The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [71]
But watching Charlie, back in the day, when I was young and stupid and arrogant (now I’m not young), I observed all kinds of uneconomical movement in Charlie’s hands and feet. There were hitches and jerks, like parries and feints at the drums, and then there was that totally annoying habit where he lays off the hi-hat with the right hand on the second and fourth beats and just slaps the snare drum by itself. That basically looked to me like no one ever told him how to play the drums. But he was pulling it together all along, wasn’t he? The second phase of Stones concrescence, just as Whitehead said.
I was deeply and profoundly wrong, and my thinking and interpretation were clouded by conventional expectations and at least some pure boorishness. I had to admit even back then that it was just a mystery to me why The Stones so totally rocked. Keith was out of tune, Bill stood like he was made of concrete and I thought I knew two dozen guys who could play at least as well as Charlie. I was an idiot. No, that’s not strong enough. A fucking idiot. My little theories and judgments wouldn’t have helped one bit in dispelling the mystery of why The Stones have “It.”
I stupidly thought “It” was about “knowing” something, as in consciously knowing it and being able to act on what you know. So I believed I understood what I was hearing and it didn’t dawn on me that I had missed a whole universe of music fermenting beneath the radar of my conventional little conscious expectations. Whitehead says consciousness isn’t very common in the universe, and it’s not very important either, in terms of what’s really going down. So it’s worth remembering, just as a principle for life, that if something is very good and your pet theories say it shouldn’t be, you need to dump your pet theories.
The River of Tight
The Stones were doing everything wrong, not by the rules (or the conventions), and there was all sorts of apparent looseness in how the rhythm section went about its business and I foolishly believed that everyone wants to be tight, not loose. What I didn’t understand back then is that there is a kind of looseness that’s on the other side of tight. It doesn’t come from being a virtuoso player, it comes from being a truly great listener and responder. And here is where we could have the Grateful Dead argument, if anyone is so inclined. The Dead were (and wanted to be) even looser than The Stones, and so loose that they defied people to believe they were even capable of playing tight. But they were more than capable of that. The recorded evidence exists. They chose an outward trajectory for their rhythmic mode of being, on the farthest wilds across the River of Tight, to see what was there. By comparison, The Stones found some nice spots for partying just on the other side of the River of Tight, and they went straight to those places when they played. And they certainly could play utterly tight when they wanted to. I speak in the past tense because I feel that this changed when Bill left the band, as I will get to in a minute.
What I needed to learn is that tight doesn’t rock. It’s impressive, for sure, but it’s for your ears and your head, not for your ass and your feet. Tight is for Rush and Styx and Kansas and Yes. It’s cerebral to play tight. It’s discursive and advisory, a little detached; playing tight won’t solve your problems and it won’t guide your life. It’s good to rehearse your part in life, by all means; but when it comes time to act, to decide, to do something you can’t take back, you need to be in the moment. You can plan your life until you think you have every detail under control, but the minute you step out on the stage of life, it’s not going to go like you planned. If you try to make it all conform to your plan, your life will surely suck, and if you’ll be honest with yourself, you’ll have to admit you really wanted it to rock. So get out of your fucking head, would you? Learn how to play tight,