Ladies and gentlemen, the Resistant Grays
On the Rolling Stones at 60, and why they matter more now than ever
It’s better to burn out than it is to rust. — Neil Young
The Rolling Stones gave us typographical insight into where they are today, decades ago. Before the nervous speed-scrawl of their name on the cover of Exile on Main Street, before the down-market street-vendor flash of their name on Some Girls, before more recent years when the font didn’t seem to matter, the Stones affixed their name to a classic — Beggars Banquet — in a typestyle befitting an older, more elegant, more classical era and identity. It was no accident; they used the same script font on stationery sent to commission the tongue-and-lips logo that shorthands the band for the world to this day.
The firebrands who once railed at the servants of the ruling class have morphed into pillars of society, employers of numerous servants of their own. The Stones, one of the most British of institutions, needed the blues, that most American music, for its initial inspiration, its enduring history, and much of its emotional currency. To say nothing of the band’s name: it’s nothing short of rock folklore how, when Brian Jones, the late founding member and guitarist, was asked for his group’s name when pitching for an advert in a music paper, and he called on the title of a Muddy Waters song for inspiration. “The Rollin’ Stones.”
That name (apostrophe included) was the one to watch at the Marquee Club on July 12, 1962, which, I recalled 10 years ago in PopMatters, was otherwise something of an “underwhelming day in world history.”
“That date marked the first time there were two manned spacecrafts in space. A resolution for President Kennedy’s proposed investment tax credit for business was adopted in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was Oscar Hammerstein II’s 67th birthday. And at the Marquee Club, 90 Wardour Street in London, the future announced itself when Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, bass player Dick Taylor and drummer Mick Avory played in public for the first time. The Rolling Stones were born.”
What this year’s 60th anniversary of the Stones as a musical entity proves, maybe more clearly than before, is that the Rolling Stones have evolved into something that’s as much an idea as a band or a financial juggernaut, one that’s more important now than ever. In a world caught in a true crossfire hurricane of a smoldering global pandemic, an economy teetering on recession, apocalyptic endangerment of the environment, and a deeply ravaging and expensive war in Ukraine — the worst such wartime violence since World War II — the Stones have come to represent more than the traditionally licentious freedoms of the rock experience.
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There’s the obvious nationalistic tie-up, of course. The Stones, the Queen, Big Ben, Burberry, spread-collar shirts, Churchill, James Bond, and Bombay gin may be the most enduring global imprints of the British brand (along with the rules for the Oxford comma, like the preceding one between “James Bond” and “Bombay gin”).
But the Stones are bigger, wider, than the idea of being British. Among other things, they represent the essence of the improvised identity, the talent for adjusting to exigent circumstances, an indomitable sense of humor, the uncanny ability to thrive amid chaos, and the equally uncanny ability to impose an order to that chaos that makes it all look like business as usual.
They’ve channeled the common chronological downward spiral into a graceful onset of the years, and a fan base that’s been graying and growing through those years, loyal as ever. It’s lately resulted in a novel relationship; the Stones’ 2021 No Filter tour was underwritten by Alliance for Lifetime Income, a 501 ( c )(6) educational organization focused on retirement planning. It’s fitting: Endurance has been a Stones trademark; no other band from the early waves of the British invasion, and arguably no other band from the entirety of the halcyon ’60s remains as joyfully, profitably, and consistently on the field. Not even Jagger’s recent COVID diagnosis kept the band off stage for a minute longer than medically necessary.
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That’s more than evidence of a ravenous work ethic. The Stones, and especially lifer-for-life Richards, have gone on the record about how being in the group, growing and learning within its embrace, distills the art of living life to the fullest: an all-or-nothing proposition. “I don’t think you stop growing until they start shoveling the dirt in,” Richards told the Guardian UK in September 2015. The Rolling Stones believe that, body & soul, not so much as a defiance of time’s inroads as an accommodation with the inevitable.
That’s maturity. That’s growing up. Like the growing up in public the band did over the years — evolving, for example, from their more than occasional flirtations with misogyny into later, fuller lives of doting fatherhood, and beaming pride in and respect for the daughters and wives, and sons, around them.
And their maturity is in parallel with ours. We’ve grown enough to realize that the Rolling Stones are essential because there’s so much more to survive now than before, more now than in a very long time. And we’ve grown enough to know that whether you’re a fan of the Stones or not almost isn’t important. Fan or not, you’re inclined to respect what they represent, what this year’s anniversary signifies: Something that stays put. Something that endures. And things that last matter precisely because of that persistence. They assume a rightful importance by the force of their very existence.
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That kind of long-distance running in the entertainment world makes creating your own ecosystem almost a necessity, and the Stones have gotten very good at that, and at understanding how very well suited they are for what they do. After everything, see, it’s not musical or cultural or economic or generational. It’s Newtonian.
Newton’s First Law of Motion tells us, a body in motion tends to stay in motion. So inspired, the band may never have come up with a better moniker than its eternal, inherently kinetic name — and its obedience of the prime directive of entertainment: “The show must go on.” That law’s enforcement has obtained with the Rolling Stones for years, through the passing of Brian Jones (in 1969), Ian Stewart (in 1985), and the timekeeper, dear Charlie Watts (in 2021). Along with myriad friends, inspirations, associates, and fans down through the decades. Nonetheless. Lives end, but life, the franchise, endures. “The show must go on.”
And that’s our Newtonian truth as well. In the wider context of life itself, at the genetic and cellular level of every human being on the planet today, the Stones’ prime directive is our very own.
Michael Eric Ross is a journalist and screenwriter writing from Los Angeles.
