The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [7]
Of those three pairs, the Glimmer Twins were the most enduring and successful, but I’m aware that to say they were the most important, as artists, can be disputed. It’s really tough to imagine any commercial music more important, artistically speaking, than Pink Floyd’s, and no single project of The Stones had the impact of either Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall. The artistic impact of Zeppelin’s body of work is also very serious, if not as focused or sustained as the Waters-Gilmour creations. What I will say is that while I think the fruits of the Waters-Gilmour partnership are more intense and deeper, I do not believe their overall impact on the world, as artists, was greater, nor do I find their creative process very intriguing, for reasons you may or may not find compelling. But instead of dissecting Waters and Gilmour, let me put it in more positive terms.
I’ll just blurt it out: the reason The Stones pair is more interesting, from a philosophical and human point of view, is because it’s so very clear that Mick and Keith actually always loved each other, being far more than friends and something closer to brothers, nay, actual twin sons of different mothers, as Mick once said. Except they are also a bit like a married couple at the same time, or so it appears when one sees them bickering. Yet, even that characterization sort of understates the matter, if some of the biographers are to be believed. Christopher Andersen basically claims that Mick was in love with Keith and depicts a Jones-Jagger-Richards love triangle when the three shared a flat on Edith Grove, in the early days. This triangle was the beginning of a lifetime of jealousies, any time someone else moved in to take Keith away from Mick, or Mick away from Keith, there was going to be trouble.
Frankly, I don’t know what to believe about any of that, and I don’t much care, but a lot of what people like Andersen say seems to be confirmed in Keith’s autobiography. What I’m talking about between them might or might not involve lust, and I wouldn’t be surprised if lust is part of the story. It certainly does involve jealousy of various kinds. The creative process for artists is inseparable from eros, as I understand that ancient idea. Still, there’s more to eros than sexual desire—it can be directed in many ways—but if eros comes to be expressed by artists in sexual activity, no one ought to be surprised. And if that sort of desire is the close companion of jealousy, and perhaps also envy, well, we all know how stories like that go. Things get ugly sometimes. It’s not as if The Stones were renowned for their wisdom, maturity, restraint, and circumspection.
My point is that the obvious depth of Mick’s and Keith’s relationship makes their creative process all the more fascinating (and perhaps easier to understand). Waters and Gilmour had a hard time ever tolerating each other, while Page and Plant apparently didn’t even have the decency to argue very much. I wrote about the Page-Plant pair in another fine Open Court book, Led Zeppelin and Philosophy, but I could add in this context that it looks to me as if almost anyone could probably get on well with Robert Plant, who seems so easygoing as to be almost otherworldly. It also appears that Roger Waters can’t even manage to tolerate himself, perhaps that’s why others have difficulty (and his art may well require just these problems). I don’t know any of these people, so I could be very wrong. I’m just saying how it looks. But I am sure of this much: Mick and Keith both have huge personalities, big enough to fill a stadium, and when you lock something that powerful in a single room, and it doesn’t blow up the whole house, that’s interesting.
Picking a Fight
So we’re talking about artistic temperaments here. That has to be a part of the story about the collaboration of the twins. But we want more than psychology from this little exploration. Let’s get at something about creativity, when it comes from interaction, instead of just one person. The kind of creativity that only happens between two people, and