Foreign Tongues

Back in the 1970’s, my brother John was a Beatles fan, and my buddy Tom was a huge fan of The Who.

From the moment, I first heard ‘Tumbling Dice’, I was hooked on The Rolling Stones.

By the late 70’s, I had ‘Some Girls’ on repeat, and I pestered my Mom about going to see The Stones at Rich Stadium.

“No!”

The Stones had the reputation of being bad boys who were hooked on drugs.

Mick was weird.

Keith was a mess.

And I was hooked. 

‘Tattoo You’ and ‘Emotional Rescue’ came out and I absolutely wore those records out, while also going back to their other records. Moonlight Mile might be my all-time favorite song.

I finally saw them perform live in 1981. They opened with ‘Under My Thumb’ and when I close my eyes, 45 years later, I can see Mick singing ‘Tunbling Dice’.

My college buddies, Rosie and Terry were also huge Stones fans and I had a ‘Glimmer Twin’ tee-shirt somewhere with ‘Keith’ on the back. Rosie was ‘Mick’.

I saw the Stones 3 more times after that 1981 show and they were always good to great. 

And my sister gifted me Keith Richards autobiography for Christmas one year and it sat in my shelf for six months because I was afraid that it would destroy my image of the band if I heard bad stories.

The book was great. They are brilliant musicians who had a crazy couple of decades, but man, they made great music.

And it isn’t over yet.

The new record is out today.

I will be listening all day, all week, all month.

I played one of the new songs, ‘Jealous Lover’ for Kathy last night.

Mick using his falsetto voice.

Keith and Ronny playing riffs behind him.

Charlie, who may have been the greatest rock and roll drummer ever, passed away a few years back.

“He’s 83 years old, singing like that,” I marveled to Kathy.

“It’s crazy,” she agreed.

When Charlie knew he wasn’t going to make it much longer he told Keith:

“Do it until the wheels fall off.”

That’s a great idea…

…and I’ll be listening.