The Rolling Stones: The Roundhouse, London
Geoffrey Cannon, Los Angeles Times, 2 May 1971

Getting Lots of Satisfaction From Mick, Stones

Photo by Pete Smith


...Our sense (is) of standing in the ruins of thought and on the verge of the ruins of history and of man himself... More and more, the shrewdest thinkers and artists are precocious archaeologists of these ruins-in-the-making, indignant or stoical diagnosticians of defeat, enigmatic choreographers of the complex musical movements useful for survival in an era of permanent apocalypse.
— Susan Sontag: "Thinking Against Oneself"

WE KEEP ON taking the question as answered: Why do we listen to so much rock music? The record players and albums we all possess; the periodicals and articles we read (like this one): they didn't come installed, like the electricity or water supply. We search them out. Why?

Here's one cluster of answers, printed often enough. Because pop music can be art. Because Paul McCartney is on a par with Schubert, or Gershwin. Because pop music is today's classical music. But these aren't answers, they don't begin to be answers. Art, Schubert, Gershwin, classical music, don't matter in the way rock does. The effect of the Beatles, or rather the Beatles as misled by McCartney, was to sell out rock, as an insipid, cadet branch of conventional music.

Happily, rock 'n' roll will stand. But as what? Happily, there are as many accounts as there are great rock bands. And none more exemplary than the Stones, who've stood up for the qualities in rock which cannot be assimilated into art. The Stones are perverted, outrageous, violent, repulsive, ugly, tasteless, incoherent. A travesty. That's what's good about them.

Good old Rolling Stones! They're still banned from the Albert Hall. Still banned from the biggest hotels in Liverpool and Manchester, as they discovered this last month on their English tour. The first time they performed at the Station Hotel, Richmond, was January, 1963. That's half a lifetime ago for a 16 year old.

For all I know, you, reading this, are 16 years old. That's half your lifetime away. And all that time Mick Jagger's not budged. Now, he makes better music and has better lawyers. But his stance is the same. "My responsibility is only to myself" (said after the Lord Chief Justice had allowed his appeal). "My responsibility is only to myself: DEAH!" And down the years, he's brought maybe 10 million people over, by his example, not to his side, but to their own side. Over, to say "I am," just a little bit louder.

Seeing Mick, anyone's head hums with recollections and sensations. He walks on stage at the Roundhouse, London. (Was this really the last Rolling Stones' concert?) Neon purple trousers. Black bolero, with sequined lights. Baseball cap quartered, and quartered again, in primary satin colors. And torso. And the grin of a man who's learned to be the ringmaster of himself.

"I was born in a cross-fire hurricane." The guitars scooping your breath away, the mind immediately bombed with sound, and word-images rushing over each other. Mick the demon king. Mick as the spring-heeled Jack of the penny dreadfuls, leaping through the windows of your imagination at dead of night, eyes staring out of his horned head. "I was washed up and left for dead."

The members of the band play in their classic positions on stage: Charlie at the back, Mick in front, Keith to Mick's left, Mick Taylor to his right. Bill to Keith's left, standing still. Keith dips to Mick's side. "With a spike right through my head." And backs away again, until the next androgynous chorus. There's no way to get used to 'Jumping Jack Flash'. And why try? The audience gives gasps of happy outrage. Dr. Jagger and the Nostrums. Flesh crept. All in fun. You'll never feel better, because you'll never feel quite the same.

Bass guitar, then a cross-buzz. "I've got nasty habits. I take tea at 3," Mick makes plays with his elbows, bunched up to his chest, and three in the band exchange glances. "Don't you think they's a place for you, in between the sheets?" Jim Price and Bobby Keys rip in on horns at the points that, on the song as recorded, now sound thin with only guitar. The sound sensation rises. Mick's voice is a blur.

Mick's insolent, flat speaking voice. "Thank you. We're going to do three new songs for you tonight. This one's called 'Dead Flowers'."

Flash, flash, flash. The bars like a shuttle weaved through and through this number, working like the Flying Burrito Brothers do. The Stones have been sharpening these new numbers, right across Europe, in 1970. Now, back home, Mick prances in front of the mike, hands on hips. "Take me down, little Susie, take me down, I know you think you're the queen of the underground." Price and Keys lift their horns, into the Stones' carrier wave. "Send me dead flowers to my wedding."

Have you noticed how all great Stones' songs have got a line somewhere in them, maybe buried so you don't hear it until a few listens, that makes you start up and prickle and say, "What's that?" "I'll be in my basement room, with my needle and spoon, and another girl can take my pain away." Listen. Mick only does it to annoy, and because he knows it teases. Rolling Stones' songs are not meant to be helpful. The on-stage volts hiss and crackle.

The music is ambiguous, between being an observation of horrible events (perceived with dread) and dwelling on invented perversions (perceived with excitement). Is Mick aware of this ambiguity? Be very sure that he is. Music is, by its nature, ambiguous. You can never say of any piece of music: "What does that mean?" But what Mick has mastered is creating ambiguous reactions in his audience. Because you don't know whether to cry out or laugh, you become tense and excited and subject to the music.

The temptation with the Stones' most impressive songs is to try to take them seriously as consistent stories. "What's he trying to say? What's that mean?" Questions like this always fail. Take 'Sympathy for the Devil' as an example. The question put, often enough, is, "Whose side is Mick on?" When he sings, "I shouted out — Who killed the Kennedys?" he seems no longer to be Lucifer, but himself. Sure. He's either/neither/either.

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners, saints.
As heads is tails...

Like I've said, travesty as an aesthetic. The conventional distinctions denied. Music is not to "be made sense of." The fan's reactions are the most authentic.

Song after song, is mask after mask fitted on. Which mask is himself? That's his problem. I'd say the songs in which the "you" comes closest into focus are probably the most personal. But they're not the best songs. Mick is at his best being his own ringmaster; with hat, whip, and grin, bringing on the next act, for our entertainment. High-wire, the dwarfs, the lions, have their equivalents in the Stones on stage, with Mick putting the tightness in your stomach, and that dizzy feeling in your head. He sings:

I can't get no satisfaction

An old act, a worn mask. The song's done absently, and he follows with another man's song, standing with legs astride the microphone stand. 'Little Queenie', which fits better with the genial mood Mick's been in for the last few months. 'Satisfaction' may be the best rock 'n' roll song ever, but the "I" in it has a bad time. Tonight, the "I" swaggers:

I got lumps in my throat when I saw her walking down the aisle...

Mick's entitled to claim an affinity with Chuck Berry. They lick their lips, within their songs, the same way, and punch the emphasis into their words. "I got lumps in my throat..." "She's too cute to be a minute over 17." The words stressed separately, like there's a full stop after them. And Mick makes the song by the insidious way he wraps his tongue around the word "mee-an-while." He sings clearly, the band pours out a beat that weighs six tons. "Go, go, go, little Queenie!"

Next, 'Brown Sugar', the star song of the new album, which has to go to No. 1 released as a single. The most blatant theme of many of the best Jagger/Richards songs is a compulsion to break rules. The song states, or implies, a norm, which is contradicted. And, through such songs, norms are searched after, so they may be contradicted: which is why anyone who looks for a common stance in Stones' numbers is wasting his time. The only thing common, is being perverse. It's a rather fetching tic: combining childishness ("yah! I will do it") with a perception of, even respect for, the rules. (Why otherwise make any reference to rules?)

Mick puts his side to us, like he used to in his old maracca days. But now he punches the air in front of him, prancing on the spot, ducking into the hand-mike. He rolls his eyes and yells "whoah," like some stud horse.

Bragging about what he can do, in and out of songs, making the amazing display of himself, refined by meticulous use of exaggeration over the years, Mick's like a Muhammad Ali who's about to retire not only undefeated, but unchallenged.

I'm no schoolboy
But I know what I like
You should have heard me...

A Stones concert is such a treat. The last number. Guitar, bass, drums, break in like great waves. The first time I heard this song was in the Roundhouse, at the time we in England first heard the rumors of what really happened at the Chicago Democratic Convention. Jeff Dexter, the Roundhouse jockey, announced he had his hands on an advance copy of the new Stones' single. He named it. 'Street Fighting Man'. And its noise, grossly distorted, swelled and howled into the auditorium. Tonight, live, it was still more deafening. Within the song, the guitars burst like artillery, and have the shock of sudden overhead thunder. This isn't music, it's a bloodstream.

The noise is unbelievably loud and distorted. You have to know the words and the song to distinguish structure within it. The band refer to it rather than play it, but that's OK, because everyone knows it and is playing it inside their own heads. "My name is called Disturbance. I shout and scream, I kill the king, I rail at all his servants." Imagery like the tin figures at fairs you shoot down with rifles, to win prizes.

Mick makes, a little circle with his right hand, stretched above his head. He leaps up. "Bye bye, good luck." And he's gone.

...Being a free-lance explorer of spiritual dangers, the artist gains a certain license to behave differently from other people; matching the singularity of his vocation, he may be decked out with a suitably eccentric life-style, or he may not. His job is inventing trophies of his experiences — objects and gestures that fascinate and enthrall, not merely (as prescribed by older notions of the artist) edify or entertain. His principal means of fascinating is to advance one step further in the dialectic of outrage.
— Susan Sontag: "The Pornographic Imagination"

© Geoffrey Cannon, 1971

Total word count of piece: 1878

Citation
APA

Cannon, G. (1971) "The Rolling Stones: The Roundhouse, London". Los Angeles Times. The Rolling Stones. Retrieved March 12, 2021, from http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-rolling-stones-the-roundhouse-...

Many thanks to Peter Metcalfe for sending me the link to the article

https://www.rocksbackpages.com/RockArchive/Article/rolling-stones

50 years... Remember it was on a Sunday afternoon. You had had to sleep rough outside the Roundhouse, some weeks before to get a ticket. Ticket price : £1. Mick wore a multicolored jumpsuit and a jockey cap. Supposed to be their farewell, last ever show. Magical.