Music Video Of the Week - October 18, 2024

"It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It)" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - June 16, 2023

"Miss You" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - July 1, 2022

"Tumbling Dice" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

A Stone Like a Rock

Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones' drummer, always stood out among his bandmates by blending in the background.  Watts, who died last week at the age of 80, was not the sort of rock and roll musician to partake in hedonism or play the role of a bad boy. He was a professional who showed up for sessions and concerts and provided the precise, steady backbeat propelling the Stones' greatest records . . . as well as records they did that were not so great.  Even slight Stones song such as "Emotional Rescue" or "You Got Me Rocking" crackle with bit because of Watts reliable backing.

A quiet and reserved Everyman in appearance, Watts was the same way on record.  He didn't aim for heroic solos like Carl Palmer, nor did he try to overwhelm everyone else in his ban the way Keith Moon did in the Who (though Moon's style of playing made him an indispensable legend in his own right).  He kept time and kept everyone on time doing it.  He provided the shotgun beat for Mick Jagger to dance over while singing to the guitar riffs provided by Keith Richards and a succession of additional guitarists - Brian Jones to Mick Taylor to Ron Wood - supported by that same drumming precision, with a seductive bass style from Bill Wyman for good measure..  Watts would later adapt his beat to the bass stylings of Darryl Jones, who replaced Wyman in a sideman capacity, showing just how, in the group's rhythm section, he carried more than his fair share of the backing - but never failed to deliver.

Now that Watts has died, the Rolling Stones seem less likely to continue for much longer, if at all.  What's really depressing is that when the Stones are gone, rock and roll itself - which has had a rough time in the past twenty years providing new blood while hip-hop continues to flourish more than rock ever seemed to - may follow them into history,  Nothing lasts forever - expect the Stones' records, of course.  And Charlie Watts is a big reason for that. RIP.  

Music Video Of the Week - August 27, 2021

"Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - April 23, 2021

"Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - July 5, 2019

"Honky Tonk Women" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

"The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" - Fifty Years

It was on this day in 1968 that the Rolling Stones filmed their television special "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus," an extravaganza of some of the best performers in sixties rock (and Yoko Ono) that would not be aired for twenty-eight years.

The Stones, like the Beatles, had not toured since 1966, and concluded as the Beatles had done that for as long as they were unable or unwilling to return to the concert stage, television was the most immediate vehicle on which to perform.  Mick Jagger came up with the idea of combining rock and roll performances with circus acts in tandem with Pete Townshend of the Who and Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces, whose respective bands were both to be part of the special.  (The Small Faces ultimately bowed out.)

Up to this point, rock and roll specials had had mixed results.  A year earlier, the Beatles had bombed with their Magical Mystery Tour film on the BBC, which led NBC in the United States to cancel its American airing, whereas Elvis Presley had just made a miraculous comeback with his Christmas special in America (relax, I'll get to that), which, in an ironic twist, aired on NBC.  The Stones' show, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was superior to the Beatles' movie and was also on par with Elvis' TV special in terms of excitement and energy.  Alas, a good deal of that energy did not come from the Stones themselves.

The TV-special film that finally got out is in fact an edited, one-hour document of the evening's best performances.  Jethro Tull begins the festivities with "Song For Jeffrey," from their debut album, and though Ian Anderson's vocal is the only live element of an otherwise mimed performance - they were the only band in "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" that did not play live - Anderson's idiosyncratic stage persona makes their appearance memorable.  (The guitarist here is future Black Sabbath member Tony Iommi, a stand-in for Mick Abrahams, who had quit Tull and would be permanently replaced by Martin Barre.)  Then the Who (below) perform an explosive rendition of their mini-opera "A Quick One While He's Away" to an enthusiastic studio audience.

Marianne Faithfull, who performs Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin's "Something Better" to music on a backing tape, rises to the occasion with a heartfelt delivery, while a performance of "Ain't That a Lot of Love" from bluesman Taj Mahal (the only American on the bill) just plain rocks.  But not as much as a performance from the one-off supergroup John Lennon had assembled, the Dirty Mac (below), which was comprised of Lennon and Eric Clapton on guitars, Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums, and the Stones' Keith Richards on bass.  Their rendition of Lennon's Beatles song "Yer Blues" is a blistering, crunchy rock performance, and their jam with Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis is good.  Well, it could have been great, actually, if not for Yoko Ono crashing it and vocalizing all over the place.  In between all this are special circus acts, with the odd clown (including Stones bassist Bill Wyman in a clown suit) popping up here and there.

The Rolling Stones close the show with a massive set of songs from their latest LP release, Beggars Banquet, as well as "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and an early and pointed version of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," culminating with a fiery take on "Sympathy For the Devil."  (They say good night with a take on "Salt Of the Earth.")  But the set was deemed inferior to what had come before, with the Who's appearance remaining the best performance of the night.  The long delay in getting the show set up between acts - filming took fifteen hours into the following morning - had sapped the energy of the Stones, and the pathetic performance of a thoroughly stoned Brian Jones didn't help matters any.  When the Stones saw the result of their efforts, they shelved the whole project rather than risk disappointing their fans as much as the Beatles had with Magical Mystery Tour.  They didn't want to be seen being outdone by the Who on their own special.

Lindsay-Hogg returned to the project in the early nineties, but it wasn't until footage thought to be lost was discovered by director Michael Gochanour and producer Robin Klein, who were able to complete the film.  Shown at the 1996 New York Film Festival in October of that year, "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" was aired in America on the cable music channel VH-1.

Watching it years after it was made, "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" holds up rather well, capturing the essence and the headiness of late-sixties rock culture, at a time when the music was dominated by the British but still deeply rooted in black American blues.  (The circus acts featured have their charms too, and a little intrigue - top model Donyale Luna, who was in competition with Naomi Sims at the time for laying claim to being the first top black fashion model, served as the fire eater's assistant.)  As Rolling Stone writer David Dalton wrote in the film's opening titles, "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" was from a time when it seemed that rock and roll would "inherit the earth."  In 1996, with most of the film's participants having become less relevant and rock itself having begun its long, steady post-grunge decline (still in progress in 2018, with VH-1 having since gone hip-hop), the spirit and the commitment the Rolling Stones and their guests had to the music came through (and they still do).

And yes, the Rolling Stones may have been sub-par compared to the Who or John Lennon, but, good grief, it's still the Stones as we know them - which, as Dave Marsh wrote, is no small thing.  Their set shows a band ready to get back on the road and prove themselves as the great live performers they knew they could be.  The Stones in fact were beginning their ascent to their peak of live performance, with their best and most exciting shows yet to come.  For all of their war-weariness, the Stones look determined to pick up where they left off after drug busts and studio isolation forced them off the concert stage and after their poorly received album Their Satanic Majesties Request cast doubt in their abilities.  Remember, the Stones made this film to support Beggars Banquet; they were more ready to rock than they realized. Janet Maslin of the New York Times summed up their fighting spirit by praising the "sleek young Stones in all their insolent glory presiding over this uneven but ripely nostalgic show."  But their fighting spirit would sadly exact a price - their decision to fire group founder Brian Jones, who would drown in his own swimming pool seven months later.

If the Stones are to be faulted for anything, perhaps it's for trying too hard. Ian Anderson offered this interesting observation years later: "I was there, and they were pretty good when they were rehearsing.  But they just did too much, and I think Mick Jagger sang himself out. When it came to the crunch, the Who just came in and did a few songs, did what they normally do and - crash, bang - the Stones, who had been rehearsing and working at it for ages, felt perhaps a little overshadowed by the energy of the Who."  But all of that work still seems noble when looking back from today, when so much pop music is not so much played as it is manufactured. "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" represents an incredible period of music, live performance, and attitude that will likely never be replicated.

Music Video Of the Week - October 12, 2018

"Jumpin' Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

The Rolling Stones - Beggars Banquet (1968)

(The cover of the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet that the band wanted to use.) 

Leave it to the Rolling Stones to make the decline and fall of civilization sound cool.

Beggars Banquet is nothing short of a depiction of the dark side of the sixties dream.  The Stones' seventh studio album is fraught with images of sexual debauchery, deteriorating social mores, and anarchy, all brought to life by stinging guitars from Keith Richards and (to a lesser extent) Brian Jones and the steady, crisp rhythm section of Bill Wyman on bass and Charlie Watts on drums.  The music explores the deepest recesses of American blues and explores unvarnished country sounds as well.  Topping all this off is Mick Jagger's incendiary, exaggerated vocals, with Mick teasing listeners with his elongated, lustful phrasing and his deep insincerity.

The album begins not with a vocal or an instrument but with a yelp, as the Stones go into "Sympathy For the Devil," a tease by the devil himself to get his listeners to admit aiding and abetting in his crimes against humanity as a sultry samba groove envelops the stereo spectrum.  Beggars Banquet proceeds with images of diminished dreams and voracious lust, from the slow, downbeat "No Expectations" and the somewhat light-hearted, country-tinged lament "Dear Doctor" (a song about a betrayal that, ironically, saves a man from having to get married) to the perversity of the steaming blues number "Parachute Woman" and the salacious "Stray Cat Blues," the latter a nasty, guitar-charged song appropriate a teenage sexual partner who gives as good as she gets.  The depictions of a young girl as a biting, scratching alley cat brought the pre-Altamont Stones as close to the edge as they could possibly go without falling over.

Dave Marsh identified the theme of Beggars Banquet as a vision of terrifying dissolution, and the music matches the Stones' vision.  But more importantly; so do the lyrics; the Stones not only acknowledge mores and morals falling apart, they revel in it.  The blatant chutzpah of the words and the sharp music complement each other and make the record all the more intriguing and exciting.  Jagger and Richards present a world where outcasts and misfits either enjoy the ride to the bottom or fight a losing battle to weather the storms, especially in "Jigsaw Puzzle," with its images of gangsters and bums on the edges of society with the Stones themselves while elderly ladies fight the law and the law not only wins, it takes no prisoners.  The strident guitar on "Street Fighting Man" is a call to arms, but the words openly question whether taking to the streets is any realistic solution to . . . what?  What are we rebelling against?  Beggars Banquet closes with "Salt Of the Earth," an ironic celebration of the lower classes that rock stars like the Rolling Stones can only pretend to relate to . . . and pretend to care about.  In a world where everyone is left to their own devices but are slaves to their own base interests, no one is exempt from damnation - not even the Stones.  And the Stones were brilliant in pointing that out.

Sadly, Brian Jones was a victim of the Stones' own vision. He died a few months after this LP's release.

(The cover the Stones were forced to use by their record company.  The cover the Stones wanted has since been used.)  

(I'll be back with more record reviews later.)

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers (1971)

At the beginning of the 1970s, the Rolling Stones were reeling from Altamont and burned by pop impresario Allen Klein, all while trying to gain total control of their work . . . and trying to actually produce some work.  Sticky Fingers, their first seventies studio album, was recorded in fits and starts through much of 1970 in different recording studios (including the legendary Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama) with producer Jimmy Miller, and the album, which came out in April 1971, suggests on the surface that the Stones were none the worse for wear; all the raunchiness and debauchery of their earlier work remains as nasty and as uninhibited as ever.

But listen to what's going on beneath.  While the opening cut "Brown Sugar," an electrically charged tune walking the tightrope between racial animosity and sexual desire, and side two's opener, the explosively offensive "Bitch," pull no punches, the rest of the album, while no less malicious, is a collection of songs of isolation and fear.  The draining rock-star life and the bitter aftereffects of the sixties had clearly taken their toll band and left them feeling alienated.  Mick Jagger sounds restless and scared in much of his vocal delivery, Keith Richards' guitar riffs are crunchy and tight to the point of seeming claustrophobic, and the subtle bass of Bill Wyman and piercing drums of Charlie Watts hold everything together with such conviction that you almost wonder if they are the leaders of this band.  It's Mick Taylor, the group's new lead guitarist, though, that outshines everyone with heavy, blues-steeped solos.

Among the deeper cuts on Sticky Fingers, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" is the sharpest rocker, but the tale of a man wandering the streets in desperation is the sound of a cry for help - lyrics like "Help me baby, ain't no stranger" and "Hear me singing soft and low" couldn't be any more ironic.  The extended outro, with Bobby Keys's beefy saxophone and Taylor's magnificent (and magnificently long) guitar solo, says more than the lyrics ever could.  The Stones are mainly in a country/blues mood, though, as they stay with mostly slow temps and moody sounds.  "Wild Horses," with its tender acoustic guitar riffs, is a gorgeous country ballad about seeking a place to rest, but if  you find even a modicum of hope in the promise that the narrator and his lady will ride those horses one day, you clearly don't understand the desperation of his pleas.  "I Got the Blues," with its soulful brass, puts the listener in Jagger's shoes as he calls out for succor at three o'clock in the morning, while the absolutely devastating "Sister Morphine" (originally done by Marianne Faithfull in 1969) takes you out of your own shoes and onto a junkie's gurney; you can almost hear the intravenous solution dripping into the veins.   

There's a sense of regret and resentment throughout Sticky Fingers (most notably on the Stones's cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move"), fueled no doubt by the Stones' efforts to take charge of their music after being held down by Klein and his ABKCO company.  Jagger and Richards may be liberated on this, their first album on the Stones' own label, but the liberation comes at a bitter price that, perversely, pays dividends.  The snide "Dead Flowers" is an angry tale of abandonment that shines with Richards's and Taylor's salty honky-tonk guitars topped by Jagger's affected Nashville voice; it's proof positive that they'd learned as much about the culture of the American South through their friendship with Gram Parsons as they did about the music.  And while sidemen such as Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins and the aforementioned Keys have fine moments on this LP, Paul Buckmaster's orchestral arrangements are the most prominent contributions from outside the band.  Buckmaster had been known for his majestic, symphonic work with David Bowie and Elton John, but his strings on the burned-out rocker "Sway" and the chilling "Moonlight Mile" are menacing.  On the latter song, Jagger seems as lonely and as strung-out as can be, finding no solace in the world of rock and roll adulation and consumed by a hungry, stark rootlessness.  Freedom may be just another word for nothing left to lose, but Sticky Fingers gave the Stones a resilience that allowed them to go forward with everything to gain.   

Music Video Of the Week - May 12, 2017

"Happy" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

When The Beatles Were Turned Down

A new year has begun, rock and roll is out of style, and solo singers dominate the charts.  Groups that play guitar music don't stand a chance.

Is rock that bad off at the start of 2017?  Actually, I was talking about 1962.

At the beginning of 1962, rock and roll was dormant to the point of disappearing altogether, what with Jerry Lee Lewis banished for marrying his cousin, Chuck Berry in jail, Buddy Holly dead, and Elvis Presley having been turned into a mainstream pop singer.  And it was in this milieu that the Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best - went into a Decca Records studio in London for an audition.  It was fifty-five years ago today, and it's actually kind of scary to think that we're marking double-nickel anniversaries in Beatledom.

The Beatles did indeed spend New Year's Day, 1962 auditioning for Decca, one of the biggest record companies in the United Kingdom.  They spent an hour in the studio and recorded a set of American rock and roll songs and pop tunes, along with some of their own original numbers, that were selected by their manager, Brian Epstein. After a straightforward run-through of their set list, producer Mike Smith (not to be confused with the Dave Clark Five's lead singer) was so bowled over he wanted to sign them immediately, but his superior, a fellow by the name of Dick Rowe, overruled him and turned the Beatles down.  Not only did he think they sounded too much like Cliff Richard's backing group, the Shadows, but he decided that, because of the popularity of solo singers in Britain (and also America, by the way), electric-guitar groups were on the way out.  "These boys won't make it," he told Epstein.  "Go back to Liverpool, Mr. Epstein, you have a successful business there."

Well, that's the short version of the story. And even though Rowe's decision is considered one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of show business, it was probably the right decision at the time.  The pop charts in both the U.K. and the U.S. showed no signs of a change of trend back to rock and roll.  Decca was kind enough to at least have given the Beatles an audition; most labels in Britain wouldn't even grant them that opportunity.  And Brian Epstein, as a record store manager in a backwater British seaport city managing and promoting a rock band at a time when rock music was out and claiming that the Beatles would be bigger than Elvis, must have seemed as preposterous as, say, a home-electronics department manager at a big-box store outside Superior, Wisconsin managing and promoting a rock band today while claiming that they'll be bigger than the Beatles - at a time when rock music is out - would seem.  

Also, Epstein is believed to have deliberately sabotaged the Beatles by choosing the fifteen songs they played - twelve covers and three Lennon-McCartney originals - knowing that most the familiar songs he chose, such as "September In the Rain" and "The Sheik of Araby," weren't the best examples of their awesome talent for doing definitive cover versions and knowing also that the originals he had them do weren't their best examples of their songwriting abilities.  (After hearing the Decca recording of their minor ditty "Like Dreamers Do," I concluded that I wouldn't have signed them either.)  Epstein later admitted that he was partial to EMI signing the Beatles, but no one at EMI would bother with them . . . until George Martin, the director of the EMI "junk" label Parlophone, auditioned them in June 1962 and didn't think much of the group.  He decided to sign them (although Best was replaced by Ringo Starr thereafter), figuring he'd have nothing to lose.

And everything to gain.

It's all good and fine to think that history can be repeated, that another band like the Beatles can literally come out of nowhere, which is what Liverpool was, and bring rock and roll back to life, but as I explained in great detail back in January 2014, things are far different today from what they were in the early sixties.  Not only is the infrastructure of the recording profession completely different, thanks to streaming and all that, but how can guys with guitars get any attention when people like Kanye West and Beyoncé keep sucking up all the oxygen and the critical acclaim?  Since I wrote about the slim chances for a rock and roll comeback in 2014, a few newer artists have caught my attention, such as guitarist/singer Gary Clark, Jr. and Australian singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett.  If white guys with guitars are considered uncool, then maybe a black guy with a guitar and a woman with a guitar, as Clark and Barnett are, respectively, can make guitar music cool again?  Good luck with that.  Many listeners view Clark's music as recycled Clapton or recycled Hendrix, while Barnett is viewed as recycled Dylan.  But most pop critics don't go for recycled sounds; they want something new, and how can you provide a new sound in an old form?     

Bands?  One up-and-coming rock band is a group called the Struts, a band out of England that recalls the 1970s-era Rolling Stones.  But that's still recycling. :-O

So, while Dick Rowe did sign the Rolling Stones to Decca after seeing the Beatles' success (and learning about the Stones from none other than George Harrison), maybe Rowe wasn't wrong when he said in 1962 that electric-guitar music was on its way out.  Maybe he was just ahead of his time.  Sure, guitar rock had a good run through the 1960s and 1970s, but afterward, that started to change.  Rowe lived long enough to see synth-pop and the rise of rap in the mid-1980s - he died in 1986 - and he got a glimpse of what would, quite frankly, be the future of popular music.

The biggest rock story of 2016 was not the Struts or Courtney Barnett or even Bruce Springsteen's receipt of the Medal of Freedom but the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of Nirvana's Nevermind, sometimes thought of as rock's last important album.  The biggest rock story of 2017 will likely be the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  But so what, when all that matters is to relive past glories in the absence of present ones?  With many rock bands going unsigned by record labels, and with rappers declaring their genre the new rock and roll, the act of living on past achievements and celebrating their anniversaries is nothing new for us rock fans, who continue hoping against hope that another eager producer will take a chance on another ambitious band and their equally ambitious manager . . . and get things going again.

But that hypothetical band from Superior sure do have their work cut out for them.  

The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed (1969)

(This review originally appeared in November 2003.)

The bass that opens "Live With Me," the fourth cut on the Rolling Stones's 1969 album Let It Bleed, catches your ear with its roughness and fluidity. Once Charlie Watts's drums kick in and get the song going, it only gets better from there, with Mick Jagger offering up lyrics juxtaposing dirty, salacious crudity with formal, mannered living, and without irony ("I got nasty habits / I take tea at three") When I first bought Let It Bleed on a digitally remastered cassette in the late eighties, the bass on that song really stood out to me; I thought it was one of Bill Wyman's finest moments. When my cassette copy of Let It Bleed broke, I replaced it with the SACD reissue, which included the full credits for each track. It was then that I discovered that the bass on "Live With Me" had actually been played by. . . Keith Richards?

Well, yes. That game of musical chairs was par for the course in the recording of Let It Bleed, which is the most haphazard, most undisciplined, and most random LP the Stones have ever made. The band was in a state of flux at the time. Brian Jones was on his way out (he died in July 1969, after Jagger and Richards showed him the door) and Mick Taylor, late of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, was just coming in. Some songs on Let It Bleed feature Jones, others feature Taylor; many have neither. The group was in such disarray that outside help was needed to get the album done. The great Leon Russell played piano and arranged the horns on "Live With Me," Nicky Hopkins added his piano skills elsewhere, and producer Jimmy Miller substituted for Charlie Watts on drums for the album's epic closer, "You Can't Always Get What You Want." (Al Kooper joined in on organ and French horn.)

Accidents seemed to be the rule of the day during the sessions for the Stones's eighth studio album. A country-and-western remake of the single "Honky Tonk Women," called "Country Honk," was, according to one source, an impromptu warm-up performance that just happened to be caught on tape. (Different stories suggest otherwise.)  An accidental wiping of Mick Jagger's lead vocal on "You Got The Silver" left Keith Richards's harmony vocal to stand on its own when Jagger was unavailable to re-record his vocal track.  The album is just like the back cover showing the carefully crafted record player artwork on the front in a shambles.  In a word, it's a mess.

But what a glorious mess it is. Let It Bleed captures the Stones in a moment of transition from being sixties rebels to seventies professionals as they pushed their bad-boy image as far as they could - which led to the Altamont disaster shortly after this album's release - even while becoming more musically savvy. Here the Stones were working their way through mishaps and putting the carefree sixties spirit behind them while looking toward a future of some of their best music as well as bigger and grander concerts. (Their groundbreaking U.S. arena tour of 1969 was a template for seventies and eighties arena rock in general.) "Gimmie Shelter" emerged as a tough, serious plea for stability; the slasher anthem "Midnight Rambler" found the Stones at the very edge of mayhem. And "You Can't Always Get What You Want" exhibited the dark side of sixties idealism perfectly. As Dave Marsh later wrote, it (as well as "Gimmie Shelter") was about as terminal as the sixties got.

So was the whole album. That's why Let It Bleed, in spite of the fact that it's ready to fall apart at a moment's notice, is essential for any serious record collection.

Music Video Of the Week - August 26, 2011

"Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - July 29, 2011

"Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)

Altamont, Rock and Roll, and the December Curse

Ever notice how the worst moments in rock and roll always seem to happen in December?

Think about it. It's been the month in which all sorts of disasters have occurred - John Lennon's murder, the trampled fans at that Who concert in Cincinnati, the Montreux entertainment complex fire that occurred while Frank Zappa was performing there and Deep Purple were recording there (which Deep People immortalized in "Smoke On the Water"), Frank Zappa's death, Roy Orbison's death, Rick Nelson's fatal plane crash. . . . Obviously, not everything bad that happened in the "rock era" of popular music happened in December, but that's a pretty nasty list right there.

What is it about December being a bad month for rock and roll? Something makes rock and roll hit the skids in the last month of the year . . . or the decade. December 1979 saw Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer's awful duet record, Styx's "Babe," and Rupert Holmes's stupid song about piña coladas all hit number one on the Billboard singles charts. Not a good way to close out the seventies, although that's obviously an innocuous example. And of course, I haven't mentioned the greatest December disaster in the history of rock and roll . . . Altamont, the rock festival headlined and sponsored by the Rolling Stones, which took place in California forty years ago today.

The Rolling Stones had ushered in a new era of rock concerts with their 1969 U.S. tour by playing arenas, a standard that would last for big-name acts for decades. At the time, arena concerts were seen as money-grubbing shows to get as many people to attend a concert as possible, with little regard to the ambiance or intimacy necessary to make the music work. Advances in sound equipment made it possible for a rock band to give a pretty decent show in such a large space, but the Stones were still viewed as going for the money at the expense of their own audience. With their free concert in London's Hyde Park having gone off without much trouble, the Rolling Stones attempted an act of good faith by deciding to stage a free show in California. The Altamont Speedway was the third choice after proposals for employing one of two other venues - Kezar Stadium in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and another Bay Area speedway - fell through.

Soon, California rock acts such as Santana, the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the Jefferson Airplane were invited to perform there as well, with the Rolling Stones as the final act, in the interest of turning Altamont into "Woodstock West." The hope was that the good vibes of peace and love would permeate through the show and create a magical experience as had happened in upstate New York four months earlier. There was just one hitch. The Stones didn't represent the spirit of peace and love; they represented the dark, violent, sexual underbelly of rock and roll. Their most recent album of the time, Let It Bleed (notice the title?), had references to knifings in two - two - of its songs. Much of the crowd that gathered to see the Rolling Stones were not like the flower children who followed the Dead. They were young punks who scoffed at "peace and love" values and were turned on by rebellion. At a free concert, such attitudes could cause a ruckus. When the Stones decided to hire a local Hell's Angels chapter to provide security on the basis of the Stones having used a British Hell's Angels chapter at Hyde Park, something more than a ruckus was guaranteed. Rock critic Greil Marcus, who was there, picked up the negative vibe immediately. When Marcus offered a piece of his sandwich to a fellow concertgoer, the fan slapped the food out of Marcus's hand and snapped, "I don't want your f---ing food, you a--hole."

It got worse from that moment on. Unlike the British Hell's Angels chapter from Hyde Park, the American bikers were a much less malleable bunch, and after getting paid in five hundred dollars worth of beer, they proceeded to drink on the job. Some of them were reportedly stoned on barbiturates, while concertgoers were reportedly stoned on LSD and amphetamines. The mood was peaceful at first, but as the bands played their sets, the crowd got more restless and more violent, and the Hell's Angels started beating people up. The Grateful Dead bowed out entirely, refusing to play when Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane was knocked unconscious by a Hell's Angel.

When the Stones arrived, by helicopter, Mick Jagger actually got punched by a fan. The Stones began their set at sundown, and while performing "Sympathy For the Devil," the third song in their set, nearly five thousand people jammed the edge of the stage and some tried to climb on it. The band had to briefly stop their set to appeal for calm. Later, Meredith Hunter, a black Rolling Stones fan, tried to get on the stage, and a Hell's Angel grabbed his head and punched him. Hunter returned to the stage, where he pulled out a gun, and another Hell's Angel repeatedly stabbed him to death. The Stones, then performing "Under My Thumb," were unaware of the killing, and according to one other Hell's Angel, they were ready to abandon the show until he held a gun to Keith Richards and threatened him with his life to play their set.

The idealistic spirit of the sixties rolled over and died at Altamont, and rock and roll was no longer seen as a rebellious voice for social change. The seventies, while producing some great rock music, were a more cynical age, during which society in Britain and America became rougher and more disillusioning. The decade culminated in the burnout of the punk movement meant to reinvigorate rock and roll, giving way to an era of mindless self-interest that was signaled by Margaret Thatcher's assumption of the British prime ministership in 1979 and Ronald Reagan's election to the U.S. presidency a year later. The great racial divide in popular music began with Altamont, Meredith Hunter's killing an apparent sign that black people weren't welcome at white-dominated rock concerts. (This became clear when Prince opened for the Stones in 1981 and had garbage thrown at him.) In the early eighties, the late Michael Jackson was applauded for his crossover appeal; in the sixties, racial crossovers had been par for the course.

Altamont cast a pall on rock and roll, which continued to manifest itself in the ugliness of the Montreux and Cincinnati disasters referred to earlier, as well as Woodstock '99. In fact, the December curse began with Altamont; before 1969, the worst thing to happen to rock and roll in December was the Beatles's Magical Mystery Tour film. Now whenever the year winds down, I wonder what disaster awaits rock next . . . and hide in the comfort of holiday music.

The December curse lives, forty years after Altamont.

Let it bleed.

Unsavory Characters

Two somewhat unsavory figures died recently . . .

Allen Klein was a music mogul who made his reputation as the "Robin Hood of Pop" for getting sweetheart royalty deals for his pop star clients (and, coincidentally, himself). Starting out as the manager of singers like Bobby Darin and Sam Cooke, Klein advised and later managed the Rolling Stones (his record company still has the rights to their pre-1971 catalog) and later acted on behalf of three of the Beatles. Paul McCartney didn't trust him and had his affairs taken care of by his father-in-law, which turned out to be a good idea. Klein was a skank, making lot of money off the chaos at Apple, and he may have contributed to the Beatles's breakup. Ironically, Yoko Ono - wrongfully credited to instigating the split - was instrumental in getting Apple separated from Klein, thanks to her skillful negotiating tactics. Klein compared her negotiating skills - as a compliment - to those of Henry Kissinger.

His handling of the Stones's finances so angered Mick Jagger that he had to chase Klein down a hotel corridor to pick a bone with him over it.

Klein later did time in prison for tax fraud.

Also, Robert McNamara died today at 93. As Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, McNamara oversaw the escalation of the Vietnam War and was blinded by anti-Communist paranoia into keeping the war going, even though he knew the U.S. couldn't win. He later expressed regret for his policy but never actually apologized for it.

Personally, I think McNamara would have been better off staying at Ford, where President Kennedy found him.

Two extremely unsavory people celebrate birthdays today. Former President George Walker Bush and former box office attraction Sylvester Stallone both turn 63 today. Meanwhile, Nancy Reagan, 88 - who it turns out, wasn't unsavory at all - celebrates her 86th birthday today.