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Ten Thousand Motels
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Supposedly dry Rolling Stones abide
By Rod Filbrandt
Straight.com
April 9, 2009
It would have made a great reality show: The Rolling Stones Go for a Physical. Unfortunately, or perhaps mercifully, we'll never really know what that trip to the doctor's office would have looked like, but I'll give you a moment to shudder in horror at the mental picture anyway.
There you go.
After starting with a February 2009 news report that Ronnie Wood has been warned to stop boozing by the band, the show goes something like this. To get tour insurance, the Stones have to pass a medical exam. They don't think Ronnie Wood is going to cut it. He failed in 2002, quit the sauce, then passed. As fate would have it, the seven-time rehab veteran has since relapsed hard and repeatedly, to the point that his stretches of sobriety probably look a lot like what most people would call sleep.
Keith Richards has been the one to give the 61-year-old wet-brain the ultimatum: quit drinking or you're out of the band. Then Keith goes drinking. Just the mention of quitting something is enough to require the immediate topping-up of his irony tank. Actually, what's surprising is that the word “quit” is even in his vocabulary, or, given his legendary gibbering Keith-speak, the word “vocabulary”, for that matter.
Wood passes the physical and ends up in the “not currently drinking” file. And that's just shaky enough to restore my faith in rock 'n' roll—if not the Stones.
With Sir Mick hanging out at garden parties, admiring the ice sculptures with Elton John, and Charlie Watts no longer piggybacking a junk monkey, it seems that only Richards still has a solid grip on being an unrepentant fuck-up. Wood might not quite have the party chops to keep up, but come on—at least he's trying.
That's all we can ask. Though long since irrelevant musically, these crusty old reptile delinquents are nevertheless making everybody else look bad, rock 'n' rollers decades their junior bobbing about in their greasy wake like so many empty lite-beer cans. A glance at today's big-league rockers finds little more than a shameful roster of poseurs, quitters, and unabashed yoga enthusiasts. And I bet that not one of them has snorted his dad.
Is the out-of-control rock star a vanishing archetype? Is Pete Doherty the best we have? Am I going to have to look him up one of these days and find out who the hell he is? He certainly looks like shit on those tabloid covers. At least Shane McGowan kicked plenty of musical buttock before turning into a puddle of puke. Next to the old pros, Doherty looks like a naughty kid who got into daddy's liquor cabinet and his mom's cocaine hutch.
Historically, most hard-partying bands seem more an example of protracted adolescence than anything. Why not? You're in a band, you're young, famous, and probably stupid. It's a great combination. Go nuts. But don't let us down. Don't get all Mötley Crüe on us and make a career out of bragging about your shenanigans. Besides, who says you need to be in a band to go the Peter Pan route? I could do that. Ahem.
Of course, there's always death, the true measure of whether you can cut it or not. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Johnny Thunders, Kurt Cobain—lightweights. The trick, really, is to somehow look dead while not actually being dead. Kind of like the Stones, or at least the two Stones who are still out there stumbling about like crazy rock stars. Richards and Wood remain the standard-bearers, the textbook-writers, and with every year survived, with every freaky new face crease and every inevitable relapse, they are boldly charting wild and untamed territory. Somebody's gotta do it—and I bet it's thirsty work. Not to mention what would inarguably be must-see TV.
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