The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [88]
He is guided by incongruous moral bearings. So, as the pendulum swings one way, and he sleeps with Keith’s girlfriend (Anita), Mick gets what he wants sexually. His need for passion and excitement is fulfilled, but his impulse and desire for tradition leaves a vacuous hole. As it swings the other, Mick comes back home to Marianne, happy to be back in the fold of tradition (or some semblance thereof). But at the same time, he’s wishing he was feeling up the silky sleeves of some other mistress. Tension. Meanwhile, Keef is jumping out the back window, sockless, having just had a go at Ms. Faithfull.
Glass of Wine in Her Hand
Keith is a different beast altogether—certainly not a beast of burden. He has rolled more by the instinct of camaraderie (often delightfully sordid) rather than by any defined moral impulse. If anything, both in friendship and romance, Keith’s guidance seems to be some kind of will for collective hedonistic comforts. The lines of his sexual and platonic relationships are often blurred. I get the sense that Keef is always on the east side of the tracks, windows steamed, guitar in hand, intoxicated and nestled in the lap of a black woman, channeling ecstasy of one sort or another. Bacchus incarnate, he often keeps the cauldron full of wine and the songs bubbling. Most anyone who is around him takes in the vapors.
This may not seem like tension at all, and it often isn’t to those who are drinking from his cup. It’s only tense when those few interact with the rest of the uninhibited world. You don’t notice the yellow lines on the road (let alone drive between them) once the vapors hit you. But, much of the world heeds and needs the yellow lines and recognize them as necessary for avoiding head-on collisions. Keith seems not to have worried much about that.
Though there’s less tension in Keith’s own mind, there’s tension in his relationships to those who aren’t stirring the cauldron. Keith’s passed out with some gal after a night of the vapors, meanwhile, Marlon (Keith’s son) is running amok without guidance, or his old lady is sleeping with someone else. (See Life for the story of Marlon on the ’76 European tour.) There aren’t many rules at all, which makes everything blurry. This chaos is fine in a vacuum, but anytime one has to interact with the rest of the world, the tension can be deadly. I’m almost positive Keith would be dead if he hadn’t been a Rolling Stone.
If You Try Sometimes …
Charlie just turned seventy (June 2nd, 2011). He married Shirley Ann Shepherd in 1964, bringing them close to their fifty-year wedding anniversary. It seems very clear by Charlie’s actions that monogamous marriage is an institution he believes in—or at least sticks to. In a profession known for womanizing, Watts is known for having kept it in his pants. In fact, while staying at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion during The Stones’ 1972 “Journey through America Tour,” Watts is said to have taken advantage only of Hef ’s billiard room, rather than the other sweet-smelling accoutrements on display at the mansion. Watts is a man of few words, so there’s some guesswork needed here. Perhaps Watts’ steadfastness is the result of someone who simply doesn’t have much impulse for sexual diversity. Maybe the passion implicit in a relationship’s initial stages is unimportant to him. Or perhaps Watts is a resilient man compelled by promises and tradition. My instinct and experience of marriage is that it hasn’t been easy for him. That being said, Watts doesn’t drop the beat when his arms get tired. He plows right on through the burn. That requires a lot of a person and can certainly be tense in its own right. Marriages often are burning, tense things. Fatigue is common. Dropping the beat is even more common.
In Her Glass was a Bleeding Man
Like the Watts-Shepherd marriage, the love life of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir lasted right around half a century. They died never having broken their