Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [65]
Nope. It wasn’t just Altamont or the Stones, the whole peace brat society was wrongo to the liver. The Stones had expressed it in “Gimmie Shelter,” but they were even less prepared to deal with it than we were. And if you can even believe that was four years ago, you gotta ask yourself if you’re any better equipped to deal with this mess now. Because you really don’t wanna ask if the Stones are.
Death of Innocence in Woodstock Nation my ass, Altamont was the facing up. And the Stones were stuck in the middle of all of it, partly at fault, partly the confused patsies from out of town who’d tried in their own mallethanded way to do something nice for a group of people toward whom, nevertheless, they almost certainly felt more contempt than anything else. The Stones never bought all that brothers and sisters crap, but they were just beginning to be distanced in a truly uncomfortable way which they certainly brought on themselves. When Jagger raised his delicate arm in the power fist that tour he just looked silly, but when he tried to reverse the manipulative thrust of his presence at Altamont he made himself suddenly and completely pathetic for the very first time because he was a total failure. All he could do was incite, the collegiate insurrectionist with half his act down and nowhere to take it but self-immolation.
The Angels looked at him with obvious contempt on their faces: little fag. It took Keith Richards, the phased-out ghost of last summer, to exert the necessary mojo, seething forward and jerking the mike: “Look! Either you guys stop that shit, or you get no more music, do you understand? You, out there, I saw you doing that, and you better knock it off, man!”
It was the first time all day that anyone in a position of authority had directly and angrily demanded that the Angels cool out. Grace Slick had set the tone that morning when Balin got slugged: “People, let's not be laying our bodies on each other unless we intend love….” Or, as I muttered when David Crosby was onstage: “Screw you, you asshole. You’re not my brother.” It would stand to reason that among those here only the Stones would have the guts and perception to adopt that kind of position and stick with it. Keith was pissed and moving. Jagger was sad to look at. The others were impassive. As always. Would Bill Wyman move a facial muscle while staring at a ritual disem-bowelment? Whee, everybody gets numb. But from that moment on you never saw Jagger quite the same again. First vivid experience of the dimension of Stones weakness, and it stayed in the mind.
The latest U.S. tour was all precaution, no major skirmishes, just a slow cancer. Great tour, socko, Clockwork Orange pix in the press showing where it all came from, but, but… but Keith was hardly even there, even in the pictures he was just an earthbound shadow following music down a windy street, any street, while Mick Taylor played the solos. Mick Jagger was working harder than ever before, but that was just it: you could see he was working. The whole tour carried a mood that left you with the feeling that the artificial hysteria had finally tumbled past the overload, and strained nerves were not just visible but twitching all around. Exile on Main Street grew and the new songs were great, the press gushed, but people were beginning to get irritated—The World's Greatest? Who was to say these guys weren’t dying?
Not Keith. Who was suddenly beginning to seem the crucial one, as Jagger flopped around in his jumpsuit and just looked more like a society creep every new picture. But Keith, Keith was obviously one