Gathering moss? - letting go of the fervent allegiance to the Rolling Stones rock group - Column

THIRTY years ago, in my grade school, there were Stones guys and Beatles guys. My thirdgrade class was riven accordingly. Note, please, that we were not Beatles or Stones fans--the sense of identity ran much deeper than musical taste. Whether you were a Stones guy or a Beatles guy determined your essence. We all wore the same madras shortsleeved shirts, the same khakis and sneakers; we all, that is to say, wore what our mothers told us to wear. But inside--in the roiling depths of the soul, where attitudes toward homework and teachers, smoking and girls take shape--a Stones guy and a Beatles guy were like the Sharks and the Jets, oil and water, Mensheviks and Lennonists.

Of course some kids claimed to admire the Stones and the Beatles equally; and both sides, then as now, despised these little Gergens of the time. The rest of us were separated by an unbridgeable divide: the Beatlites tending toward reading classes and the boys' chorus, where we squirmed through fruity recitals while our parents beamed; the Stoneheads toward shop class, where they made shivs. I myself was a Beatles guy, as you'd expect of a future writer for NATIONAL REVIEW. It seemed at the time a bad bet, for by, say, 1966, the Beatles were already established as the ancien regime, the preference of mossbacks, and the Stones as the Jacobins (or Jaggerbins, to continue the lame puns).

This was partly the fault of our parents. After the initial Ed Sullivan-induced shock wore off, many American parents grew to like the Beatles. My own mother offered to buy me the single of "Yesterday." She thought it was pretty. What could be more embarrassing? The eruption of the Stones forced parents into the realization that the New Age would offer pop stars much worse than the mop-topped, suitclad Beatles: here was a band with even unrulier hair, even sallower complexions, even bigger, more menacing lips. "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" was a famous tagline. The reasonable parent's answer, of course, was, Hell no. This guaranteed that the cutest girls wanted to marry one, which meant, in turn, that the hippest guys ached to be one.

In time I succumbed, and became a fan. The Stones outlived the Beatles, after all, and no lover of rock-and-roll could resist the guttural come-hither of "Honky Tonk Women" or "Jumpin' Jack Flash." What disconcerts me, as I review these generation-old memories, is that the Stones are with us still. Still! As you read this, the band is on the road, playing amphitheaters in the heat, plugging a new album, called Voodoo Lounge. Meanwhile, the Stones' drummer, Charlie Watts, is bumping 60. Keith Richards is on his third or fourth full-body blood transplant. Mick Jagger is a grandfather (and a sunshiney gramps he is, too, I'll bet).

Can we get the jokes out of the way right now? The girls will toss Depends on stage instead of their panties. The groupies will place a cup by the bed, for their dentures. And imagine the backstage parties, with Mick and Keith doing Geritol shooters. Fine. Hilarious. The more wheelchair jokes the better. But what about the rest of us? How do the Stones expect us to respond to this Peter Pan antic, a quarter-century after their peak? For myself, I refused to sweat out a concert in the middle of a football field, shank to damp flank with fleshy teenagers in black T-shirts. But I did bring myself to buy their album.

I AM SORRY I did. I hadn't bought a Stones album since 1975, and the first thing I noticed when I opened up the cover art of Voodoo Lounge was that the fellows aren't looking so great. Can middle-aged men get anorexia? More to the point, can music be described as anorexic? Every Stones trademark from my youth is here: the Satanic affectations, the salacious lyrics, Mick's slobbering elocution. The songs may be wonderful, thrilling some 1990s kid as the Stones thrilled my classmates a generation ago. I wouldn't know. As I enter middle age I'm less susceptible to thrills. I can tell you, though, that I seemed to hear a recurring question, humming sotto voce beneath every riff: "Aren't you a little old to be doing this?" In the living room of my suburban house, mortgaged to my teeth, I couldn't tell whether the question was directed at me or the Stones.

"Who wants to be a 30-year-old Beatle?" the Beatles used to say, and true to their word they never were; the band broke up when the oldest member, John Lennon, was still 29. Lennon even had the good grace to die at age 40, though admittedly he didn't have much say in the matter. In any case, I like to think their early retirement validated the wisdom of being a Beatles guy. The Beatles, by ending the Beatles, let us grow up. "What a drag it is getting old," sang the Stones, in 1966. But we Beatles guys learned to live with it.

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