Boomer Midnight: Rolling Stones Outrun Zombies
Looking through the past, darkly at the legacy of a formidable generation
The most stalwart and steady pillar of the Boomer generation is their music. Elsewhere, their legacy gets very unsteady – but more on that later.
Of the bands that built that great mountain, few can claim as prominent a placement as the Rolling Stones. Their contribution spans its peaks and its valleys. Their influences feed the streams and rivers connecting it to music of past and future.
Their contemporaries the Zombies carved out their own promontory. And while not as monumental as the Stones, theirs is a fascinating formation of formula breaking outre-pop.
So it was a sad shock to hear that, in the middle of a tour, founding Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent suffered a stroke. Stricken but not struck down, the Zombies have canceled all future dates as family, friends, and fans pray for Rod’s recovery.
I noted the news with particular trepidation because in less than a week, I was going to see the Rolling Stones play one of the final shows in their current tour. The actuarial risk of the Rolling Stones is no secret. The only mystery is how they manage to continue to outlast their own musical peers and descendants despite the most decadent of reputations. To be sure, heroin and coke orgies are long behind them. Still, Mick Jagger will be 81 next week. Keith Richards is not far behind. Rod of the Zombies is 79. The freak chance of a similar health complication for any member of the band is very real. And while everyone’s demise is inevitable, I selfishly hoped I would get to see the Stones one last time before the rolling ended.
Truth is, that nagging fear has been present for each of the six Stones concerts I’ve seen since going to my first almost 20 years ago. This 7th occasion however would be special because, for the first time, I would be bringing my parents who themselves straddle 80. Unlike me, they had yet to see the Rolling Stones live, despite the songs being core to their youth. I owe my fandom to their introduction. The Stones are foundational in my fondness for music, occupying a central point in an “all roads lead to Rome” kind-of-way. Taking my parents to a show would be a milestone – memorable for them and significant to our relationship as I burrow deeper into adulthood and they reach advanced age.
Ever since gifting my parents with the tickets, I anticipated this show with the hedging worry that one associates with the endeavors of the elderly.
Capricious death has been a touchstone of the Boomer generation. It began the Day the Music Died in a plane crash. The scar made deep and permanent by the successive assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK followed by a murderer’s row of musical icons felled by drugs. All vigor was lost when Elvis’ heart gave out. Whatever glimmer of idealism remained smote by the gunman who shot John Lennon.
The Rolling Stones survived it all. They were not so much immune to the darkness as a party to its nature. The stabbing just a few feet from stage during their free concert at Altamont served as a sunset to the sixties. The sex-and-drug fueled nihilistic sleaze of the seventies followed, then the final capitulation to commerce that is corporate sponsored stadium tours. The Rolling Stones track the revolutionary origins and compromised comeuppance of a generation that in many ways remains in the driver’s seat politically, financially, and culturally. Their dick pills and prescriptions dominate TV ads, their politicians occupy our ballots, and – let’s face it – most millennials and anyone with any taste will take the Rolling Stones over Taylor Swift seven days a week. Still, death hovers spectrally, “just a shot away, just a shot away.”
And on the very day we were to see the Rolling Stones play at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, shots rang out. A former and possibly future president found himself bloodied before spectators. Upon hearing of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, many found themselves sympathizing with the devil himself. The “Weekend at Bernie’s” president said words, but for those who listened, his expiration seemed even more likely than the man who had just been shot. For my part, the capricious death I experienced Saturday was of the good vibes I felt before going to see the concert.
In the moments before the Rolling Stones take the stage, a strange suspense fills the air. This is a band as iconic as any that ever lived. Every person present is aware that they are about to witness actual living legends. But after more than 60 years of touring, one can’t help but worry that this may be the moment they run out of gas. How heartbreaking it would be for the curtain to rise only to see a decrepit outfit sag and sputter. After all, a similar, sad spectacle was fresh in the minds of many.
Thankfully, the Rolling Stones remain singularly indomitable. The opening blast of “Start Me Up” is a shot in the arm par to none. Mick Jagger no longer sprints out onto the stage but instead struts with swagger. And while he might have been a little stiff at first, it only took a few kinks and twists before the dancing demon within wriggled free.
The visage of Keith Richards is every bit the ancient totem. His face pocked and craggy, hands gnarled and knobbly, but the timeless riffs are buried so deep in his bones that they flow from his guitar with the effortlessness of an eternal river.
Then there is Ronnie Wood, the baby of the band at 77, bouncing joyfully as the lucky guy who joined the World’s Greatest Rock n’ Roll Band after they had already ascended to the pinnacle of the pantheon. In many ways, we have Ronnie to thank for the longevity of the Stones as a touring act. He, more than anyone, helped defuse the constant fraternal flare-ups between Mick and Keith that threatened to tear the band apart. Now almost 50 years after joining, he continues to carry himself like a man who just won the Rock n’ Roll lottery.
Any lingering doubts as to the band’s vitality were shoved aside when they launched into the second song of their set “Get Off of My Cloud”. A punk song written before punk existed, the performance revealed a key ingredient to the band’s explosive alchemy: the rhythm section. Darryl Jones and Steve Jordan, at bass and drums respectively, are a generation younger than the founding members of the band who they replaced. While Keith’s riffs and Mick’s moves make the greatest impression, it’s the groove that generates the body shaking carnality of the Rolling Stones music. “Get Off of My Cloud” hits with an avalanche of drums tumbling under a high flying riff. Playing this music is a test of endurance. And it is the strength of the backing musicians outside the core three that keeps the band at cruising altitude for the full two hours of the set.
This is most evident when backing singer Chanel Haynes takes center stage to wail apocalyptically on “Gimme Shelter.” Mick Jagger might be the greatest frontman who ever lived, but that doesn’t mean he is a great singer. His performance rests more on the energy and commitment he brings than any vocal technique he has honed. So on the rare occasion he welcomes a true torch singer to share the spotlight, expect fireworks.
I am pleased to report that I, along with the tens of thousands who saw the show at SoFi on Saturday, left in a state of satisfaction. Personally, as a fan, the best moments come when they dig into their deep cuts: Keith Richards’ tender country ballad “You’ve Got the Silver”, Mick Jagger crooning falsetto notes on “Fool to Cry”, Ronnie Wood playing slide on the gorgeous instrumental bridge for “Monkey Man”. (“Layla” by Derek and the Dominos is a shameless rip-off of this lesser-known Stones track).
Still, even in the ecstasy of the concert’s afterglow, there is no mistaking this band for the Rolling Stones of yore. Archival footage of the Stones in their prime show a band in full, unrelenting attack, a runaway train barely gripping the tracks. And while the transcendent quality of that music and those performances may very well be a mirage cast through the filter of time, it is a convincing one. Today, whether due to age, AARP sponsorship, or the $200 dollar average price tag for tickets, deliverance is no longer on the menu even as delights are served in abundance.
I firmly believe in the power of music to change the world. But the music of the Rolling Stones no longer can. It has already done so, and we are left with the world they made, the world as it is.
The shadow Boomers cast has bred an admiring resentment in every generation that followed. Even as each tries to stamp itself upon history, they are dwarfed by and cannot escape from the chasmic rupture created by the cohort that came of age in the Sixties. Any new contribution is cast as a downstream result of their revolution, their break with the past. Campus turmoil, racial reckonings, sexual revolution, radical lifestyles, and dangerous music, Boomers got there first.
It’s gotten to the point where the conflicts themselves seem tired. Setting aside the music for a moment, it is a grotesque inheritance the Boomers leave us in their last hurrah. The glamor of Camelot is now a contest of the infirm. The urgent struggle for civil rights and women’s liberation today is fought with shrill accusations and celebrity cancelation while actual voting and reproductive rights are curtailed. Even the imagery of assassination itself seems diluted: the labyrinthine Dallas Book Depository substituted for a nondescript one-story warehouse in the exurban suburbs of Pittsburgh, the communist-sympathizing Lee Harvey Oswald replaced by a non-ideological pubescent nobody, and a bullet that either did or didn’t graze the intended target’s ear ends up killing some poor, anonymous bystander. No clarity can come from seeing the world through a Boomer’s lens, only further discord.
The founding interest of The Crumbling Column is that which emerges from the ruins. Just as every empire falls, every generation ultimately meets its midnight. And that is where the Boomers find themselves, at the eternal precipice. And when they leave the stage, what then?
Like the Boomers, subsequent generations have tried to define their identity through their clashes and attempts to break with the past. But perhaps the imitation is the reason each would-be successor has failed to match them in impact. What if instead of a rupture with our past, we achieved reconciliation? What if instead of seeking to break, we sought to bind?
Keith Richards once said, “Solos come and go. The riff lasts forever.” Keith here is commenting on the structural element that makes so many Rolling Stones songs timeless classics. Standout guitar solos are a fun distraction, but what gives a song immortality is the simple riff that repeats itself over and over throughout, unifying all parts, and driving the song deep into the core of anyone who hears it.
Instead of identifying ourselves by the solo we play in history, perhaps we should seek the eternal riff that rolls across time and space. What if instead of attempting to define our generation as distinct from any that came before, we recognized all the ways we are just like our predecessors? The world itself will always turn with new emerging trends, threats, and conflagrations, but we are the same beings that must struggle to respond. We are driven by the same needs, yearnings, and fears that have always been and will always be.
Perhaps then we might realize that, despite all our conflicts and hatreds, love is just a kiss away. Maybe it will give us the wisdom to see that, even if we can't always get what we want, we’ll find in time, we get what we need.
So insightful, Colin! You are a superb writer with very sympathetic wisdom. Thank you so much from one of the hardcore Boomers. Cheryl
all roads lead to Rome; all riffs lead to the Stones