Why I Hate The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones--"The Last Time" (mp3)
The Rolling Stones--"It's All Over Now" (mp3)

It was not always so.

Back in the late 60's and early 70's, I had two Rolling Stones albums that got as much turntable play as anything else I owned--Big Hits (High Tides and Green Grass) and Through the Past Darkly (Big Hits, Vol. 2). Songs like "Heart of Stone," "The Last Time," "As Tears Go By," "Paint It Black," "Ruby Tuesday," "She's A Rainbow," and "Dandelion" were favorites that I'd play over and over, stacked album side after stacked album side on my record player. The songs from those two records comprised much of the soundtrack of my early teens.

What I didn't realize until I was researching this column is that these songs are hits from the Brian Jones era Stones; by the time Through the Past Darkly came out, Jones was both out of the band and dead.

For most people, I realize, the pinnacle of the Stones as a band came after this--Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street all the way up to Some Girls, but by that time I was already pretty much done with them. In 1974, we all had tickets to see the Stones in Cleveland, but I ended up selling mine, with the vague excuse that I had to work (which was true, but not essential--I was being paid $2.00/hr by the Mt. Lebanon Parks and Recreation Dept. to schedule and oversee tennis courts that cost $.50/hr to rent, but all of them but one was closed due to construction!). I have never been sorry that I didn't see that show, great as my friends said that it was.

What happened? What happened to me? I've never really tried to figure that out until now. I just knew that I had a vague dislike for what the Stones had become, and that feeling has grown from distaste to loathing over the years. I hung with them until about 1972, and then I was finished with them, but for a smatterin of great songs on Exile.

I suppose, in the simplest terms, the, Rolling Stones, especially Mick and Keith, became more celebrities than legitimate musicians to me by the mid-70's. The Stones seemed like they were more of an event, a brand with a logo, and those two guys more like larger than life figures than members of a hard-working band. I suppose it's why I never liked U2 much; they believed their own mythology and became bigger than their music.

Why didn't my disdain spread to other megabands like the Who or Led Zeppelin or Bowie? With the Who, it was obvious: Pete Townshend continued to write songs that helped him to work through his childhood and England and the meaning of rock. Like Neil Young or, even more so, Bruce Springsteen, the songs of the Who always had their contexts built in. With Quadrophenia, whether it was true or not, I always felt like I was glimpsing Townshend's own teenage angst, difficulties fitting in, romantic failures. The Who rocked, but they were confessional, too.

And Zeppelin? Much as they were (rightly) accused of stealing other people's blues riffs, I never doubted that they were bluesmen, that everything originated there. And, I never lost interest in whatever Jimmy Page had to play.

Bowie never pretended to be anything but a chameleon.

The Stones, though, were never more than dabblers. Satanic for awhile when it was cool. Yeah, they went bluesy on Exile, but wasn't it just a pose? It certainly didn't carry over. Maybe go a little reggae a record or two later? Maybe embrace a disco beat when that is hot? Occasionally country for shits and giggles. While some bands can successfully intergrate the latest trends into their sounds, with the Stones, it always sounded to me like a purely commercial endeavor. What sheen could they put on their sound so it would sell?

Sensing the change in rock in the late 70's, Townshend confronted the Sex Pistols, both in person and in song; Neil Young also did so in song and recorded with Devo. Where was Mick at that time? Studio 54.

Because rock and roll is all about the lie. That's right. It's just a lie, but it's a lie that we want desperately to believe. The men and/or women up on the stage, like any performers, must convince us that they are indeed what they seem--troubadors, revolutionaries, chroniclers of our times, lovers, visionaries. We want to believe that the people in those songs are people they know, that they care about, maybe even them. And if the listener/audience member doesn't buy the lie, the whole house of cards that is a band's persona collapses.

With the Rolling Stones, I never had any trouble seeing through the facade. From Keith's pathetic "acting" in Gimme Shelter to Mick's spraying down the audience with a firehose in concert, the Stones became the epitome of Queen's implied mantra: You will not rock us; We will rock you. To me, the lyrics "But what can a poor boy do, except to sing for a rock and roll band" are among the most laughable I've ever heard. Great a song as "It's Only Rock 'N' Roll" might potentially be, I don't buy it for a second. There's nothing about the Mick persona that suggest that he has ever been the guy with the broken heart, or even that he would be "waitin' on a friend." Sorry, boys, but the public personas can't play the material convincingly.

Finally, you'll notice, I haven't said a word about anything past the late '70's. That's because there isn't anything to say. Their sporadic output of new material over the last 32 years is, to be kind, forgettable, to be direct, embarassing. The Rolling Stones are the worst example of a band that didn't know when to hang it up, and so they have become the Beach Boys of hard rock, dusting off the show every few years for an international money grab from the kinds of people who still believe that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards never got any satisfaction.

I know that most of you will not agree with me. That's fine. But I'll bet you have your own versions of the rock and roll lie that you refuse to believe. This is just mine.