God Bless the Glimmer Twins

A nice anniversary last week – 50 years since the Rolling Stones played their first gig at the Marquee Club in London.  50 years!  No other band from those days is still around, alive and kicking, even if a little ragged around the edges.  It’s a quite extraordinary achievement, given the lifestyle they’ve led this half century.

I salute them.

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I can still remember the first time I saw them on Top of the Pops.

I was 9 at the time, I guess, or 10, and up until then my music had been provided by my elder sister’s tastes – which was basically Cliff, Cliff, more Cliff, a bit of Adam Faith, maybe a Marty Wilde or two….oh, and yet more Cliff.  That and Two Way Family Favourites on a Sunday lunchtime, which was all Glen Miller, Frank Sinatra (nothing wrong with either of them, mind you….), and novelty stuff like “The Laughing Policeman”.  Oh, and Cliff……  So crap, basically.

The Stones even then had a reputation of being wild and hedonistic.  You have to remember that in the early 60s artistes were still expected to be well groomed on stage: matching suits and ties, neatly combed and Brilliantine’d hair, and saccharine smiles.  If they could master little carefully choreographed dance steps (usually one forward, one or two to the left (or right), one back and then another two to the right (or left) so they ended up where they started from, like the Shadows were really good at), then so much the better.

So these guys from South London, as they were billed, who didn’t wear matching suits, sometimes didn’t wear ties, didn’t apply buckets of grease to their (longer than normal) hair and – in Keef’s case, horror of horrors! – had a bit of acne…..well, they were instantly disliked by mums and dads across the country.  And of course loved by us kids….nothing like a bit of youthful rebellion.

Anyhow, they were on TOTP, singing their first hit record, the old Chuck Berry song “Come On”.  Mick Jagger, I remember, wore a roll necked jumper – no idea what colour as we still had a black and white tv – and manically shook a pair of maracas while bawling into the mike and stamping one foot roughly in time to the music.  Keef was glowering at the camera, Bill Wyman held his bass vertically instead of slung across his belly, and looked bored, as did Charlie Watts on drums.  Brian Jones looked absolutely stoned, smiling angelically at the camera every time it was pointed in his direction, his face framed by long blond hair (at least to his collar).  It was totally unlike anything I had seen before on 6-5 Special or Ready Steady Go! (or TOTP for that matter) and was the absolute dog’s bollocks.  Love at first sight.  My mum, God rest her soul, rather spoilt it all by laughing long and loud at Mick’s “rubber lips” and saying over and over again how ugly and dirty they all were.   But her view was no different to every other parent, I suppose.  My dad shook his head sadly, as if to say “and to think I fought a war for you lot…..”  My sister liked them, I think, as she was tapping her foot to the beat, but still laughed and agreed with my mum and dad…..it wasn’t Cliff, after all.

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The Beatles came out at around the same time, and were always in marked contrast to the Stones.  For one thing, they toed the corporate line and wore the matching suits and ties, and had relatively tidy – though still longer than normal – hair.  Mums and dads loved them – as did we young ‘uns, because their music too was unlike anything that had gone before.  But there was no getting away from it – they were the kids from the nice neighbourhood, whereas the Stones were the scruffs from the local council estate.  Interestingly, the reverse was true: the Beatles came from the generally poorer parts of Liverpool that in years to come would be riven by civil unrest and unemployment as the docks closed down, while Mick and Keef came from relatively well to do parts of Dartford and Wilmington – Mick’s dad was a school headmaster, a nice cosy middle class occupation – and both went to better schools (Dartford Grammar and Wilmington Tech respectively) than any of the Beatles had been to in their childhood.  Brian Jones went to a private school in Bath, and both Charlie and Bill had had decent education too.

What made the Stones different, from the wrong side of tracks, was that their music was an Anglicized (but definitely not sanitized) version of rhythm and blues – American black music.  While the Beatles were churning out wonderful two minute pop songs like She Loves You and I Wanna Hold Your Hand,  Mick was bawling Let’s Spend the Night Together and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.  The contrast was sharp and obvious.  It was there throughout their respective careers.  Even as they grew musically and became leaders of the psychodelic movement, the Beatles still had a tendency to release sugary sweet or novelty songs (When I’m 64, Octopuses Garden) alongside Lennon’s meatier output (Revolution, Twist and Shout) – whereas the Stones continued their own dirty way – Brown Sugar, Street Fighting Man and especially the wonderful Sympathy for the Devil.   And so parents tended still to prefer the Beatles, and their offspring tended to prefer the Stones – certainly that’s how it was in my family, and those of all my mates too.

The Beatles of course imploded finally, in a welter of drugs and litigation, all very sad, and went their separate ways, leaving a brilliant and game changing back catalogue of songs and the lesson that any group of kids could really get together, learn to play a few instruments (not necessarily well), and make a shedload of money – just ask Noel Gallagher.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that any “pop group” from about 1964 on owes them a debt of gratitude for showing them the way.

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Meanwhile, the Stones trod their own path.  There were more drugs, more sex, more of everything, and it made no difference.  They were arrested and taken to court for pissing up against a garage wall – cue public outrage.  There were more court cases for possession and smoking of cannabis.  More outrage.  There was a spectacular drug raid on Keef’s country mansion, where a naked Marianne Faithful (Mick’s then girlfriend) was allegedly pleasuring herself with a Mars Bar – years later she reportedly denied it, and insisted it was actually a Crunchie bar.  Brian Jones died in his swimming pool, drowning under the influence of various toxic substances.  Mick and Keef were continually in and out of detox clinics, trying to kick heroin and cocaine addictions with varying degrees of success.  Bill was accused of having sex with an underage girl, and didn’t help his cause by claiming he’d actually slept with “thousands”.  It was all riveting stuff, and the music really didn’t suffer while all this was going on……they churned out brilliant album after brilliant album, each seemingly better than the last.

Brian died and was replaced by Mick Taylor, a respected blues guitarist, but surprisingly he didn’t fit in with the rest of them and quit a year and an album later.  Ronnie Wood joined, fresh from an all too briefly successful career with the brilliant Faces, who themselves collapsed when Rod Stewart simultaneously left to find world-wide fame and fortune as a solo artist (personally I think his Faces days produced by far and away the best music of his career).  Bill just got bored and left, married, divorced, re-married again (this time to a girl 30 years younger – more outrage!) and divorced again, and devoted his time, musically at least, to occasional albums and tours with Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, a pick-up band of session musicians and old mates who fancied a few gigs now and then – and very good they are too.

The Stones tours got bigger and more outrageous, lasting for years at a time, and printing money faster than even Keef’s drug habit could spend it.  At times it became parody, especially in the later years, as their 50s approached.  But they got a second wind, went back to their roots and picked it up again with the epic Steel Wheels and Bigger Bang tours – global tours that outgrossed very other act doing the rounds.  Only U2 have made more out of a single tour.

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So here we are, an amazing fifty years on, and they’re still going strong.  Charlie has beaten cancer and is still playing perfect drums.  Ronnie Wood has been in and out of rehab, made a second career as a session musician, a third as an artist in oils and watercolours, and is now busily carving out a fourth career as an award winning radio presenter.  Mick even got a knighthood.  Keef should have died a dozen times from the unbelievable amount of toxic substances of one kind or another that he’s taken either orally or intravenously, but came closest to death when he fell out of a coconut tree, sober, and fractured his skull.  Needless to say he recovered and was back on the road within a couple of months.   His autobiography is one of the best and funniest books I’ve ever read – taking the lid off life in the world’s biggest and best rock’n’roll band, and providing the man’s own recipe for bangers and mash (his favourite meal ) – I’ve tried it and it’s really good.   He looks a wreck, as though he died years ago and has been re-animated, but he’s the perfect Rock Star image: aviator shades, bangles and bracelets, a voice shot to hell by too much brandy and nicotine, hands that look like they’ve been through a mincer – no-one else comes close.  The man’s a genius.  My hero.

A couple of years ago, one of my kids bought me their Forty Licks greatest hits compilation, a double CD that really is the soundtrack to my life.   Forty pieces of quite wonderful rock and r’n’b music by a bunch of guys who changed the world.  I was listening to it on the iPod at the weekend as I wandered around London in the rain, my first visit for maybe two or three years.  Sympathy for the Devil playing loud in my ears as I wandered around Canary Wharf was quite fitting, I thought….. 

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They’re planning another tour, although they’re all well in their 60s (in Charlie’s case 70-odd, but he still looks pretty sprightly).    In a way I’d love to go to a concert, but I would be worried that at their age it would be crap, like Sinatra’s much vaunted Albert Hall concert back in the early 80s, when his voice was gone and he had to sit on a stool and read the lyrics from sheet music on a stand in front of him – a tragic end to performing of another game-changing genius.   I’ve never seen the Stones live – back in the 70s my mate had tickets for their Hyde Park concert and I was going with him, but the night before he phoned me up and announced he was taking some bird from the office instead – the bastard.  It turned out to be one of their best ever shows…..  The only silver lining was that the bird hated it, and wouldn’t sleep with my mate – serves the fucker right.