Fadin’ Away Stones

Perhaps not. Daughter Escella Shears, age 12, has taken a cotton to the Rolling Stones, their music, and especially the song “She’s a Rainbow.” Escella being of a latter day flower child persuasion, it’s only natural.

So we bought Hot Rocks yesterday. I had Hot Rocks when first issued back in ‘71 and had forgotten that “Rainbow” is not on it. That album pioneered the classic rock best-of genre, even while the classic rock era was ongoing. Smart (Mick, always in control, and a grad of the London School of Economics) the Stones knew all along  that they would issue a second greatest hits record and saved some of the old stuff for it.

We filled it in for Escella by buying “Rainbow” as a single song, and now she has the whole lot on her iPod, right there cohabitating with Mika. 

So, while playing through Hot Rocks this morning  Mrs. Shears pointed out the irony of one particular Stones lyric. 

“Mother’s Little Helper” played, opening with: “What a drag it is getting old.”

“How freakin’ old were they when they wrote that?” Mrs. Shears asks. (That’s about as profane as Mrs. Shears will get.) 

Well they were in their early 20s, a lot younger than they are in this recent picture:

By now the Stones as the leading geezers of the Geezer Rock scene is an old joke, on multiple levels. Charlie Watts looks the oldest, but he’s a cancer survivor so good-on-ya Charlie. Mick Jagger has aged fairly well, but it’s only because he looked old when he was 22. He’s eased into his grotesque attractive-like-a-car-wreck face over the years. Ron Wood, the luckiest third-rate rocker in the world, will always look like an (even) uglier Rod Stewart. And Keith Richards is, self-admittedly, lucky to be alive, and not because of a bout with cancer; and he has those little chicken arms, scrawny to rival those of the Dalai Lama. We’re sure his hands have not atrophied with the years, however. Great guitarist.

Oh, and by the way: Free Tibet! 

Products in this post:
“Shes a Rainbow”
Hot Rocks
Mika – Life in Cartoon Motion
Keith Richards: The Biography The Biography