Sir Michael will be 68 in July.
I saw the Stones at Duke U. about 5 or 6 years ago. Mick Jagger was not only in shape, but he pretty much ran up and down the stage for the whole show (I heard later that he’s pretty fastidious now about watching his health - he’s into all-organic food, exercise, etc.). Keith Richards looked like you would expect him to look, but he still played guitar like a sumbitch. Whatever substances he has imbibed over his lifetime apparently missed the music lobe of his brain.
I’ve heard that Charlie Watts is in and out of ill health. That more than anything might limit how much touring they do.
Not a lot. I saw it on Amazon.com for $21.99 for a “new” copy, as in factory-sealed. For a double CD, that’s actually quite reasonable.
I can’t imagine that the Stones will stop touring as long as all four members are physically capable of doing it. Why would they? They enjoy it and get paid absurdly large salaries to do so. I think there’s a reasonable chance that the Stones will not stop touring until at least one of their members is dead.
Mostly heroin, supposedly. Which when injected, reportedly doesn’t cause physical brain damage. I imagine some of the adulterants they cut it with could cause brain damage, but a millionaire rock star wouldn’t have trouble affording the good stuff, as well as clean single-use needles.
I don’t know about ‘done’, but I’d bet that most of them are at least baked.
Already happened, and it didn’t stop them then.
Technically no, as Brian Jones was no longer a member of the band when he died.
I remember a press conference in the late 1980s when Keith Richards was asked “Is this going to be a farewell tour?”. Keef responded “We were first asked that in 1966. Next question.”
These guys love money (most of us do) and as long as people will shell out, they’ll play and collect.
I fully agree. If the Stones decided to strip back the production and play some dirty acoustic-based old man blues, I believe they could still put together a really worthwhile album or two. But that’s a huge “if”, and I can’t really see it happening.
They’ve collaborated with Tom Waits a few times: they should get him to produce an album for them. I’d pay to own that album.
I’m about 70% through Keith’s book; it’s well worth reading. There’s nothing in it that’d be a major revelation to any Stones fan, but it’s very interesting to get Keith’s version of events that have previously only been written about by outsiders.
The Brian Jones/Anita Pallenberg triangle gets what seems to me to be a pretty fair and reasonable treatment.
He’s amusingly bitchy about Jagger in some passages. The passages about Gram Parsons are great; Gram is often dismissed as a drug-buddy footnote to the Stones’ story, but he was a great friend to, and a great influence on, Keith Richards at his musical peak, as well as a great (and under-acknowledged) talent in his own right.
Keith says that Jagger ended up being deliberately unfriendly to Parsons, trying to drive him away because he felt that Parsons was too close to Keith and was a threat to the Jagger/Richards partnership. Which is silly, of course, but Keith’s version of the story rings very true to me. I can certainly picture Jagger acting jealous and threatened in that situation.
Fascinating stuff, I’d recommend the book to any Stones fan.
Just found this Billboard story, dated February 2. A Stones press release says no tour this year, but doesn’t rule out future tours.