Last night’s show really put a spotlight on many things I feel have allowed the band to hold it together this long and still be such a powerful force of nature. Feel free to add and expand:

1. Deep Love (of each other, the music, the enterprise)
2. Deep Loyalty (to each other, the music, the enterprise)
3. The music
4. Smart business decisions
5. Making Concessions (to time, age, changing abilities)
6. Staying true to the vision of the band
7. Having each other’s backs
8. Success (there no better fuel)

What else??



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2021-09-27 22:31 by cineplexed2.

Probably Mick Jagger the managerial genius kept the Stones rolling

Any person able to maintain a huge following over multiple decades must feel that the are lucky. To manage to keep the audience interested just by playing music is a fascinating achievement that no books can teach. Hard work, passion for the craft and chance.
Rockandroll,
Mops

1) People just aren't interested in Mick as a solo act, for whatever reasons. If he could have filled stadiums on his own, he would have left in 1985 and never looked back.

2) Keith the fierce lifer, Charlie the modest circumspect one, and Ronnie the good-time-go-along guy made a good mix of personality to keep it going. (Probably a good thing Taylor quit, as a great as he was as a player, simply because Keith didn't really like him that much.)

3) Mick and Keith's professionalism in continuing to work together after they stopped being buddies (post-war English stiff upper lip hard-mindedness)

4) They're all more interested in maintaining their position at the top of the heap than in following an artistic muse. They are artists, of course, but also definitely careerists.

Money

Mick's and Keith's love for performing live to the audience. Mick has said he often dreams about performing even when he is on holiday.

Also Mick and Keith don't mind the touring lifestyle. Some artistis hate touring even if they would like to perform but Mick and Keith also like to be on the road. That's not any bigger problem for them. Instead, they seem to enjoy it.

Some kind of musical and spiritual connection between Mick and Keith. There has been tougher periods but still there is something special between them. And even if they diagree on something they don't break up the band for that. They are very persistent.

And all the other band members have been so great. Mick Taylor maybe wasn't feeling himself very comfortable within the band all the time (even though he was an absolute brilliant solo player) but Ronnie Wood has been just great in bonding the members together. And Charlie of course also.

Mick has been fantastic at organizing things and leading the whole thing from the business perspective. He has both artistic talent and business talent and that is maybe not so common among rock bands.

They happened at the right time. The cultural arc of western societies somehow aligns with their career.

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Nikkei
They happened at the right time. The cultural arc of western societies somehow aligns with their career.

Yes but so did the Beatles but they ended their band fighting in the late 60s

Lots of luck and robust constitutions. Mick has worked very hard to maintain his enduring youthfulness but at the end of the day a lot is down to genetics and, by rights, Keith would not have survived the late 60's/70's without a lot of luck and good genes.
Mick's drive and equal shares of artistic and business sense and interest - rare to get both in one person and it's served all of them well.
I hadn't considered rollingon's point before but their apparent enjoyment of touring lifestyle has probably contributed to their longevity as a working band.

Hard to answer that question without making a small essay out of it. Too many components involved. I'll pass on that one for the moment.

I'm gonna go with money...and their realizing what in the hell else are we gonna do with our time. Can't say its musical artistry and work, otherwise, there'd be a slew of new albums out there over the past 20 some years. So, we get songs we love for the most part and a fresh bone or two occasionally. It's the nature of the beast. Y'know, as a comparison, you gotta wonder how much B.B. King tired of singing The Thrill Is Gone because it was the song most people who came to his show knew.

Mick Jagger

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cineplexed2
Last night’s show really put a spotlight on many things I feel have allowed the band to hold it together this long and still be such a powerful force of nature. Feel free to add and expand:

1. Deep Love (of each other, the music, the enterprise)
2. Deep Loyalty (to each other, the music, the enterprise)
3. The music
4. Smart business decisions
5. Making Concessions (to time, age, changing abilities)
6. Staying true to the vision of the band
7. Having each other’s backs
8. Success (there no better fuel)

What else??

I would add a ninth reason , if not the main reason,

9. Mick Jagger's failure as a solo artist

I would like to agree with your list but just watch LSTNT (the movie). The light sign showing alternatively 'Mick Jagger' / 'The Rolling Stones'. If Mick's solo adventure in the 80's would have succeeded and make him great without the Stones, it would have been the end.

and would add a 10th reason. Charlie and Ronnie. Of course if someone of them would have quit as Bill did, they would have continued but Charlie and Ronnie were the perfect glue to bond Mick and Keith when they were tired of each other (since 1978 approximately)

The audience.
The 'classic rock' audience is huge and never wavers.

Clearly success (making money having an enthusiastic fan base) helps longevity, but I don’t think the money is what really keeps them going. Not that they don’t enjoy it and what it brings.

But the Stones were always the oldest band.. in 1980 there was talk of their longevity.. because nobody really knew any rock bands that lasted that long.. they were pioneers, now a lot of bands are becoming 30, 40, 50 years old, but it's not that big of a deal anymore since the Stones are already almost 60 years old.

also, good fortune in finding the right sidemen. and women.

ROCKMAN

they stayed alive and couldn't find anything else to do that was more enjoyable and more financially rewarding

Story has it that they loved havin' the store
but Pacino and Pesci were theivin' alotta shit off the shelves



ROCKMAN

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Chester
Money

Exactly! Starting in 89 when Michael Cohl started promoting their tours, which really pissed Bill Graham off, they have made huge dollars on ticket sales and merchandising. A number of the top 10 tours of all time are the Stones. Even today with different promoters, they only do a dozen or so shows and yet this tour will rank up there in the top for 2021.
So many of the "classic" rock bands have to tour these past several years because there are no album sales anymore. I've seen more concerts the past several years than I have since I was in highschool back in the 80s!

The most fundamental reason, which defeated a lot of other performers, is that they were able to keep going physically. They haven't succumbed to illness, injury or disability.

Secondly, motivation - they have been able to remain a cohesive enterprise unlike, say, the Beatles, who preferred to pursue solo projects rather than overcome their differences.

I think if other seminal bands of the 60s could meet these two criteria, they too could keep going into old age.

HOWEVER...another reason is that their music is Blues-based. Blues is a timeless genre, immune to changing trends. Had the Stones' music been based on, say, Disco, no matter how strong they were individually and collectively, it would be a hard sell apart from a core fanbase.

1. giving mass audiences exactly what they want: greatest hits and pure entertainment (and not much else beside)
2. sacrificing any artistic aspiration for commercial success (see above)
3. becoming part of the establishment instead of rebelling against it
4. surviving the 70s and the 80s = being able to resume touring at the end of the 80s (and onwards) when Rock music became a gigantic business (because the babyboomer generation which was and still is their major fan base have become wealthy enough to afford overpriced tickets).
5. being able to survive their creative death for some 40 years…
6. as someone mentioned above: Jagger's failure as a solo artist which forced him to realize that the price of being successful is keeping the Stone together.

I'm a fan but these are the brute facts



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-09-28 11:54 by slewan.

Talent, foresight, money, ego, and the obsession to not leave the place

***
I'm just a Bad Boy Boogie

Friction, hunger and a deep, deep love for music as well as each other.

1. Deep Love (of each other, the music, the enterprise)
2. Deep Loyalty (to each other, the music, the enterprise)
3. The music
4. Smart business decisions
5. Making Concessions (to time, age, changing abilities)
6. Staying true to the vision of the band
7. Having each other’s backs
8. Success (there no better fuel)

9. Luck
10. Luck
11. Luck
12. Luck

Luck = finding Charlie in 62 pairing him with BW and creating the best rythmn section of rock', roll.
Luck = hiring MT after BJ was sacked.
Luck = having MT quit in 74. RW entered the picture and gave a new life to the band.
Luck = Keith getting arrested in Toronto in 77 which led him to quit heroin (Keith would have certainly died from his addiction hadn't he "met" the Mounties)

«Met the Mounties»

Haha, good one!

In physichal way...
They found some magical alchemy with lifestyle&drugs...
Some kind of Peter pan thing..
And they use that alchemy running their music love&passion...

They showed decades "how To live as young"... Now they been showing "how To live as old"

chicks & money

As having been said by "wonderboy", the audience. Not only wealthy baby-boomers, but a lot of casual fans. However, if the casual fans should care, the band would have to be big, which depends on...all things mentioned, so there you sit.