The Rolling Stones (favourite songs, thoughts...)

I think that of all these old & legendary Rock bands who are still in bussines, The Rolling Stones look the best in that image of  "wheelchair rockers".

This is a footage from their concert in my hometown, 2007.

 

The Beatles were always my #1 but I loved the Stones too.  Something else people forget about the late 60's, when the Beatles were singing about "Revolution" and the Stones were glorifying the "Street Fighting Man", there was a palpable feeling that revolution and anarchy could be right around the corner and that the Stones could just be the ones able to incite the worlds youth to rise up.  These were times where a campus protest against the Viet Nam war lead to a student being murdered by the National Guard at Kent State.  1967 may have been the "summer of love", but 1968 dawned dark and the Stones were at the forefront.  The Watts riots, assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy, Manson family, Zodiak killer, everything was falling apart at the seems.  Riots at Stones concerts were commonplace and this of course culminated in Altamont where the demons were hired as security guards and all hell literally broke loose.  Jagger particularly seemed to revel in his power to incite riots and chaos.  John Lennon may have claimed the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus" but "Sympathy for the Devil" seemed to be Mick's statement of where his allegiance truly lay.  At the conclusion of the Stones performance at the "Rock and Roll Circus TV special", Jagger tears his shirt off to reveal a Satan artwork on his chest.  People really wondered if he was the second coming of the fallen angel.  Then as the 70's wore on, the Stones became a bloated parody of their 60's selves as Keith drowned in a sea of drug addiction and Mick became the darling of the jet set class.  

But there was a time when the Stones really seemed to be the living embodiment of all that was dark and evil in the chaotic swirl of the late 60's world.