The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [132]
The Nature of My Game
No collection of folks, or even any individual, symbolizes for us more profoundly an S&D&R&R aestheticism than The Stones, and we all know that, at this late stage of history. But why did the Stones so reliably bring the Dionysian frenzy to the breaking point? To hear them tell it, you’d think they were more the victims of that craziness than catalyst or cause. That story isn’t quite believable. The Stones may not have seen the frenzy coming, but they can’t pretend to be innocent. I’m sure they never wanted anyone to be seriously hurt, and I think they were genuinely surprised at how thin the line was between a bacchanalia about pleasure and one about death.
If not in recent years, then certainly for their first twenty or so, going to a Stones concert could be, well, almost a sporting proposition (and that was part of the attraction), a little risky. You might come back preggers or even in a body bag, if you weren’t careful. That includes the band themselves (on the body bag part—I’m supposing they aren’t biologically right for the other). The frenzy phenomenon didn’t wholly end, though, even when it did subside. You can find a vid up on Youtube where in 2005 a Pittsburgh crone attacks Keith Richards (for reasons unclear—she can’t still want sex, but she certainly wants something), as he tries to get to his car.
Of the craze, Keith says that in the early days “what they were reacting to was being in this enclosed space with us—this illusion; me, Mick, Brian. The music might be the trigger, but the bullet, nobody knows what that is” (Life, p. 137). Still, I think there’s something about the way the Stones have gone about crafting their personae and prosecuting their performance that taps into a deep (and disturbing) aspect of all human experience. I want to get at the bullet, if I can.
There are lots of kinds of crazy, so there’s a very great difference between becoming schizoid, sociopathic, or individually manic, on the one hand (where I think Brian Jones belongs), and losing it with the crowd, or the mob, on the other (possibly this is the right category for the late Meredith Hunter, waving his pistol in the stage area at Altamont). Whatever takes hold when the Stones play brings people to do things in groups they wouldn’t do alone, so it’s more like the second kind of crazy. People don’t suddenly become individually insane when Keith hits the first chord, but something happens to the crowd, for sure. It started with the girls. Keith describes it:
The ’50s chicks being brought up all very jolly hockey sticks, and then somewhere there seemed to be a moment when they just decided they wanted to let themselves go. The opportunity arose for them to do that, and who’s going to stop them? It was all dripping with sexual lust, though they didn’t know what to do about it. But suddenly you’re on the end of it. It’s a frenzy. Once it’s out, it’s an incredible force. You stood as much chance in a fucking river full of piranhas. They were beyond what they wanted to be. They’d lost themselves. These chicks were coming out there, bleeding, clothes torn off, pissed panties, and you took that for granted every night. That was the gig. (Life, p. 138)
That was the gig? Okay, he knows better than I would. But it doesn’t seem like you could quite book that gig, you know? If that’s the “sex” side of the Dionysian coin, what about the “violence” side?
Reading the Riot Act
The British parliament passed the real “Riot Act” back in 1714 to make it possible for them to use the death penalty on those who refused to disperse after the Act was read aloud. Rioting breaks out periodically among all sorts of people (however tame they seem), and for a lot of different reasons, some political, some religious, and even some purely aesthetic. Apparently, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring provoked a purely aesthetic riot among the Paris highbrows at its debut in 1913. That must have been very strange. The crowd started booing the bassoon solo, early on, and even the police couldn’t keep