The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [125]
The press saw them as thugs: “These performers are a menace to law and order and a result of their formula of vocal laryngitis, cranial fur and sex is the police are diverted from other forms of mayhem to quell the violence that they generate,” said London’s Daily Mirror in 1964.60 Assaulting Christian values, The Stones made outrageousness their trademark. Yet, the more adults despised them, the more teenagers loved them. Commenting on the adoration of their audience and their evil intent, the Daily Mail said in 1964, “I have seen nothing like this since the old days of a Nazi rally.”
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” caught the tenor of the times. It was an anthem of rejection to the authoritarian teachers, priests, politicians, bosses, and parents who wanted to trap kids in a society that denies sexuality and freedom. They criticized corporate propaganda in “Get Off of My Cloud,” mocked anti-drug hypocrisy in “Mother’s Little Helper,” and delivered a punch to the face of the old values with a flagrantly provocative “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” Despite the uproar, they were invited to perform it before nine million viewers on Britain’s most popular variety show, “Sunday Night at the London Palladium.” Seeing this notorious group singing that sinful song on television right after dinner caused mass indigestion and indignation.61
Yes, other British bands—such as The Animals and The Yardbirds—were steeped in the blues; and, yes, The Beatles were busted for drugs and provoked hysteria at their shows. But it was The Stones’ unique blend of devil’s music, social criticism, public vulgarity, sexual promiscuity, lewd charisma, and overt mockery of authority that generated this rabid hatred and their reputation as a menace to society. “This is the end of the line. Beyond The Stones, one simply cannot go and still maintain civilization,” claimed the Chicago Daily News in 1965.
Even twenty years later, in his critically acclaimed and bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom called Jagger a nihilist provocateur, a “demon” and “satyr,” who stimulated mobs of children into a sensual frenzy with an act that
was male and female, heterosexual and homosexual; unencumbered by modesty, he could enter everyone’s dreams, promising to do everything with everyone; and, above all, he legitimated drugs, which were the real thrill that parents and policemen conspired to deny his youthful audience. He was beyond the law, moral and political, and thumbed his nose at it. (Simon and Schuster, 1987, pp. 78–79)
From Satyrs to Martyrs
Bloom’s morally offended viewpoint—enclosed in a larger critique of how the University fails its students—encapsulates the reasons why many adults thought The Rolling Stones were in league with the devil. Antagonism to Christian values, self-indulgence, sexuality, seduction, mind possession, and the provoking of chaos were intimately linked with the rise of Satan and the vision of evil in early Christian mythology. In the Old Testament, the devil as phallic snake tempts Eve into sin.
St. Augustine developed the idea of sex as sin. According to one historian, he was “the dark genius of imperial Christianity, the ideologue of the Church-State alliance, and the fabricator of the medieval mentality. Next to Paul, he did more to shape Christianity than any other human being.”62 Writing at the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, Augustine believed that while all humans were destined to sin, only Christians could resist the devil’s influence through God’s grace. Therefore, non-Christians were doomed to evil and must be compelled to accept Christian dogma. Rejecting Christianity equaled rejecting society—something that could not be tolerated. So Augustine’s totalitarian vision of a Christian society included the right to persecute non-conformists and rebels