Re: Why do the Stones have so few hardcore fans?
Date: August 1, 2006 13:31
I dont see the stones as "one of the most influential" band. Prolific? yes, at least once, brilliant? yes but not influential as their status of "greatest etc..." could imply. Velvet Underground is/has been the most influential band for nowadays rock music. Beatles of course because they defined what pop music was all about. Dylan of course and Neil Young. But Stones? They did not influence that much. Of course they defined a certain mold between blues and rock and roll but after them, those bands that followed them have been mostly a stones mimic more than a blooming of something great and different from that mold. This is one of the reason why, imho, Stones are still around, a part from personal motivations of course.
They still fill a spot that no one else can: the rhythm and blues/rock'n'roll band. The music they play is "out of time" literally, it is classic and unchangeable, that's another reason. Sure you can depart from the main street of that music to invent anything, but if you stay on the main street of r'n'b/r'n'r there you find no room for other than the stones.
You can find tons of great young storytellers on myspace.com and among indies that work under the dylan, springsteen, young, reed and waits influence, but the stones, i believe, did not nurture such a prolific prole. Just because they did not invent the music they stick to in 40 years. They invent the meaning of "rock and roll band" for sure. But they just play Chuck Berry or Solomon Burke covers. They happened to make them sound a whole lot better!
Maybe this is another reason why they attract more causual than die hard fans. Fanatics need a strong identity to identify with. Be that in the music style or in lyrics or in both. If you go to a stones concert you find the whole audience singing "woo hoo" during SFTD or responding "woooooooh" to mick's yeah yeah yeah on BS, or "no no no, eh eh eh" on satisfaction, but how many people you hear singing along with mick the lyrics of ASTL or TD? If you go to a Morrissey or Weller gig you see the difference. In 1986 i was attending the Queen concert at Webley stadiun in London, the whole crowd was singing each word of each lyrics.
If you consider also that they have ever looked for new audience more than to satisfy old fans you may find the reason why they have succeded - at least until now - to avoid the status of nostalgia act while playing mostly the same numbers most of the time. The Stones playing JJF is not the Eagles playing Hotel California just because HC is - for those who like the genre - a beautiful ballad whose beauty can be easily located in space and time, on the other hand JJF could have been written last night or 100 hundred years ago. You can see this "process" almost openly in the making if you think how the glimmer twins reworked The Last Time from a spiritual of the same title.