The Rolling Stones are just a good ole blues band at heart
Please allow me to introduce ourselves We're a band of wealth and taste. Pleased to meet ya Hope you guessed our name.
It's the fall of 1989. The Coliseum. Los Angeles, California. The Steel Wheels Tour. The Rolling Stones.
I remember leaving the concert thinking ...man, these guys are old.
The opening act that night was Guns & Roses. Axl, Slash, Duff..yeah, those guys. If you had asked me that night who would be the more relevant musical act almost thirty years later, I never would have said Mick, Keith, Charlie and Woody. NEVER!!
And yet here we are in 2016 and if you said The Rolling Stones are the biggest music act in the world today, you just might be right.
Here's how great a year it's been for the boys...They toured South America. Sold out shows in Chile, Argentina, Urugruy, Brasil, Peru and Colombia. They headed off to Mexico for a couple of gigs. They finished off the spring by performing in Havana. Yep, the Stones went to Cuba...land of Fidel and did a free show for more than 250,000.
That would be enough for most bands but these dudes are not most bands. In October, they headed off for the California desert and did two weekends at "Desert Trip". Unlike most of the performers, the Stones did two different sets.
Phew...that's a lot of work for guys in their 70's...but they weren't done yet...not even close.
It was time to get back into the studio. It had been eleven years since their last studio album, "A Bigger Bang" and it was time to make some new music. Keith Richards was especially anxious to do this. It led to "Blue and Lonesome", which was released on Friday.
While the music on the album isn't new, it does take the Stones back to their roots. "Blue and Lonesome" is twelve cover songs of mostly Chicago blues. It features songs written by Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Memphis Slim, Little Walter and other blues legends. These are the tunes that created a bond among the original Rolling Stones when they first decided to become a band. Throughout their more than fifty year run they've always treated blues musicians like Muddy Water and Buddy Guy with a kind of reverence. They think of them as music royalty and this album is a tribute to them.
A few interesting things about this album.... . No horns. There's a lot of Mick Jagger playing harmonica but no brass. . With the exception of a couple of songs, the music was done by the four Stones and their touring band members. Eric Clapton played guitar on two songs and that was it. . The album was recorded in three days. THREE DAYS, PEOPLE! A lot of records take three years to make. The Stones came in, knew the songs they wanted, played them and were done! I guess making records for more than fifty years pays off. These guys knew what to do and did it. . No overdubs on this record. They put down their tracks together and that is what you hear on the album. Very unusual....almost like a live album.
The album is getting rave reviews. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it seventh among all the new albums for the year.
And we're not done. "Exhibitionism", an exhibit of Rolling Stones memorabilia has opened in New York City. All the band members were involved in deciding what pieces to show. Some of them go back to the beginning days of the band in the early 1960's. The exhibit started in London and will be headed to Chicago and the West Coast before ending up in Australia.
So that's a look at the Rolling Stones 2016. In a year where they've lost a lot of their contemporaries, the Stones are thriving. Can't wait to see what happens in 2017.