No matter how clownish Mike Jagger becomes (and as far as I’m concerned, let him keep that carnival going as long as he can and more power to him), he will always be a god because of what he –and his mates– did back in the day.
And I fully acknowledge that for a dude about to turn 70, he has more hair than me, a thinner waist than me, can dance better than me, and perhaps most importantly, there are few women on the planet who, given the choice, would prefer me over him.
Listen:
The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.
Yeah, what he said.
And that’s from a guy who doesn’t even have a day job. Although Mick Jagger, more than any other rock star, has perfected the vampiric vibe necessary for survival, sympathy for the devil be damned. Look at him, trim as a teenager with crags in his cheeks that make statues seem soft. But these are not the men we can measure ourselves against; these are people who’ve made careers out of doing precisely the things so few people are able to imitate. Perhaps that is what makes them rock stars. And like the stars themselves, only the lucky ones burn bright, while all around them, their hard-partying partners-in-crime are falling out of the sky, or streaking into rehab, or getting born again in a galaxy far, far away.
(The only things worse than the things you do to your body are the things your body does to you. Payback is a bitch, especially when you don’t have the sex, drugs and rock and roll to help you ignore the pain. Wait. Am I having a mid-life crisis? Shit. Then it occurs to me: if I keep having them, I’ll never die.)
Here’s the thing: if anyone ever has any questions about the Glimmer Twins, and what they did, the answer is: They did this. In addition to too many other things to count. THEY DID THIS!
(And special props to the ever-underappreciated Mick Taylor, featured on all these tracks from the ’70s.)
