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Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll
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18126 |
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BOOK WORLD
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11 / 1990 |
2,308 Words |
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Curt Schleier
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BLOWN AWAY
The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties
A.E. Hotchner
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990
349 pp. $21.95
The Rolling Stones, once denounced by the communist regime of Czechoslovakia, recently performed before an enthusiastic, rain-soaked audience of 107,000 in Prague. There was more than one metaphor at work that night.
One could say the concert was symbolic of how far and how fast the newly freed nations of Eastern Europe have come since they started on the road to democracy. Or one might conclude that the appearance, which benefited a charity for disabled children, is emblematic of how straight the Rolling Stones have become since their booze-guzzling, acid-dropping, antiestablishment early days.
Those who subscribe to the latter theory might take comfort in the fact that the Stones are not alone. In "Forever Young" Rod Stewart sings about the good life he wishes for his young son. "In the Living Years," performed by Mike and the Mechanix, laments the untimely death of a father before his son has an opportunity to express his love and gratitude.
For gosh sakes, rock and roll is middle-aged! And, sadly, so am I.
In the still of the night
Recent tours by aging groups of veteran rockers - a reunited Who (with a slightly deaf Peter Townsend on lead guitar), the Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones - served as visible reminders of just how old we - rockers and the ret of us - have become.
Today's kids may have their heavy metal - something that was used to construct sturdy buildings in my time - but they didn't invent rock and roll. I did! Along with Neil Raphael and Larry Geneen and Paul Reitman, sitting on the stoop, in the still of the night, listening to those early strains. Or we'd be down on the corner, trying to harmonize a cappella but creating only off-key shaboom, shabooms.
Those were days of innocence.
And then came the Stones, along with the Beatles at the vanguard of a group of musicians singers, and songwriter's who let us know there was more to music – and life - than buddle gum. The feeling was at once heady and blasphemous.
The torch had been passed to a new generation. It was Camelot, where it never rained until December. But a storm arrived early, one Friday afternoon in November, and snuffed out the torch. There was a war that - whether right or wrong - ripped the nation apart. Under the circumstances, it was no wonder that young people understood what Mick Jagger meant when he sang "I can't get no satisfaction " or about his "Sympathy for the Devil."
This is the mood that author A.E. Hotchner attempts to re-create in Blown Away, an oral history of the Rolling Stones during the sixties. The biographer of Ernest
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