Ridiculous old rascals
Charles Spencer
Back in the mid-Sixties, we had a cleaning lady called Mrs Parker. She must have been in her mid-sixties herself, and had spent her whole life, from the age of 13, in service. She called my mother 'mum', my father the master' and I was referred to, entirely without irony, as 'the young master'. Mrs Parker had a catchphrase that has passed into family lore. 'Do you like a shine? Mum, I like a shine,' she'd venture repeatedly as she got to work with the Brass°.
She was full of surprises, though, Mrs Parker. At a time when the press were busily demonising the Rolling Stones — largely at the instigation of their machiavellian manager, Andrew Loog Oldham — Mrs Parker remained a staunch fan of the band who were scandalising middle-class parents. 'Don't you like that nice Mick Jagger?' she'd ask me. 'I like that Mick Jagger. And I love that song "Lady Jane".'
I don't suppose that Mrs Parker realised, any more than I did, that 'Lady Jane' has been widely interpreted as a song of praise to cunnilingus, but I don't suppose even that would have deterred Mrs Parker's ardour for Mick Jagger. She always seemed refreshingly open to the prospect of new experiences. Once she turned up for work all of a flutter because she'd heard there was drug-dealing going on at a café in Surbiton called the Penguin Lounge. 'If I went in there and started shaking, Mum, do you think they'd give me a fix?' she inquired. 'I'd like a fix.' She was clearly a woman after Keefs dark heart as well as Mick's.
It's strange, indeed it is downright uncanny, to realise that the surviving members of the Rolling Stones are now almost as old as Mrs Parker was then. Mick and Keef, the glimmer twins, both turn 60 next year, and the splendidly insouciant Charlie Watts has already passed that milestone. It's 40 years since they started playing together, an anniversary being marked by yet another greatest hits collection, Forty Licks, the rerelease of all their early albums, and yet another epic tour of the world's enormodromes.
This is causing derision in certain quarters. The old joke about the Rolling Bones is being trotted out yet again, and it's true that Keef, in particular, now looks more like something from a horror movie than a recognisable human being. If you want to know what the picture of Dorian Gray looked like, just look at a recent photograph of Richards.
What's rather marvellous, however, is that the Stones are still capable of causing a stink. The Daily Mail was furious about Mick's knighthood, as indeed was Keef. though for rather different reasons. The Mail hates Jagger's endless womanising, womanising that is either heroic or sad, depending on whether you are being honest or merely envious. Richards, ever the rebel, understandably loathes the way Jagger now sucks up to an establishment that once threw them both in the slammer. Asked how he felt when he heard about the gong, Richards says he felt 'cold, cold rage' at Jagger's 'blind stupidity' which should make for a happy atmosphere on the tour plane.
What really pisses people off, though, including many former fans, is that the Stones too often seem to be motivated by greed rather than any love of their music. They haven't released a truly great album since Exile On Main Street in 1972, or even a consistently good one since Some Girls in 1978. And isn't there something grotesque about this bunch of rich, ravaged crumblies still pretending to be the wild, degenerate rebels of old?
That was certainly my view until 1999, when I was dispatched to review them in Stuttgart. I went to mock, but, to my surprise and delight. I stayed to cheer. The show was one of the finest spectacles I've ever seen, the music still throbbing with the old excitement, Jagger still the greatest front man you've ever seen, combining the arrogance of a hustling pimp with a ballet dancer's grace, while Richards churned out the most awesome riffs in rock with palpable glee.
I was allowed to stand at the back of the stage for the final 20 minutes of the show, within a few feet of performers I'd revered since childhood. What was crystal clear was that they were having an absolute ball up there, performing magnificently and still giving it their all. When they came off stage they were wrapped in white towelling dressing-gowns and tottered down the steps to their transport like frail, completely spent old men. But while they were up there. defiantly strutting their magnificent stuff before an adoring audience, they somehow seemed forever young. God bless the ridiculous old rascals. Like their oldest and most improbable fan, Mrs Parker. they still like to shine.
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