Monday, May 20, 2013

The Rolling Stones in Las Vegas


After the wife so gracefully convinced me to buy tickets to see the Rolling Stones in Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena on 11 May (“JUST DO IT; you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”), I wrote sincerely on this blog, “here’s hoping that these old dudes don’t ruin or pervert the image and ideal I hold so dear.”

Truly, the Rolling Stones are one of my favorite favorite bands.  It’s only rock and roll, but I sure like it. 

On the surface, their sound isn’t all that remarkable; the blues-based structures and chord progressions are tried and true, the riffs are often the first riffs picked up by novice guitarists (though the tuning can baffle even the shrewdest of ears), and Mick Jagger isn’t the most technically gifted singer.  Underneath that surface however is something a little harder to grasp; there’s a current of tension, of danger, of sex and violence.  It’s a decidedly adult sound, one that separated them from their peers and fueled their success -- it was fresh and exciting then, and it’s often imitated but never duplicated now.  This is part of “the image and ideal I hold so dear.”

Their sound also undoubtedly lent to the band’s characterization as bad-boys, up to no good.  They were viewed as degenerates, offensive and immoral and depraved (which of course only made them more appealing).  Certainly, their hedonistic bent (perhaps most notably in the case of Keith Richards) had something to do with it too but, sensational press-clippings aside, the tone and subject matter of their music arguably spoke more to their badness than the headlines they made.  Dripping with attitude, with dark undertones of rebellion and hard living, the music of the Stones is wild and feral, full of happily reckless abandon.  Still, it retains a touching human element that seems to leaven and lighten it.  This too is part of “the image and ideal I hold so dear.”
My personal history with the Rolling Stones is unexceptional yet respectable.  Initially, when I heard their Hot Rocks in high school, I was basically unmoved; I played with fire but didn’t get much satisfaction.  It wasn’t until my college years that the music really started to sink in and resonate with me.  Incidentally, I started drinking and engaging in more grown-up behavior around this time, which may or may not have had anything to do with how I absorbed and experienced their music.  I nonetheless began to recognize a different quality in it, one I had heretofore heard but not effectively felt.  Gravitating mostly to the band’s superb 1968-72 four-album run (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile On Main St.), I found myself hopelessly affected.  I soon dug into their entire catalog, ripping those joints and fully getting my rocks off.  The deeper I got, the more clear their image and ideal became to me, and the more dearly I began to hold it.  I took it, and I couldn’t leave it.

To this end, I also consumed footage of the band at work.  Films like Gimme Shelter, Rock andRoll Circus, and Ladies and Gentlemen were/are revelatory to me.  Their performances at the T.A.M.I. Show in 1964, in Ireland in 1965, and in Texas in 1978 prove that the Stones onstage were a special animal with a lasting influence.  As such, I really came to respect them as a live act. 

I could yak for days about how they operated in front of an audience but I won’t go beyond this: Jagger is still widely regarded as THE quintessential frontman.  Finger-pointing and hip-shaking, lip-pouting and cock-of-the-walk-strutting, he was charming and charismatic, aggressive but coy -- the man wrote the book on rock-and-roll performance.  And Keith?  He seemed to be all about the music and the sensation of sound.  Where other guitarists of this period were showmen, flailing wildly and engaging the crowd with any number of exaggerated moves, Keith often just played with his eyes closed and sang to himself.  To be sure, he stepped about, swayed and shook his head but to me, he was way more into the music than his contemporaries, savoring every melody.  Though it’s likely he was high to a degree, seeing him listening and loving gives me the sense that he was just as intoxicated and transported by the music as he was by whatever was floating around his bloodstream.  The ever-stoic Charlie Watts also seemed a little disconnected, despite the fact that his drumming held the entire thing together.  All this too is “the image and ideal I hold so dear.”

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m obsessed with the Rolling Stones.  I’m not trying to compete with other fans, to suggest that I’m a bigger fan, or to prove that my relationship to the music is stronger.  I just want to be clear about what this band means to me and how dearly I hold their image and ideal.  It’s special to me.  I’ve scrutinized the sounds and sights, read books and collected ephemera but, I’d never seen the Rolling Stones live.  Over the years, I’ve given them treatment here, here, and here.  I’ve also tried to work out how and why old men playing the music of young men, prancing about like the 20-something bad-boys they once were, makes me kinda uncomfortable. 

Accordingly, I worried that flying to Las Vegas and going to the show, probably my last chance to see this iconic band play, would be nothing but a letdown.  I was concerned that the Stones couldn’t cut it, that a group of 70-year-olds couldn’t possibly rock with the same conviction they had 40-some years ago, that they couldn’t possibly live up to the expectations I’d set as a totally fierce fan.  Would spending a boatload of money for a seat in a large arena sour my taste for the band?  Probably not.  Would the defining moment of my fanaticism tarnish the image and ideal in my mind?  Maybe.  I waffled.  But the wife, in her wisdom, insisted.  So it was with this attitude, this raw reverence for the image and ideal of the Rolling Stones, that I pulled the trigger on a 500-dollar pair of concert tickets.

And lo, the Rolling Stones did not disappoint.  The show was much better than I’d expected, cooler than I’d imagined, totally thrilling, totally awesome and totally magical.  Nine days later, I’m still riding the wave.
Novel concept, this alcohol to go.
We spent the night before the show in Vegas, at the MGM Grand, and kind of got a feel for the place.  For the most part, there were two kinds of people: dressed-up, heavily made-up 30-40-year-olds in various states of inebriation and chain-smoking older folks carrying plastic bags full of gambling change.  The night of the concert however, a more diverse crowd descended on the scene.  I observed people from all age groups, some younger than me and many much older.  I saw 70-year-old women leaning on canes, their orthopedic shoes squeaking with each shuffled step; I saw 60-year-old men with vintage Stones t-shirts tucked into worn jeans; I saw 50-year-old people poured into unforgiving pants and halter tops, their hair Aqua-Netted to perfection.  And I saw young folks, some bouncing manically with excitement, others listlessly trailing their (likely wealthy) parents, having been dragged to the show as part of their continuing rock-and-roll education.  I took it all in, and it all added to the anticipation.  Crowding around the gates, getting our tickets scanned and filing in, I couldn’t help but feel a charge in the air.  Indeed, the mood was electric.

We took our seats with a great, straight-on view of the massive tongue-and-lip stage.  Our seats were not the cheapest seats but they definitely weren’t the most expensive.  We were up behind the sound-board and lighting-rig, which was manned by eight people in cockpits suspended from its frame.  Soon enough, it was raised to the ceiling, out of view, and the house-lights went down.  I had been nervously tapping my toes up to this point but now, I jumped to my feet.  I whooped reflexively, without thinking, unable to contain my glee.

Grainy film flickered on the giant screen.  Screaming teeny-boppers, convulsing youngsters, the repressed youth of postwar England, all losing their minds at the sight and sound of five thin, bushy-haired boys.  Replete with sound bites from newsmen, famous fans (Iggy Pop!) and the Stones themselves, the video served as a retrospective of the 50-year history of the Rolling Stones as well as an introduction to the band now jogging onstage in the dark.

A simple drum beat fills the arena.  I’m quaking, my eyes are welling up.  The spotlights flash to life and I promptly lose it as Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood attack the first notes of “Get Off of My Cloud.”  I’m still hooting madly as Mick Jagger (Mick Fucking Jagger!) shimmies to the front of the stage and delivers the opening verse.  The snotty song, released as a single in 1965, had aged well and, to my absolute delight, so had the Rolling Stones.

The band, Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie, along with Darryl Jones on bass, Chuck Leavell on piano, Bobby Keys on saxophone, some other guy on a saxophone, and Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler on backing vocals, kicked out their tunes as only they could.  Charlie, the oldest member at 71 (he’ll be 72 in June), drummed mightily.  Keith played riff after indelible riff on a succession of beautiful Telecasters, trading solos with Ronnie.  Mick raced from one end of the immense stage to the other, dropped trademark dance moves along the way and, astonishingly, still had the breath to shout the words we all knew.  At one point, he greeted the audience, “Ellow Lass Vay-geese!  You know what they say, what happens in Vegas… ends up ten minutes later on Instagram.”  He kept up the patter throughout the show, thanking the crowd and introducing songs and band members, who all seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves.  Coincidentally, I was also enjoying theirselves. 
Keith sings "Happy" in this phone-photo from our seats.
Three songs in, I was in-control but, I hadn’t quite settled down.  My hands didn’t belong to me.  They just couldn’t hold onto my beer, too busy were they air-drumming, air-guitaring, or slapping rhythms on my thighs.  So when the slow, eerie groove of “Gimme Shelter” began to grow and build around me, I was able to half-collect myself and consider the magnitude of my situation: I was experiencing one of my favorite favorite bands, a band whose “image and ideal I hold so dear,” and it was amazing.  I was so overcome, I nearly wept when Charlie jumped in with those two snare-cracks and the song took flight.

Though they play old guitars, the Stones are nevertheless embracing new technology.  Case in point, they’ve got an app that lets concertgoers vote for one of five songs they’d like to hear at the show.  The winning song for the Vegas show, by request, was “Beast of Burden” from 1978’s Some Girls.  Keith and Charlie set if off, Mick started to sing and who should swagger out from behind the drum-riser but Katy Perry.  The pop star immediately turned heads as some wondered who this young girl was, why she was sharing a stage with the Stones, and just how the corset she wore was containing her ample bosom.  I, for one, happen to be a legitimate fan of Ms. Perry.  My wife knows this and, according to her, I screamed like a 14-year-old girl when KP made her entrance.  I remember it a little differently: we both reacted simultaneously, feeding off each other’s enthusiastic response to the surprise.  Either way, Katy held her own, singing well and dancing suggestively with each of the smirking band members.
KP joins the Stones for "Beast of Burden."
A highlight of this tour is the feature of former guitarist Mick Taylor, who joined the band in 1969 following the death of Brian Jones.  He stayed until 1974, playing on what I consider the Stones’ finest work, before leaving because he felt under-appreciated.  Footage of Taylor playing with the band in this period is telling; he comes across as bored or uninterested despite playing with an assured, expressive grace that calls to mind one Eric ‘Slowhand’ Clapton, a virtuoso among dirtbags.  He received a warm welcome as he took the stage for “Midnight Rambler” which, in addition to providing him the opportunity to loose an extended solo, allowed Jagger to show off his undiminished harmonica skills.  The song ebbed and flowed, built up and broke down as Jagger whipped the crowd into a frenzy before a sudden and thrilling conclusion. 

The last song of the set was “Sympathy for the Devil,” a long, wordy discourse evoking the disillusionment felt by so many young people as the idealism of the 1960s faded.  It’s a song of anger and discontent, written by Jagger and Richards when they were both 25 years old.  Now 69, the two performed their song without a hint of irony.  At this point in the show, time had melted away and age meant nothing to me.  I watched and listened to the band as a generation of fans before me had.  I didn’t care that they were now old; I wasn’t bothered that they were playing songs they’d written as young men.  I was just stoked that they were playing at all, and that “the image and ideal I hold so dear” was still intact.  Prior to this, I thought “what a drag it is getting old.”  But now, I felt differently.  I felt invigorated and refreshed.  Most of all, I felt overwhelmed (in a good way).  I was in awe, impressed that this group of old folks could still get down as they had so many years ago.  I sent them off with a sincerely appreciative cheer, my head swimming, my voice hoarse, and my hands sore.

The band wasted no time in returning to the stage for an encore.  A large choir, split in two, flanked the stage and began “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”  It was cool.  I imagine a lot of others in attendance reflected along with me, thinking that we were actually getting what we wanted.  The band then launched into “Jumping Jack Flash” and that mean, mean riff invaded my headspace.  They extended the tune, jamming around the final chorus and making sure everyone understood how much of a ‘gas gas gas’ it all was.  I wondered, would this be the last song?  The cap to 2+ hours of rock-and-roll ecstasy?  Though the lengthy show had passed quickly, in a kind of haze, I just couldn’t believe that these guys had more petrol in the tank.  When the song ended, the lights were cut.  And then, without so much as a breather, they punched it, hitting the accelerator for one last hurrah.
Naturally, the Stones closed with “Satisfaction,” the 1965 smash that put them on the map and basically started them down the road that led them to where they are now.  Taylor rejoined the band, the light-techs pulled out all the stops (creating something akin to the grand finale at a fourth-of-July fireworks show), and the entire place sang along as the band muscled through a song they’d played countless times before and took a final bow. 

Choosing my most memorable concert is tough.  I live for those sublime moments when music surrounds me and transports me, when nothing else matters, when I somehow feel alone in a room full of people.  I can think of a few shows that took me away, that made me give in and forget my name for an hour or more (for better or worse), but I can’t remember being this profoundly moved by any of my many rock-show experiences.  Indeed, the Rolling Stones still have a valid claim to the title of Greatest Rock-and-Roll Band in the World.  Instead of ruining or perverting “the image and ideal I hold so dear,” they reinforced just how strong my love is.

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