Once upon a time, rock ‘n’ roll was a young person’s avocation. We listened to it as a way to thumb our noses at “the establishment.” There were songs, and lots of them, with hidden messages contained within the lyrics, known only to those of us fortunate enough to be “in on the joke.”
Most, though certainly not all, of them were sexual in nature, and we laughed at how smart we were compared to how dumb all the adults were who didn’t get the references. The only thing funnier was listening to adults who thought they could interpret all the arcane references but who really didn’t have a clue.
For example, “Louie Louie” was supposed to be a dirty song. I remember listening to people who swore they could pick out raunchy words among the undecipherable lyrics when, in reality, it was a song sung in a Jamaican dialect about a sailor returning to shore to be with his woman. Nothing dirty about it at all.
We’re talking hardcore ’60s here, when all you had to do was look at Mick Jagger to know he was sneering at anyone over the age of 30, because, if you remember, you weren’t supposed to trust those people.
The Rolling Stones came to Lynn in 1966, and they were so subversive my mother wouldn’t let me go, even though I was 12 and thought I was old enough to survive anything (I was similarly refused permission three years later for Woodstock). Good thing I didn’t, as it turned out, because there was a mini-riot at Manning Bowl.
They got arrested in Rhode Island in 1972 and probably kicked Stevie Wonder’s career up a notch or two (he was the backup act) because he had to keep playing until the Stones could get sprung from jail and rushed to their show in Boston.
On and on it went. In 1989, they were all in their 40s, and playing at Foxborough Stadium, and an Item contingent consisting of Ted Grant (now the publisher), Bill Brotherton, former editor Mike Williams and myself went down there. Keith Richards looked like he was about to die even then. That show, 30 years ago, was a representative compendium of just about everything they’d done in their careers. It went on for a day and a half.
But the funniest thing about it was reading, much later, that someone had told Mick that he just had to eat a banana midway through the performance to keep his stamina up, and that he stuck to that routine religiously throughout the whole tour. Seriously. The concert would come to a screeching halt so Mick could eat his banana.
This isn’t the same as using the term “Cocaine Eyes” in “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” or naming a song “Sister Morphine,” is it? You probably had every justification to think “Mother’s Little Helper” was a pep pill.
But a banana? And not even electrical, either.
The genre has kept aging even since the end of the ’80s. And while Keith may be like a mutant fungus that just won’t leave the planet, we’ve lost some other icons — guys like David Bowie, Glenn Frey, George Harrison and God knows how many more.
How old are we getting? One of the last times I saw the Moody Blues, a door opened at the venue at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut and in drove a horde of fans in those Hoveround scooters. That was seven years ago, and I’m probably as old now as some of them were then.
This is why I have to give all kinds of props to Mick, Keith, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts. Jagger will be 76 at the end of the month. He’s had serious heart surgery. Yet there he was Sunday, out front, fit and trim, preening around at Gillette Stadium like the guy who strutted around singing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” in 1965. Even Keith, who must have struck some Mephistophelean pact with the mysterious Mr. Dark from “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” was apparently infused with the vigor of (comparative) youth.
You can be sure the Rolling Stones aren’t trying to put one over on “the establishment” these days. They’re not snickering over some private joke they’re sure the “squares” aren’t going to understand. They may be now what they once laughed at. But at the same time, they kind of have shown the boomers they represent how to age with vitality and “Not Fade Away.”
Hail, Hail Rock ‘n Roll.
