decades – for any such new release to come along; and (2) when they do, inevitably, there’s a 99% chance that they’re going to be rubbish, i.e. played once (sometimes only two or three tracks!) and then put in the back on your wardrobe along with all the other crap CDs you’ve bought since 1990.

But there’s always hope.

And in the Rolling Stones’ case, this latest release is at least to be an album of Blues and R & B covers – and they always played a mean set of those – recorded in simple circumstances, as in playing ‘live’ together in one room, rather than recording their instruments, sterilised and  separately, upon hundreds of over-dubbing tracks later put together in the master editing suite.

Anyway, here’s the first review of the new album that I’ve spotted, by Neil McCormick, music critic of the Daily Telegraph, and thankfully it prompts a sense of slight optimism – see here – BLUE AND LONESOME

Last night I completed watching my recorded version of Saturday night’s Channel Four late night (well 11.00pm) transmission of The Rolling Stones: Ole! Ole! Ole! A Trip Across Latin America, a documentary following their 2015/2016 series of gigs in that continent, culminating in a free concert attended by over 300,000 people in Cuba.

I found it fascinating on several counts. Firstly, because the Rolling Stones – against all the odds, given their well-known self-destructive tendencies – have somehow managed to keep doing what they were doing in their early twenties now into their seventies. Is this the result of them simply refusing to (as the rest of us undoubtedly had to) grow up and get proper jobs and then being lucky – or it is a case of great musicians capturing the hearts of the public in a way that few ordinary folk could ever understand and then simply sticking resolutely to their rock and roll principles when most others were gradually selling out, as is the sad lot of the vast bulk of the global human population?

I suppose the answer is probably a bit of both.

What came home to me with bells on from this documentary was that – whatever we think of the Rolling Stones in the UK – to be frank, it doesn’t matter.

What became evident from seeing the people of Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and (eventually) Cuba – after President Obama and the Pope had done their level best to kybosh the Stones’ plans to play there by arriving themselves (Obama) or calling for them to be banned from playing on Good Friday as had been agreed (the Pope) – is that – at least in South America – the Stones are the equivalent of Gods visiting from planet Mars.

For the downtrodden of that continent, beset for decades by violent and oppressive dictatorships who banned their music, devotion to the Rolling Stones was a symbol of defiance, the quest for democratic freedoms, and simply ‘the right to do your own thing’. To be able to see them in the flesh was the equivalent of being in the presence of Napoleon, or Alexander The Great, or (dare I say it) a group of Jesus Christ and his disciples.

For ‘the Rollingas’ of South America (devoted followers of the band), the Rolling Stones are a combination of religious and political leaders. After touring there, the boys (Mick, Keef, Ron and Charlie) must find it somewhat strange to come home to the UK and return to being regarded as quaint relics of the past. Doesn’t it say in the Bible “A prophet is never recognised in his own home town …”? Out in Rio and beyond the Rolling Stones could start a revolution and probably overthrow five governments in a fortnight if they just flicked a finger.

Here’s an extract of them playing that free concert in Havana on 25th March 2106 – BROWN SUGAR