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Steel Wheelchairs Before you pay a scalper with six tongue-rings and a navel tattoo of Jesse Ventura $500 for a pair of nosebleed seats to watch the Stones this fall, there are a few things you might want to consider. Some things in life can’t stay the same, no matter how well conceived the marketing strategy. When I was a little kid, I worshipped the Rolling Stones. They were rebelling against the establishment. Now they’re rebelling against carpal tunnel syndrome. Not everyone was so elated to learn of this latest tour. Hear that groan? That’s the sound of one more struggling twenty-something band giving up the dream to go get Microsoft certification in Excel. Hats off to Bill Wyman for stepping aside while still in his mid-50s. The Stones will be the first band to play the Garden in Depends, and you just know Mick has a product placement deal in the works. But the songs won’t mean what they used to. Start Me Up will refer to a dialysis machine. Miss You will refer to Charlie Watts’ teeth. Beast of Burden explores a family’s moral dilemma in having to put their lead guitarist grandfather in an assisted living facility. Gimme Shelter chronicles Ron Woods’ escapades while shopping for a retirement community in the Tampa-St. Pete area. You Can’t Always Get What You Want is a lighthearted look at a frustrating trip to return something at Macy’s. Songs to be outright re-titled include Under My Bedpan and 19th Parkinson’s Tremor. These guys can’t get no satisfaction because they can’t get no erection. That is, until recently. Forget about Budweiser. This tour is sponsored by Viagra. But we must rise above the third-rate age-ism jokes and see the bigger picture. While Michael Jordan wrestles with his third retirement, the Stones roll along. While the Kurt Cobains and Layne Staleys of the world drop like flies, Keith Richards lives on, shooting up Botox. The runway models the Stones screwed over in the 80s are experiencing hot flashes. Illegitimate kids they sired in Midwest Holiday Inns during the 60s are already releasing retrospective box sets and calling it quits to raise hemp and speak out on behalf of the rain forests. Brian Jones has been dead long enough to reincarnate as a geek, make a billion dollars going public with a dot.com, lose it all in the crash, and relocate to a Dianetics commune in Tennessee. And how long, really, before Eminem and Kid Rock return to the trailer parks from whence they came? But the Stones saga is about more than a band overstaying their welcome so long they’re welcome again. It’s about the future—not just of a band, not just of a half-dozen played-out riffs repackaged into yet another album, but of Western Civilization itself. Medical longevity is here to stay. What if I told you the Stones were at the midpoint of their career? They used to be known as a 60s band, then a 70s band. And they will again. There is no rim to get over here. Gently pluck an A string pumped through twin DeMarzio pick-ups and a wall of Marshall amps, and you’ll sound like a rock star too. Hangers-on will certainly benefit. Groupies with nicknames like Preparation H, Mineral Ice, Dentu-Grip, and Gold Bond won’t have to worry about getting pregnant. The fabled mother-daughter groupie sexploit will be supplanted by the hipper mother-daughter-granddaughter feat. The public at large will benefit too. Men will retire and pick up a Stratocaster instead of a paintbrush. Those of us pushing 40, still noodling around an open E chord, can go to sleep at night comforted by the notion of having at least another forty years left to register a hit. Thirty-year-old guys cruising the mall for high school girls won’t look quite so pathetic in the New World. The Adam West/Burt Ward Batman reunion seems almost viable. The bottom line is this: the older the Stones’ fan base gets, the more disposable income they’ll have. In 2022, festival seating at a Rolling Stones concert will require a time share. And give this to Mick, Keith, Ron, Charlie, and their phantom bassist du jour—they’re above and beyond milking the public by doing a six-year farewell tour a la KISS. Like Arnold Swarzenegger pumped up on Cortizone and Creatine, they’ll be back. Click here to rant back. |