For better or worse, one of the realities of advancing age is the ability to view the landscape of past decades as they unfolded, surveying the highs and lows along the way from a perspective only time can provide. It’s surprising how few joys travel with us for long before their colors fade or are outshined by the next fleeting fancy, perhaps as a built-in function for the progression of our species. Occasionally those who touch us in an unforgettable way become fixtures in our reality - or at least the tendency to hope convinces us it is so. Childhood friends, young loves and those whose talent or kindness colored our memories are somewhere out there, they are, and will always be a part of this existence, as much so as the sun or the sky. Sadly, another truth the view of aging eyes increaingly points out - this is not the case. Like so many many of us do, I fell in love with a specific strain of popular music at an early age and I witnessed from a distance the departure of its creators: Lennon, Bowie, Cobain, Cornell, Weiland, Winehouse and so many others along the way and my world felt diminished with the knowledge each was gone, never again to light my path in their own unique way. Though I happily accepted the gifts they gave, I hadn’t thought to thank them until suddenly the opportunity had vanished. I’d never known any of them personally - maybe my admiration would have suffered if I had - yet it was only after they were gone their personal importance would dawn on me, and the reality they would no longer be out there, somewhere, and the subtle comfort of knowing we still shared at least existence in the same time and world was gone.
This week I noted the Rolling Stones’ tour postponement due to a medical issue suffered by Mick Jagger. Oh, no. My heart sank. Is this it? For decades the Stones have beaten time and fate, surviving legions of contemporaries, musical fads and eras. We’ve been joking about Mick and Keith’s creative (and later overall) longevity since I was a awkward teenaged knave forty-something years ago. While other bands and celebrities became obscure, stale, or fell from view altogether, the Stones seemed to transcend all by sheer force of will. “We’ve got to leave the world a better place for Keith Richards” says the Facebook meme, beside his ancient leathered image. Yet this too is false. His days too are finite and he too shall one day fall, the world will be a bit less because of it. So this is my thanks to you, fair Mick and Keith, for the color and companionship you brought to my life, while we yet share this speck in time and space.
At a time when the snappy beat of Devo dominated local airwaves, the echoes of Mick Jagger’s voice rattled the doors of my F-150 as I worked my logging job in the Appalachian foothills of northern Pennsylvania. I was nearly a decade late to the party, but these would be my Exile On Main Street days and that is how I still remember them. I’d blown my chance at college and dusty sweaty summers and winters of silent monochrome became the setting of my vocation. Logging as we did it was a solitary walking/hefting job and days were mostly spent among the winsome victims of my trade and my own regretful thoughts. I’d never minded being alone; I was raised in a woodsy setting, but the daily isolation at age 19 and 20 soon became an unwelcome and self-feeding companion. It grew as I fell ever further out of practice socially and the unease of interaction eventually found relief only in work and alcohol, begetting ever more seclusion. Jagger’s voice offered what felt like common ken. “Wadin’ through the wasted stormy winter, and not a friend to help you through,” he teased in the bluesy boxcar tropes of Sweet Virginia, and the sentiment rang true to my young ear.
A weary copy of Exile on cassette played endlessly as I bounced to and fro down the logging roads; chainsaws, axes and fuel cans in tow, dancing in the back of the truck as though drawn to the beat. “I’m the man on the mountain, come on up - I’m the plowman in the valley, with a face full of mud.” How Jagger, the petite London economics student who’d found celebrity and adoration not far out of his teens, who had certainly never waded through the dirty provincial life he related in Loving Cup hit my then self-image on the nose so well - I have no idea. Conceived in the South of France on the ancient Mediterranean coast, the geographic origin of Exile could not have been much further in setting from my rustic interpretation of its contents. Of course I bent it to fit my own story, but I didn’t have to bend it very far. The Beatles’ Helter Skelter and its resident White Album were still being searched for hidden meaning in popular music circles; its words could be steered to suit nearly any thought or theory, a source of wonder to this day. Much like the post-fab Beatles themselves, it was just as it said - “miles above you” - over and away, like an unusual object distant in the sky, sowing speculation and receiving it in abundance. Rarely was this the case with the Rolling Stones. The abstract was not their thing. While Paint It, Black might have earned some conjecture, a definitive setting framed most of their works - well fixed to the canvas at its core. The noble estate of Lady Jane. The dark skies of As Tears Go By. The creased but sympathetic brow of Ruby Tuesday. One thing was true, the Stones rarely left you guessing. Whether the tony snottiness of Miss You or the woeful surrender of Love In Vain, the air of each and all between was easy to divine.
As Brian Jones’ quirky influence dissolved along with the sincere if perhaps naive dreams of the late 60s, Mick and Keith stomped into the everyman’s saloon, cue in hand and ready to rack up the balls in a way the Beatles, for all their marvelous creativity, never could. Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile: In these the Glimmer Twins proved they could sit at the bar. Lamenting, bragging and cavorting with the neo-peasantry - the Salt Of The Earth. Cheering and jeering, swaggering but also offering some sympathetic respect,“Raise your glass to the hard working people, who burn the fires and who still till the earth... Let’s think of the wavering millions, who want leaders but get gamblers instead.” The Stones were specific, on the ground and in the grit. How Jagger and company could render such a diary of the faceless man (or woman) mystifies me to this day. They judged, often crudely and occasionally cruelly; but rarely did they sentence. They knew the score and let you know they knew it, take it as you might. Yet between the tracks of jukebox classics were challenges to the status quo as applicable today as they were nearly a half century ago. “Doctor prescribes, drug store supplies. Who’s gonna help him to kick it?” Yet they often offered redemption too. When a song ended I nearly always felt better for having listened. They could manage that in a way few others could. Bowie awed me with otherworldly dreams; Zeppelin catapulted me to pyramids and prophets; Pink Floyd justified then amplified my depression; but only the Stones came banging on the rough-hewn door of my reality. They tormented with the joyous twang of Torn and Frayed, “His coat is torn and frayed, it’s seen much better days,” but then reassured - it’s okay to derive some happiness along the way -“Just as long as the guitar plays - let it steal your heart away.”
As many a young Appalachian working man was and still is wont to do I drank, drank and then drank a bit more. I worked hard and drank harder. It was just the lifestyle, a temporary stint on the way to a grand yet undefined future I assured myself. Generations of loggers, miners and foothill farmers had sought the comforting glow of the bottle through January tingle and dog days of August. With the cockiness of youth I was sure I was merely sojourning in their footsteps for now, merely a brief immersion as a casual observer, as though I had some other exceptional reality to which I would soon return. Besides, I was still only in my twenties - isn’t that what your twenties are for? But I was saving nothing and accomplishing less, wasting all I did and all I worked for. My heart saw prophesy in the creases of many an elder’s face, angled lines earned by hardship and libation. Something was pulling on my collar, nagging in Jagger’s Sweet Virgina drawl; “I know ya got it in ya; got to scrape that shit right off your shoes.” And I did. Eventually. But only after the requisite years of sorrow and guilt had made it the only option save death itself. Mick, Keith and the boys had thoughtfully translated that feeling too - in the swoopy brass of Rocks Off, “Kick me like you’ve kicked before, I can’t even feel the pain no more.” Their words snatched my soul, shoved it in my face, echoing what my heart already knew. I rejoiced to be in this company; they somehow must have passed this way too. When finally I began to win my private liberation and dawn was soon to light the dreaded morning after, Mick, once again appearing as the self-effacing yet ever hopeful swain of Loving Cup, seemed to tip his cap as if to bid thee well, “Just one drink... and I’ll fall dowww-n drunk.” But it now meant something new. “I’ve been trying to tell you,” my mind’s eye dreamt him adding, as he summed up the reforming addict’s Bible in a simple turn of phrase. I was the moth forever drawn to the candle it must never touch, this was the bitter truth of my liberty. To me those eight simple words said what the twelve-stepper’s Big Book took a thousand paragraphs to say. This was what they meant by the blues.
My youth turned to middle age and I now find the door of my winter years coming into view. In the meantime the Stones have been doing what they’ve always done. My life turned and turned again. The logging boots and chainsaws gave way to office shoes and cubicles, the muddy ruts to urban streets. I followed the Stones through the 80s - Emotional Rescue, Tattoo You, Undercover and on into their solo efforts during troubled years, observing with declining frequency as time rolled along. They changed and I changed as well. They faded from my thoughts in the 90s as my musical attention turned to Nirvana, STP and Soundgarden, who were kindling a torch of authenticity after long lean years dominated by what I considered (with a handful of exceptions) the contrived and commercial. As the years came and went my albums and tapes floundered in drawers and glove boxes until one by one they made way for other things and took their leave, but I never forgot how they spoke to me in those misty days.
When the news of Jagger’s health met my eyes, I revisited some of my old companions from Exile, Bleed and others on YouTube. After all the years of neglect, they still felt like a well worn glove. Unlike so many passing loves, they were still there waiting for me, just as they were all those years ago. Of course my interpretations are different now than they were through younger, lonelier ears, but the memory of the feeling they gave is just as strong. The songs may belong to the world and to posterity, but they’re also a precious part of my jouney through this strange existence. For that I thank you Sir Jagger, Mr. Richards and all the hands and minds who brought you to my door. To long life, my old friends.