11

IN WHICH… I’M STONED

I made an early start to get to a Luton Town home match, diverting en route to Black Circle Records in nearby Leighton Buzzard. A very pleasant shop, offering a good selection of new and second-hand stock, but little or no psychedelia, my own preference, on show. The friendly young lady behind the counter addressed customers as ‘mate’ and had to deal with persistent enquiries as to where owner, David Kosky, might be. It seemed, though, that he didn’t usually turn up on a Saturday.

A man and his wife were browsing. Well, he was browsing, while she, apparently good-humouredly, asked the counter lady, ‘Can I bring his bed down?’ as he showed few signs of wanting to move on. There was a bargain-priced CD box edition with book(let), of the latest Rolling Stones’ album, Blue & Lonesome which sees the band tackling some of the basic blues numbers with which they first began their career. It was new, but priced at 20 quid, quite a markdown on the original price, although it seemed to me when I checked, that the basic version of the record, which I’d already bought on LP at half of the box price, contained exactly the same tracks, if not the associated, inessential fripperies.

Just who actually buys these ‘deluxe’ versions of albums, either new or reissued/remastered/restored/revised, baffles me. If they are bought for their content then the purchaser is shelling out an awful lot for maybe a couple of extra, afterthought ‘bonus’ tracks, an often hastily compiled, if good-looking, book(let) and a few pictures or posters. If bought in the hope that these ‘limited edition’ (they seldom tell you just how limited) copies will soar in value, then I fear they will have a very long wait. Just maybe their great-grandchildren will be able to sell them for a measly profit during the 2060 series of Flog It. That’s assuming there is still television…

I’d quite enjoyed listening to that Stones’ Blue & Lonesome album, although there was such a contrast between the listenable, but ever so slightly routine renderings of the tracks, and the semi-bootleg style releases I’d also recently acquired. These contained live versions of very similar material from early 1960s, usually BBC radio broadcasts, which vibrantly captured the early enthusiasm and vigour of the optimistic, youthful Jagger, Jones, Richard, Stewart, Watts, and Wyman. Yes, the band are now far more professional, but inevitably some of the optimistic swagger with which they played then, charging past the odd bum note, overwhelming it with the bravado and sheer joie de vivre of youth is missing.

The contrast between the two demonstrates why I now prefer, and enjoy watching and listening to, tribute bands like the Counterfeit Stones or the Rollin’ Stoned, who play the Stones’ back catalogue with the energy they used to display themselves back when they were still the Stones and not leaving themselves open to allegations of being just a pale imitation of their own imitators. The ‘real’ band has the authenticity, and seeing and hearing them play is something of a rite of passage for many generations. But the original shock and awe of seeing and experiencing their performance are gone, replaced by the tick-box duty of watching living legends move about and the anticipated kudos of being able to say, ‘I’ve seen the Stones. They’ve still got it.’ And yes, they have. But the ‘it’ they now have isn’t the same ‘it’ that ‘it’ used to be. Is it?

I was fortunate enough to see the Stones in their pomp – albeit on perhaps the saddest day for the group – at their legendary concert in Hyde Park in which they released butterflies galore to mark the death three days previously of estranged founder Brian Jones, who drowned in a swimming pool in early July 1969. Despite various conspiracy theories which have been, er, floated, there has been no ‘evidence’ produced compelling enough to suggest it was anything other than an unfortunate tragedy caused by the influence of drink and/or drugs, with the official inquest ruling ‘misadventure’.

In late May 2018, I sat in an almost full Alban Arena in St Albans, to see, and hear, at close quarters, the Counterfeit Stones, delivering a satisfying two hours of Stones’ music to an appreciative audience which hadn’t paid much more than 20 quid a head to be there at a time when the ‘real thing’ were also touring. Even ‘Nick Dagger’ commented in a jokey aside how much better a deal we were getting than those opting to pay through the nose for being able to say they were there to see the ‘real’ Stones in a cavernous arena where they might as well be watching a DVD of the band in action projected on to giant screens around the venue. Some of us don’t believe that even if they had been at the Jagger-Richards-Watts show that they’d have been watching a true version of the Rolling Stones. They wouldn’t have seen Brian Jones, or Bill Wyman. No Ian Stewart.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Stones and have bought every album, and all the early 1960s and 1970s singles they have issued, as well as many they haven’t. I even have a couple of Ronnie Wood prints hanging in my hall looking askance at me as I write these critical words. There’s a ‘Mick’ of his, with Charlie hitting the skins behind him, and a wonderful, contemplative, strumming ‘Keef’. But I don’t have a Ronnie ‘Ronnie’ as I genuinely cannot regard the former Face/Jeff Beck Group member as a bona fide Stone. Any more than Mick Taylor before him.

Seeing the version of the group any court of law would almost certainly uphold as being the proper band, Craig Brown, columnist for the Daily Mail, wrote of his trip to watch them play in late 2018, under the heading ‘Seeing The Stones? Take Binoculars!’

‘“Premium” tickets which might get you within viewing range cost £282.45 including booking fee,’ he declared, adding: ‘Most of the audience doesn’t watch the concert, but a live film of the concert. In fact, it could as easily be a film of a concert that took place last year.’

Without the screens, Craig, from his viewpoint (the cheapest seats cost ‘just under £100’) ‘had no way of telling whether the little chap at the front was Mick Jagger rather than, say Kylie Minogue or, indeed, Jacob Rees-Mogg.’ Although Mick’s voice was still in fine form, ‘it was not their fault that the acoustics of the London Stadium are hopeless.’ He concluded that, ‘I could have had the same experience for free by sitting in a field watching the Stones on TV through binoculars held the wrong way round.’

If there were ever two greater gestures of contempt towards those who hoisted their careers skywards and kept them there, one was surely the actions of the Stones in ‘celebrating’ the free concert in Hyde Park after the death of Brian Jones, by charging a small fortune to attend the band’s concert there, on 6 July 2013, ostensibly part of their ‘50 and Counting’ tour to mark the group’s 50 years of existence.

Then there was the issuing of a 2012 TRIPLE CD greatest hits-style compilation with 48 tracks which virtually all loyal fans would already own, but also including on it two tracks unavailable elsewhere. No wonder it was called Grrr! – they, or their commercial people, must have known that would be the reaction. The BBC online review by Sean Egan of the record, noted:

‘The stupid title and stupider cover artwork of Grrr! seem to suggest that enthusiasm was in short supply as the Stones’ camp approached yet another permutation of their greatest hits.’

He adds that ‘all they can muster in the way of new material to mark the milestone of their half-centenary is ‘Doom and Gloom’ and ‘One More Shot’, a brace of tracks that – in the typical modern Stones style – are just riff, slogan and biscuit-tin drums.’

These two tracks could have been released as a bargain price, or even free, thank you to long-suffering, completist followers. Some small recognition of the loyalty of their now elderly core support would not have gone amiss.

You may conclude that I have a down on the Rolling Stones. But perhaps those we love the most we give the hardest time.

It is hard now to recapture the way in which the arrival and impact of The Beatles had such a seismic effect on me and so many other early teenagers. This amazing group seemed to have arrived from out of nowhere, and began to reinvent the entire world of music, simultaneously energising and exercising the media from newspapers to radio to TV to movies.

Almost everyone of a certain age and mindset took to them immediately and gave them virtually unconditional love. They brought with them to our previously monochrome world sunlight and bright colours. But then, a few months later, the Rolling Stones turned up. If The Beatles were the flamboyant technicolour photograph, the Stones were the scruffy, dark negative. Many of us who had already welcomed The Beatles with open arms and minds began to have second thoughts. Perhaps these polar opposites were the truer reflection of the era we were living in. The rivalry between the bands began to feature in the media coverage and, for me, the decision had to be made virtually on my 13th birthday.

By November 1963 The Beatles were exploding into the public consciousness. They already boasted three massive hits: ‘Please, Please Me’, ‘From Me to You’ and ‘She Loves You’ dominated the charts, following on from their initial chart success, ‘Love Me Do’. You could even argue they’d already peaked, as ‘She Loves You’ would be their biggest selling UK hit of all. Meanwhile, although their untidy image had started to aggravate parents everywhere, the more rebellious kids were championing the Stones over The Beatles. Initially, it seemed a one-sided contest as the first Rolling Stones’ single, ‘Come On’, peaked at Number 21. Now came the first real point at which a choice had to be made. Like an owner throwing a hungry canine the contents of a tin of supermarket own-brand dogmeat, so The Beatles unexpectedly handed over an unwanted song, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ for the Stones to record. They did so, and the resulting single became their first Top 20 entry, reaching Number 12.

Here was a focal point. Yes, The Beatles wrote the song. Their own version, though, was given to Ringo. It was regarded as a run-of-the-mill song which the drummer sang, as a filler track on the With The Beatles LP. He may have been joking but John Lennon told the writer David Sheff in a 1980 interview in New York, which was one of the last, if not the last, he ever gave: ‘It was a throwaway. The only two versions of the song were Ringo and the Rolling Stones. That shows how much importance we put on it: We weren’t going to give them anything great, right?’

The choice, which was pretty much going to decide which side you were on for the duration of the contest between them, now had to be confronted. Did you prefer the version by The Beatles or the Stones? For me, the Stones’ was clearly the better, catchier, more aggressively played treatment, and remains one of my favourite singles of all time. But did the fact that The Beatles wrote the song trump the fact that the Stones performed it better?

Some reports suggest that watching The Beatles creating ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ in the studio encouraged the Stones to write their own songs, while the other explanation for them doing so has always been that Andrew Loog Oldham sent Mick and Keith into a room and told them not to come out without a song – which, so legend has it, was the genesis of ‘As Tears Go By’. The Stones wouldn’t have a Jagger/Richards-written hit single until March 1965 when ‘The Last Time’ opened the self-penned singles’ floodgates. Once that happened there was no holding them.

The establishment and the authorities had begun to pick on them for various reasons. This was the time when William Rees-Mogg, editor of The Times, used a quote from Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (‘Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’) as the heading for a supportive editorial on 1 July 1967 about the ‘Redlands’ court case, when Mick and Keith appeared before magistrates charged with drug offences, resulting in prison sentences. All of this just cemented their place in my affections and although ‘We Love You’ in August 1967 was their least successful single for some time, I absolutely loved it, particularly its strikingly flower-power B-side, ‘Dandelion’, the name Keith gave to his daughter.

You will probably not be very surprised to know that the psychy Their Satanic Majesties Request is my favourite Stones’ LP. How weird it is that, with thirteen weeks in the charts, reaching a highest Number 3, according to the book Guinness British Hit Singles & Albums, this album outdid the follow-up, the much more critically-lauded Beggars Banquet, which was also a Number 3 but only spent twelve weeks in the charts.

When that dismal disco period of the dirge-like ‘Miss You’ and its album Some Girls arrived around June 1978, three years after Ronnie Wood replaced Mick Taylor, I decided it was time to pay just lip service loyalty to the band. Despite the short-term recovery of ‘Start Me Up’ in August 1981, they have never since threatened to come anywhere near former glories. Bill Wyman’s official departure at the end of 1992 was further proof that an era was over, although the remaining trio would never accept it.

In February 2015 Wyman put the band’s roots and history into perspective with his comments after a plaque commemorating the chance meeting between Mick and Keith was unveiled at Dartford station, reading:

‘Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met on platform 2 on 17 October 1961 and went on to form The Rolling Stones.’

Wyman made a warranted public complaint, pointing out on BBC Radio 5 Live:

‘Mick Jagger and Keith Richards didn’t create the Rolling Stones – they were part of The Rolling Stones like all of us. Brian Jones wanted to form a blues band and he enlisted each member one by one. He gave the name The Rolling Stones, he chose the music and he was the leader.’

But if the Stones and Beatles were amongst my first musical loves they only dabbled, albeit very influentially for a while, in the style which would remain for me, the greatest rock music genre of them all…