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Column -

Jagger turns 65, the age of content

Andrew Bolt
Friday, July 25, 2008 at 06:14am


MICK Jagger tomorrow will turn 65. Or rather, he will add 65 to his collection of ages, and stay precisely as young as he feels.

Pensioner Sir Mick will perhaps then realise what young Street Fighting Man Jagger and his generation never did.

It’s that while we may age, we don’t really grow old after all. Not old, as opposed to young.

This is what the Rolling Stones and all those other bands that exploded out of the 1960s never understood.

Back then it seemed they were playing the soundtrack to a war against the old and ageing - a battle hymn for baby-boomers screaming, “Get out of our way. It’s our turn.”

The dead hands of the old had to be prised from the wheel. The past-it were of a different country; the young did things differently, and between the ages was a gulf so deep and horrible, only a fool would even want to cross it.

You heard that in the great anthem of The Who in 1965:

Things then do look awful c-c-cold

(Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)

I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ bout my generation)

And you heard it in the more gentle contempt of the Beatles for the living death, the utter banality, that was life at 64 - and beyond:

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,

Who could ask for more.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I’m 64?

But here’s Jagger now not 64, but 65 - retirement age. Digging weeds age. Feed the helpless age. Wish I were dead instead.

Except, like Pete Townshend and Sir Paul McCartney, Jagger is not dead nor dulled, but playing and loving and leading a life with a heartbeat that seems to throb even louder than ever.

So who would you envy now? That no-name baggy-lipped young dropout from the London School of Economics all those years ago who was just starting to play his first gigs?

Or a knight of the realm, with a fortune of almost $500 million, millions of idolising fans, a beautiful young girlfriend, concert dates until doomsday and chateaus and mansions from France to Mustique, Long Island to Los Angeles?

Jagger’s life has not worsened with age, but only grown richer. And if he’s like most older people that psychologists have checked out, he’d be happier than ever. More content.

That’s what the young that the Jaggers, Townshends and Beatles once led in their Mao-like assault against The Olds never seemed to understand.

Old isn’t the opposite to young at all, as in near dead. Being old is exactly the same as being young, only with less puff and more experience.

And you know how it is with experience - you just make fewer mistakes. You know better what will please and what will hurt. I know, for instance, it’s crazy trying to be a party animal when I never liked it in the first place, and I can’t now be shamed any more out of my happy home.

This is also the advantage older folk have in their battles with the young. The young have never been old; but the old have sure been young. So, kiddo, we know you far better than you think because we were once you, and still are - but this time with cunning.

After all, we are never just the age we are today, but every age we ever lived.

All that we’ve lived through and loved stays with us, which is why meeting an old teacher still has us straightening up and calling them “Miss”, and why our teenager’s angst attacks can make us flinch with old pains, too.

And it’s also why being with children makes so many people feel years younger. That’s the child that’s still in them, coming out to play again.

The arc of Jagger’s career has shown just how true this is for his fans.

The big hits of the Stones, the critics frown, dried up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, which made it seem odd that this was just when the Stones started to become a touring sensation. And the Stones will keep touring, if Ronnie Wood can give up the drink and the teen Russian waitresses again, and act the older of his many ages.

But that change in the Stones’ fortune was no mystery, no contradiction. The Stones’ greatest fans didn’t want new hits but the old - the ones from their teens that let them live again those days when they’d never have guessed what a joy it was to be still bopping at 65.

Baby, baby, baby you’re not out of time, at all. You’re just adding the years to a big, warm pile.

Andrew Bolt is a typical right-wing nutbag. The Sun is the empitome of the Anglo-Saxon W.A.S.P. ideals of the previous 2-3 generations. Nearly every fucking journo at that paper is white, over 50 and/or married to another journo who also works at the paper. I bloody hate conservative crap!

Bolt has been angling for years now to try to be as ultra conservative and controversial as possible, hoping it would get him a gig on tv ala Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. Or even our own Alan "i like rough trade in public toilets" Jones. Trouble is, he's not very good at what he does. And now the political winds have changed in Australia, this prick will only ever be a "panelist" on political/social current affairs shows.

I recall a story a few years ago about how Bolt was taunting a journo at The Age (a Melbourne paper that is sympathetic to my kind of politics). Bolt, who was gloating over another conservative political win or something, asked the journo
"Why dont you work for a REAL newspaper?"
The dude replied
"Why dont you? Instead, you write for disgruntled shop keepers, self funded retirees and indignant, unemployed racists who want it to be 1955"

Anyway, another pointless article from this hack that says nothing at all. Bolt has long hated the 60's and all they represent. Which, of course, is kinda dumb as he was just a little Dutch immgrant boy and wouldnt have a clue.

Still, kind of nice of him to be positive about Jagger. Only, it shows his ignorance about the band. The Stones have never been about youth. They worshipped old men. Old black men. The only factor really being they were young. I get the feeling Bolt has never been young.

And his wife is fat fucking pig! OMG, her ass has its own postcode! When she sits around the house. Hey, she sits AROUND the house!

He has to roll her in flour to find the wet spot!

Which might explain why he is so uptight and right-wing.