The Stone Age: Sixty Years of The Rolling Stones by Lesley-Ann Jones

Author:Lesley-Ann Jones [Jones, Lesley-Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781639362066
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2022-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Some still blame the Rolling Stones for Meredith Hunter’s death. What did they expect, others reason, of a rock gig, especially a vast open-air festival, which after all is all about crowds and surging masses? Collective loss of control often leads to tragedy. Were the Who to blame for the deaths of eleven fans and the serious injury of twenty-six others in Cincinnati, Ohio, December 1979, when 18,000 fans stormed the venue and only twenty-five policemen fought in vain to control them? Were Queen responsible for the fatal stabbing of twenty-one-year-old Scottish fan Thomas McGuigan at Knebworth in August 1986, the last gig with his band that Freddie Mercury ever played? What about the terrorist attacks at the Manchester Arena Ariana Grande gig, and at the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest musicfest, both in 2017? Or the nine killed at Roskilde in Denmark – Pearl Jam’s concert in June 2000, when the crowd rushed the stage? And did the buck stop at the feet of rapper Travis Scott after nine lost their lives at his Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas, in November 2021?

There is no question that the Stones should have called a halt at Altamont, and have quit the stage the moment the scuffle broke out. According to them, they had no idea until afterwards that anyone had been killed. But we know they smelled danger, that they sensed a satanic panic. What else would have spooked them back into the chopper that had conveyed them there, cramming in more bodies than it was designed to lift so that they were lucky it didn’t go down?

And still the myth persists. Still they bang on about Altamont closing the door on the sixties and extinguishing the hippie dream. The assumption that this was its outcome obnubilates shudderingly sinister reality. The Stones never cared about the flowery-powery counterculture. Their passing interest in what the masses were into extended only so far as what was in it for them. Posing as believers in peace and love and a better world would make the punters more inclined to buy their records. The latest of which had just been released. Only yesterday, folks, come and get it! Let It Bleed, their eighth studio album in the UK (their tenth in the US) bore the hallmarks of a band which had come of age and grown into their reputation. No. 1 in the UK and a No. 3 in America, it was thin on singles chart hits but was a crucible of live-performance classics. ‘Gimme Shelter’, ‘Midnight Rambler’, ‘You Got the Silver’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, specifically. Which may have been intentional. They were finally free from comparison to the disintegrating Beatles, as well as of a defeated key component who had been dragging them down. Cynical? You are right, reader, I wasn’t there. But friends who were, who ran for cover once they had seen that particular emperor in the altogether, are under no illusions. They saw right through Jagger that day, and they’ve been seeing ever since.

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