Gazza wrote on Jul 12^th, 2012 at 8:19pm:


I'm holding you to it, Mick !  

gimmekeef wrote on Jul 12^th, 2012 at 4:13pm:

Hey GK. I'm celebrating my own 50th anniversary in November. Fuck waiting for the Stones,I'm doing my own tour....Of every bar in the San Francisco Bay Area! Only a couple of thousand more to go!!

I think some things about the past few years have been made clearer by the comments the past few days.
1)  Keith's book really strained his relationship with Mick and probably keep them far from each other for a few years.
2) Mick has stated that they aren't doing the Olympics because they didn't feel the band was ready. Personally I think this is a great sign-no one wants the Stones half assing it.
3) The fact that they didn't feel they were ready to play must mean Keiths playing is holding the band up as Charlie , Ronnie, and Mick have all played in the public recently and all sounded good.
4) Since they are all saying they will probably tour by years end I believe it's just a matter of time as the tour probably has to be booked before its announced. As soon as it is, well get an announcement!

If Keith can no longer play what makes us think magically in a few months he will be able to.....more likely a continued decline. To publicly say no plans yesterday on the 50th would have been globally written as THE END....so we will be teased but I'm not convinced anything will come of this sadly.........

The way Keith played after The Fall is not encouraging for any future tourage; I'd be satisfied if they could pull off a few gigs.

I was there and it was good to meet up with some die hard fans and also to see the band on their 50th but it was all over in minutes and sadly they had no time to sign many autographs (only Mick fleetingly).

online comment from the other day


VengeanceGauche
9 July 2012 11:44PM

Don't be seduced by hearsay and second hand opinions concerning Jagger, who i've retained a huge amount of affection for, and admiration over the years. Many revisionist cultural historians - especially those not around in the 60's - have been trying to diminish his importance for over forty years and none have succeed. Much as Richards has moved centre stage in the affection of fans and critics in the Stones declining years, during the 60's the Stones were very much Jagger's band and Keith really didn't get a look in until 1968. Even Brian Jones was more prominent than dear old Keith.
For a short time Jagger was the greatest rock 'n' roll front man and template for every lead singer in almost every (faux)outlaw rock band that followed. For every person that tells you Jagger has always been conservative there are a thousand others - try Nick Kent the music journalist who was closer to the Stones than most, or Grail Marcus or Robert Christgau or Stanley Booth - that will tell you that without Jagger's leadership and drive the Stones would have fallen apart after ten years if the band had to rely on Keith.
What people who weren't around in the 60's/70's forget is not only did Jagger have the leadership, he had the iconography, which is always a crucial ingredient in a great rock band and it was during that period the premier Stone - effete, androgynous, decadent - changed many peoples perceptions about what it was to be a "real man" and was the bete noire of mainstream culture, and as famously quoted became "Everybody's Lucifer," and we gals loved him as did many of the boys, and along the way he wrote some of the greatest most iconic songs in rock 'n' roll. That he wasn't Satan is immaterial, often perception is as powerful as the reality. I also suspect that what people resent about Jagger as represented by many on this thread is they feel betrayed, let down or a huge amount of generational envy or they just don't get it because they weren't around when Jagger and the boys were responsible for a seismic shift towards what the great music critic/cultural historian Robert Christgau described as "mass bohemianism," that took place on an international scale in the 60's . Much greater than any of the musical/cultural pygmies that came afterwards at the end of the 70's up to the present. I mean Ms Jagger got to have his cake and eat too. Where as dear old Keith got to live out his arrested adolescence and retain faux rebellious purity while Jagger took care of business.
The Stones were the Countercultures premier band and carried the zeitgeist of the age. With Gimme Shelter - rocks greatest song of dread - they foreshadowed they death of 60's utopian-ism - Paris 68/Grosvenor Square Riots/Mai Li Massacre/Manson Murders/Race War/Mass Civil Disturbance/Nixon/Altamont/Kent State Killings. At the height of their powers they pre-empted the coming dissolution and retreat into the decadence and cynicism of the 70's and my!! How we danced!! Not on the grave of Western Civilisation as we imagined but on our own sense of communalism.
For too short a while The Rolling Stones were sensual/sinister/iconic/politi­­­cal/ironic/camp. "This is the Stones as they ought to be remembered; emperors while they still had the clothes, hollow men before the tappers' hammer, princes of darkness before the lights came up".
The Rolling Stones Midnight Rambler Live - Forest National (Brussels, Belgium) Oct 17, 1973. - The sublime instrumental twin guitar break two minutes into Midnight Rambler, is one of the greatest in rock 'n' roll history. Complimented by Keith Richards monstrous, burn your house down rhythm guitar slashes, Mick Taylor enters serious neo-psychedelic blues - third eye - guitar territory and on this majestic, swamp voodoo, meets Brecht of a song, proves he was one of the greatest most inspired guitar players of the 60's/70's. For five short years the Stones, with Taylor proved that they truly were the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world.
The Stones are like a spine that runs down the back of rock 'n' roll history, unimpeachable bohemian rhythm kings. They are the spirit of rock 'n' roll, its death and one of its greatest beginnings. They are to rock 'n' roll as Wilde, Muddy Waters, Beardsley, Chuck Berry, Baudelaire, Jimmy Reed, Rimbaud are to the art of a life lived.
After all these years of let downs,disappointments/flawed albums perceived betrayals - outlaw millionaires - they have become the greatest rock 'n' roll circus and most beloved jukebox in the world. And yet they still represent that old Dylan trope that "To live outside the law you must be honest".
Or as Turner says in the Cammell/Roeg masterpiece 'Performance,' "The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.”
Long may they run
I too was at the Hyde Park gig as a young hippie girl art student, but let's just say the excesses of the day burnt a hole in my synaptic memory

mojoman wrote on Jul 13^th, 2012 at 10:38am:



Wait...MojoMAN was a hippie girl art student in 1969? Que?

Who actually wrote this? I think it's rather inspired.

FPM wrote on Jul 13^th, 2012 at 11:51am:


it was in the comments section from the guardians website the link i provided on my previous post.
loved it and wanted to share!!!

Rolling Stones Gather in London for 50th Anniversary Exhibit

'We've been playing, not rehearsing,' says Charlie Watts

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/rolling-stones-gather-in-london-for-50th-...



Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Mick Jagger attend 'Rolling Stones: 50 - Private View' as the Rolling Stones celebrate their 50th anniversary with an exhibition at Somerset House in London.
Photo/Samir Hussain/Wireimage

By Mark Sutherland
July 13, 2012 9:40 AM ET
The Rolling Stones celebrated their 50th anniversary in style last night by reuniting for the launch of a new photo exhibition celebrating the band's career.

Last seen in public together at the Shine A Light premiere in 2008, their appearance at London's Somerset House – 50 years to the day after their first gig at London's Marquee Club on July 12th, 1962 – is expected to be just the first in a series of events over the coming months to mark the band's Golden Jubilee.

On the red carpet, drummer Charlie Watts confirmed to Rolling Stone that the band had been practicing again, although he said it had "not yet" made any concrete plans for their live return.

"We've been playing, not rehearsing," he said with a smile.


"We had a good play in New York a few weeks ago," added guitarist Ronnie Wood. "We did 50 songs in five days. It was brilliant."

Meanwhile, frontman Mick Jagger said he was pleased the band had made it through 50 years together.

"It feels really good," he said, "if a little long . . . in the tooth! It's quite surprising. It does seem a long time, but I'm really happy about it."

Later, inside the exhibition, which showcases intimate pictures from throughout the band's career, Jagger reminisced about that first show at the now defunct Marquee, which the band had "reconstructed" for a photo shoot the previous day.

"I remember it because of the trouble we had finding a rhythm section," he laughed. Dick Taylor played bass that night, with the drummer either Tony Chapman or Mick Avory, depending on whose version of history you believe. The lineup was completed by Keith Richards and Brian Jones on guitar and Ian Stewart on piano. Former bass player Bill Wyman did not come on board until later that year, with Watts joining in 1963.

Jagger also noted that the band – then billed as the Rollin' Stones – only got that first gig because Alexis Korner's band Blues Incorporated, with whom Jagger had been singing, had been called up by the BBC to do a radio session. Jagger said his disappointment at not participating in the session (after the BBC said they would only pay for six musicians rather than seven) was tempered by having his new band fill Korner's usual Marquee residency slot.

Fifty years on, the band caused rather more of a buzz as they again spent the night together in central London. Despite heavy rain, dozens of fans lined the Victoria Embankment by the side of the River Thames to catch a glimpse of the band as they arrived for the exhibition.

The Stones turned up 20 minutes later than planned in a silver people carrier and immediately posed for photos. Smiling broadly, Jagger and Richards kept Wood between them as the band linked arms for the massed ranks of paparazzi. Jagger, wearing an electric blue suit, enthusiastically took direction from the photographers, telling his bandmates to shuffle to the left for a better angle.

Photos over, the band spent only the briefest of moments on the red carpet but, once inside the exhibition, all four members took the time to look at the photos and chat with party guests, who included former Stones Wyman and Mick Taylor, Simply Red's Mick Hucknall, lyricist Sir Tim Rice, crime writer Ian Rankin and Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera.

For much of the evening, Jagger and Richards held court in separate areas of the party. Richards, wearing trademark hat and shades, looked at the photos with his son Marlon, chatted with Live Aid promoter Harvey Goldsmith and at one point doffed his hat to some passing fans who spotted him through an open window. Meanwhile, Jagger chatted with his glamorous daughters Lizzie and Georgia May near an open door on the other side of the exhibition.

But despite two years of apparent feuding since a row over Richards' autobiography Life, the pair seemed as happy and relaxed in each other's company as they did in many of the vintage photos on display. At one point, Richards whispered in Jagger's ear, seemingly sharing a private joke that made both of them laugh.

Indeed, togetherness seemed to be the order of the day, with Mick also spotted embracing former bass player Wyman and chatting at length with Wood. Whether this harmony will lead to either new recordings or another tour remains to be seen, although Jagger has hinted about at least one gig this year and Stones insiders expect further discussions to be held while the band are all together in London.
Watts, however, maintained that the reunion was really just business as usual.

"We've never been apart really," he said. "It's just they live in another part of the world – well, he [Wood] doesn't, but the other two do."

The exhibition runs at Somerset House until August 27th. It coincides with the release of a photographic book, Rolling Stones 50.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/rolling-stones-gather-in-london-for-50th-...

mojoman wrote on Jul 13^th, 2012 at 10:38am:



_______________________________________________




Always an "intelligently written" and interestingly perceptive piece. Bravo -



Ian

these raggedy dolls never cease to incite excitement.  Sounds like a good year to be a Stones fan. 

I see the skunks are out again, and Mick's hair stylist has finally learned how to use a curling iron.