The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [63]
The [uncool] notion of undifferentiated endurance of substances with essential attributes and with accidental adventures was still applied. This is the root doctrine of materialism [boo, hisssss] … but this materialistic concept has proved to be as mistaken for the atom as it was for the stone[s]. The atom is only explicable as a society with the activities involving rhythms with their definite periods … The mysterious quanta of energy [Keith, Charlie, and Bill] have made their appearance, derived, as it would seem, from the recesses of protons [called “grooves”], or electrons [called “riffs”] … Further, the quanta of energy are associated by a simple law with the periodic rhythms which we detect in the molecules [called “concerts”]. Thus the quanta are, themselves, in their own nature, somehow vibratory; but they emanate from the protons and electrons. Thus there is every reason to believe that rhythmic periods cannot be dissociated from the protonic and electronic entities [or the grooves and riffs]. (Process and Reality, pp. 78–79)
What Whitehead is saying (with some help from me) is that it’s not what we are that makes us do what we do, it’s what we are doing that makes us what we are, for a short while, and then the show is over, fading ever so gradually into the past. I will now use this theory to describe why The Stones totally rock. There are three quanta (Keith, Charlie, and Bill), and their “rhythmic periods” are going to get the names Whitehead gave them:
1. Keith = the “dative dater” of the divine data.
2. Charlie = the co-ordinator and organizer of the data Keith dates, called the “synthesis.”
3. Bill = the distributor and contributor of the all goods Keith and Charlie achieve, called by Whitehead (and I swear to God I’m not making this up) the “satisfaction.”
Their “rhythmic periods” are called by Whitehead “the phases of concrescence,” and the “groove” and “riff ” are the varying patterns of “intensity,” the protonic and electronic vibes from which these wondrous quanta cannot be separated. I speak henceforth of the rock’n’roll rhythm section, and by anyone’s account, The Stones have the best one that ever existed.
The Sum of the Parts
One of the great mysteries associated with The Stones is that of the group-ness of It—how well It works when they are all in one place and time, and how not much happens when they separate and make music with others, or even when they try to go it alone. Of course Keith’s Winos and Bill’s Rhythm Kings can rock, but we all know It isn’t the same. Why is that? I think it’s a genuine question, and an important one—and not just for rock history or music criticism. The question is about “It,” and touches on the value of one kind of existing over another, and what that costs those who would pursue “It” over some more neutral equilibrium.
Somehow The Stones together are greater than the parts, and not by just a little bit. But it never was the easy choice to keep rock’n’rolling, so the value they achieve by hanging in there for one more record, one more tour, comes with risks and costs. The lure of some sort of experience has drawn them back into the dance with death again and again.
The Stones “experiment” is now about fifty years old and we’ve had an opportunity to test what “It” was that completes the circuit. The comparatively early exit of Brian Jones showed that It wasn’t the triumvirate of Jagger-Richards-Jones, as some people initially thought. “It” had little to do with Jones. The nearly seamless entry and exit of Mick Taylor, followed by the permanent installment of Ronnie Wood, showed that at least the “other guitar” was