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The new, post-modern art form was to achieve fame as an artist, and so painters needed to be acting and actors should be writing musical scores and composers should take up architecture, while the architects are writing novels, and so on. The all encompassing category of “the artist” as a type of celebrated performer was being popularized. This is, in a sense, the very extreme of the idea of genius. It’s genius pushed to its limit, so that no longer does the nature of the genius give the rule to art; now, the genius is a powerful subject who tells both nature and culture what art is and isn’t. It’s the apotheosis of celebrity as justified by the idea of genius. It was an irresistible role for anyone with the balls to claim it.

Mick has big balls. He took the bait right away. Keith was a pure musician, but he was willing to play the role, and in this I think Mick was probably his guide. Mick saw that being outrageous and re-inventing one’s persona in successive spurts was de rigueur for the world Warhol prophesied. Mick saw how to do that. He needed Keith to remain grounded in the music, to keep him on some kind of tether and bring him back down to what he really does well, which is front The Stones, and Keith needed Mick to be out there doing that Warhol-esque thing so as to keep The Stones on top, so that everyone would listen to the new music. Keith’s job was to develop and deepen himself as a serious musician, and to speak in tongues while Mick interpreted for the world. Each of them was very good at his own principal side of the collaboration, and each was nothing short of brilliant in support of the other.

So, although our twins came from the world of music, specifically the blues, there was no reason to assume that being The Stones, or more specifically, being the Glimmer Twins, was just about being good musicians. They never saw it as being only about fame, fortune, celebrity, or even just about music. There was something about what was happening and had happened to the world itself that called forth a new kind of artist. The Stones knew and intended to be artists themselves, first as bluesmen, and then as creators of songs, albums, images, shows, films, books, and all manner of other things, in an age when being an “artist” meant being perceived and received by the public as a creative person and an aesthete. The older lines were fading.

Sweet Home Chicago

Still, making excellent art always involves getting schooled by the masters. If you want to know why the great movement of Romanticism declined after the first generation, it’s because being an excellent Romantic poet requires a classical education that is then (supposedly) rejected for the sake of the power of the personal will, blah, blah, blah. As soon as that first generation of Romantics was gone (Byron, Keats, Shelley), all that was running around Europe was a bunch of narcissistic idiots who thought that being cool was all it took to be a genius.

The Stones, especially the twins and Brian Jones, did have masters. They were Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon and Little Walter and a host of others who are only now recognized for their true cultural and artistic importance. So if you want to know why Nickelback sucks, all you need to do is remember that they don’t know the blues. If they did, they wouldn’t have to suck. Maybe they went to school on The Stones or Zeppelin, but that’s not the right school. That’s like trying to learn to paint before you know how to draw. Long before ethnomusicology was a recognized discipline, with its own intellectual standing, The Stones studied everything they could find and used their hands and feet and vocal chords to profess what they knew. Anyone who wants to know how they created what they did has to go to the same school, the University of South Chicago. The Stones wasted no time, when it became possible for them, in arranging to go and sit at the feet of their heroes at Chess.

Keith remarks that if The Stones did nothing else for America, at least they