PLAYBOY: He’ll appreciate that.
LENNON: I absolutely don’t need it. Let them chase [Paul McCartney’s group] Wings. Just forget about me. If that’s what you want, go after Paul or Mick. I ain’t here for that. If that’s not apparent . . . I’m saying it in black and green, next to all the tits and asses on page 196. Go play with the other boys. Don’t bother me. Go play with the Rolling Wings.
PLAYBOY: Do you . . .
LENNON: No, wait a minute. Let’s stay with this a second; sometimes I can’t let go of it. (He is on his feet, climbing up the refrigerator.) . . . You know, they’re congratulating the Stones on being together 112 years. Whoooopee! At least Bill and Charlie still got their families. In the Eighties, they’ll be asking, “Why are those guys still together? Can’t they hack it on their own? Is the little leader scared someone’s going to knife him in the back?” That’s gonna be the question. That’s a-gonna be the question. They’re going to look back at the Beatles and the Stones and all those guys as relics. . . . They will be showing pictures of the guy with lipstick wriggling his ass and the four guys with evil black makeup on their eyes trying to look raunchy. That’s gonna be the joke in the future. . . . It’s all right when you’re sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, to have male companions and idols, OK? It’s tribal and it’s a gang and it’s fine. But when it continues and you’re still doing it when you’re forty, that means you’re still sixteen in the head.
Lennon’s remarks sound harsh, but it’s important to remember that back then, there simply wasn’t any precedent for middle-aged men playing rock ’n’ roll. Cameron Crowe made the point in his beautifully evocative film Almost Famous, which is set in 1973. A gung-ho music manager, Dennis Hope (played by Jimmy Fallon), tries to persuade the fictional band Stillwater that they mustn’t squander their opportunities—that they need to strike while the iron is hot. And why? Because rock ’n’ roll is a young person’s art form. “If you think Mick Jagger will be out there trying to be a rock star at age fifty, you are sadly, sadly mistaken,” he says. And yet the Rolling Stones have now outlasted the Beatles by a staggering forty-three years.
Not only that, but there was a brief period when it seemed like the Stones could do no wrong. Almost everyone agrees that they had a five-year stretch, beginning in 1968 and ending in 1972, during which time they knocked out four of the most enduring and ass-kicking rock records in history: Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and the double LP Exile on Main St. It was a “run of albums against which all other rock ’n’ roll will be forever measured,” averred one critic. Another called it “a series of roughly perfect albums.” This was the Stones’ “imperial phase,” and they capped it off with a legendary series of concerts. Nowadays, their 1972 North American tour (also called the S.T.P. tour, for “Stones Touring Party”) is often remembered as a carnival of lubricity. But it was also the bookend to an era. If the Rolling Stones had simply disbanded after it was over—without ever releasing another album or appearing on a stage again—surely they would be widely regarded today with the same kind of mystical reverence that is often reserved for the Beatles.
Instead, the Stones soldiered on (though eventually at a much slower pace), and over the years critics have noticed an obvious decline in the quality of their recorded work. In the ’60s, it was Establishmentarians who complained that the Stones were god-awful and graceless and tacky. Eventually, insightful rock fans began saying many of the same things. That is not to say that the twelve studio albums the Stones have made since 1973’s Goats Head Soup haven’t all contained at least a couple of admirable songs (surely they have) nor is it even to make an aesthetic judgment. It is just a plain statement about how their work has been received. For a long stretch in the ’70s, Mick’s immersion in the high society jet set seemed to eclipse his interest in making music, and Keith got so strung out on smack as to be nearly useless. The only thing that complicates the Stones’ declension narrative is 1978’s Some Girls, an eclectic and wittily priapic album that was justifiably hailed as a return form. After that, the Stones languished in mediocrity.
Complaints about the Stones reached a pitch in the summer of ’89, when they launched their Steel Wheels tour. They didn’t have a lot going on musically, so as if to compensate, they put on the most freakishly bombastic rock production the world had ever seen. The stage was some kind of dystopian megastructure: an asymmetrical tangle of scaffolding, catwalks, and balconies that was fitted with blinking lights, fog machines, and flame-shooting turrets. When the Stones played “Honky Tonk Women,” gigantic inflatable dolls swelled up alongside the stage. When Mick sang “Sympathy for the Devil,” he stood from a ledge over one hundred feet high, shrouded in smoke, as the structure beneath him appeared to burst into flames. Every show ended with a coruscating fireworks display.
Bill German, a Stones fanatic who used to publish the pre-Internet fanzine Beggars Banquet, saw the Stones as often as he could on that tour, and he noticed an “interesting irony” in their approach. “As much as Mick professed his love for the new music and as much as he despised the ‘retro rocker’ label, he was hesitant about adding the band’s new songs to the repertoire.”
Mick wanted each song, be it “Brown Sugar,” “Tumbling Dice,” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to sound exactly like the original album version. By seeing a lot of new and commercially successful acts . . . Mick got a sense of what was going on in the music industry. He learned the way to reach the vastest audience . . . was to play the hits the way people remembered [as opposed to experimenting with the songs’ arrangements]. . . . Most baby boomers want “Gimme Shelter” the way they heard it in their dorm room twenty years ago, so that’s how we’ll give it to them. It was more a business decision than an artistic decision, but it worked.
Meanwhile, the Stones took the corporate sponsorship of rock ’n’ roll to gaudy new heights. In 1981, they inked a deal with Jovan, a perfume company. The group’s main benefactor during the Steel Wheels tour was Anheuser-Busch, the brewing conglomerate, which paid them at least $6 million (some sources say more). Now the Stones’ expensive concert gear was available at department stores, including Macy’s and JC Penney. You could buy Steel Wheels boxer shorts, wallets, and commemorative coins. The Glimmer Twins even appeared on the cover of Forbes. “What Will They Do With All That Money?” the magazine asked.
Their age was becoming an issue as well. It wasn’t that anyone held a grudge against the Stones for getting older, but rather that they were so outlandishly undignified about it. In the mid-’80s, when Mick began attending to his solo career, he was plainly aping the music and mannerisms of much younger acts, like Prince, Michael Jackson, and Duran Duran. In 1989, Bill Wyman, aged fifty-two, married eighteen-year-old Mandy Smith. And of course, people sniggered about the Rolling Stones’ nostalgia-peddling “Steel Wheelchairs Tour.”
Again, that was twenty-five years ago. Other artists who have remained popular with baby boomers have always continued to evolve, whether for better or worse. (Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are both prime examples.) But the Stones haven’t seemed musically audacious for a very long time—not since they experimented with some of the trendy disco sounds of the late ’70s and early ’80s. (And even the hits they had back then, like “Miss You” and “Emotional Rescue,” now seem like duds.) Nor did the Stones return to their roots in blues music, which—unlike rock—is something that old men (if they are talented enough) can perform with dignity. Instead, the Stones drenched themselves in self-parody and inflated ballyhoo.
Nowadays, the Rolling Stones scarcely bother trying to make new music—they’ve recorded only two completely new songs since 2005—but in 2012 they made an awfully big deal about their fiftieth anniversary. To help out with all the celebrative merchandising, they hired graphic design artist Shepard Fairey to update their infamous lips and tongue logo. They put out a coffee table book (The Rolling Stones Fifty), a biographical film (Crossfire Hurricane, directed by Brett Morgan), and t
hey released yet another career retrospective of old hit singles, titled GRRR! Depending on how one counts it is perhaps the twenty-fifth Rolling Stones compilation album.
And of course the Stones launched their 50 & Counting tour, which began in Paris and London in late 2012, and came to the United States shortly thereafter. Way back in 1975, Jagger said, “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 45,” but now he and Keith were both just shy of seventy. Naturally, they played “Satisfaction” at nearly every stop. (It was an encore song.) On some nights, their set lists did not contain a single number that was written after 1981.
Most concert reviewers gave the Stones solid marks. The standard rap was that even in their dotage, the Stones were still capable of delivering an exciting performance. They played their old hits to a surefire audience, and everyone had a good time. Nevertheless, some fans found it hard to regard the 50 & Counting tour as much more than a sordid money grab. On average, the Stones charged $346 per ticket. For the most part, only very affluent adults could afford to attend. The Stones wound up grossing about $100 million from just eighteen shows.
Then again, music is a powerful memory cue; it can summon nostalgia like little else, and that can be a potent and wonderful thing. Certainly many Beatles fans remain deeply disappointed that they never got a chance to hear another studio album or see the group perform. The Portuguese have a fine word for that feeling: saudade. It’s a kind of longing for something that one has never experienced, or a keen desire for something that cannot exist.
Paradoxically, however, by refusing to reunite, the Beatles may have actually enhanced their legacy. Unlike so many other fabled pop and rock acts from the ’60s and ’70s, the Beatles retired while they were near the top of their form. They didn’t dilute their catalogue with a string of mediocre records, and they didn’t reinvent themselves as a touring act, hawking their hits from thirty and forty years ago to well-heeled baby boomers.
True, Apple continued putting out invaluable Beatles material long after the Beatles dissolved their partnership, including Live at the BBC in 1994 and The Beatles Anthology in 1995 (which was at once a documentary television series, six CDs worth of unreleased material, and an oral history). As part of that ambitious project, Paul, George, and Ringo even released two “new” Beatles songs––“Real Love” and “Free as a Bird”––which were built around Lennon’s singing voice on some old demo recordings that Yoko Ono had been safekeeping. All of the ex-Beatles went on to have successful solo careers, and recently, Paul McCartney has been putting on some magnificent, nostalgia-filled concerts of his own. But of course the Beatles never carried on qua Beatles. In a sense (and unlike the Stones) the Beatles never even grew old.
They didn’t have the chance.
Hollow-point bullets are designed to expand as they hit their target, causing maximum tissue damage. In New York City, on December 8, 1980, two of them pierced the left side of Lennon’s back, and two more entered his left shoulder. They were “amazingly well-placed,” said Dr. Stephen Lynn, who treated Lennon at the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. “All the major blood vessels leaving the heart were a mush, and there was no way to fix it.”
The Beatles in Hamburg: Pete Best, George, John, Paul, and Stu Sutcliff. Scholars agree that the Beatles’ experience in Hamburg was formative.
Astrid Kirchherr/Ginzburg Fine Arts
At the Cavern Club in Liverpool, Pete Best on drums.
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Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein.
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Giorgio Gomelsky gave the Stones their first big break—a residency at the Crawdaddy Club—and he introduced them to the Beatles.
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Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones. He said he wanted to be known as “a nasty little upstart tycoon shit.”
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Early photo of the Stones. Bill Wyman later said it was “obvious” that Andrew Loog Oldham “was attempting to make us look like the Beatles. From his association with them, he was well aware of the power of marketing, and he was initially slotting us as their natural successors rather than as counterparts.” Only later did Oldham begin styling the Stones as the “anti-Beatles.”
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She likes the Beatles.
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She likes the Stones.
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The Beatles elicited complicated responses from their fans. This photo was taken during their appearance at the ABC cinema in Wigan, October 13, 1964.
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Mick and Chrissie Shrimpton at the wedding of David Bailey and Catherine Deneuve, August 1965. Chrissie introduced Mick to some important figures in the Swinging London scene.
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The Daily Mirror, September 8, 1964. When the Stones beat the Beatles in a fan poll, it was front-page news.
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Keith Richards and Brian Jones in conversation with Paul McCartney at the premier party for the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night.
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John and Paul frolic in the ocean at Miami Beach while on tour in 1964.
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The Rolling Stones (sans Keith Richards) in New York City during their first visit to the United States.
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Hysterical fans frequently interrupted the Rolling Stones’ performances in the mid-’60s. This photo was taken at Newcastle City Hall on October 7, 1965.
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The Beatles first appearance at Shea Stadium. At the time, it was by far the largest pop concert in history: 55,600 people attended.
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John and George holding up the Stones’ records Aftermath and “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown.” When this photo ran in 16 magazine, the caption read: “Wait a minute Paulie—George and I are coming up with a couple of really original ideas.”
Sean O’Mahony
Paul scrutinizes the Rolling Stones’ album Aftermath.
Sean O’Mahony
Workers on the production line in the EMI factory in Hayes, Middlesex. Fans argued about which group was better, but the Beatles always outsold the Rolling Stones by a wide margin.
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The Beatles and their manager arriving in London, July 8, 1966.
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Producer George Martin and Paul McCartney at Abbey Road Studios recording Sgt. Pepper’s. “As I could see their talent growing, I could recognize that an idea coming from them was better than an idea coming from me,” Martin said.
Sean O’Mahony
New York City police try to restrain teens near the Warwick Hotel, where the Beatles were staying, August 12, 1966. “I don’t envy those Beatles,” Mick Jagger said at the time. “Look how much freedom we have, and they’re locked up in their hotel.”
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Rare photo of David Snyderman (aka David Jove) and Keith Richards at West Wittering Beach, February 12, 1967. They were both on LSD when this picture was taken. A few hours later, the police would raid Richards’s home, and Snyderman/Jove would be accused of being a police plant.
Michael Cooper/Raj Prem Collection
Mick and Keith leave court after being charged with drug possession after the bust at Redlands.
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May 11, 1967. Brian Jones, haggard and frightened, arrives at court to answer a drugs charge.
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Jane Asher, Paul, and Beatles’ assistant “Magic Alex” Mardas arriving in London, July 1967. After a public outcry, Mick and Keith had their drug convictions overturned.
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Mick and Paul prepare to board a train from London to Bangor, Wales, in order to attend a seminar on spiritual enlightenment led by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
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Mick and Marianne Fa
ithful in a carriage, traveling with the Beatles to North Wales, August 25, 1967.
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Ringo, George, and John speak briefly with reporters shortly after learning that their manager, Brian Epstein, had died. “Meditation gives you comfort enough to withstand something like this,” George said.
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Mick at a 1968 antiwar rally outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. About fifty people were injured when demonstrators clashed with the police. Mick left the rally after being recognized by too many fans.
Afterward, he wrote the lyrics to “Street Fighting Man.”
Michael Cooper/Raj Prem Collection
Mick on stage at Madison Square Garden, November 28, 1969. The Omega symbol on the front of Mick’s shirt was the symbol of Resistance, an American antidraft group.
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John and Paul at a press conference to announce Apple Corps. “We’re in the happy position of not really needing any more money,” Paul said, “and so for the first time the bosses aren’t in it for the profit.”
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