Rolling Stones concert shines a light on the inevitability of ageing

When your heroes, or your loved ones, get older, you worry about having to let go one day, says Deborah Lindsay Williams.

Both my mother and the Rolling Stones arrived in town last week, so it’s been a bit of a busy time. Mom isn’t much of a fan of the band, however, because when the Stones first hit big, she was newly married, with new babies: more concerned with sticky fingers than Sticky Fingers. She is, however, a big fan of her grandchildren, so she was delighted to stay with the kids while my husband and I went to the concert with some friends.

When we heard that the Stones were coming to town, our group of friends had a discussion about what tickets to buy: premier standing room tickets, which would get us close to the stage but would require standing for at least four hours; the regular price tickets which would save us money but keep us on our feet; or the reserved seats, towards the back but with the chance to, well, sit down.

The youngsters among us (read: 40-somethings) thought that standing would be all right, but others among us weren’t quite so sure: standing for a long time triggers an ache in my lower back; someone has a sciatica issue; another friend has knee problems (youthful injury, mid-30s repair, early-50s twinges). We got the reserved seats.

The upside of seats? Sitting.

The downside of seats? Sitting – or rather, feeling odd about wanting to dance, which as far as I’m concerned is the real reason to go to a rock ‘n’ roll show. In my younger days, I would have stood up to dance without a thought about the people sitting behind me, but now? I hesitated, but I didn’t want to be rude. Luckily, the people behind us left early, so I spent the last 40 minutes of the concert dancing, with nary a twinge to show for it the next day. Probably I could have stood for the entire concert. Mick did, after all.

Despite his youthful wiggling, Mick does show some sign of age, as does the entire band. They all wear sensible shoes, for example, albeit with a rock ‘n’ roll flair. Keith looked to be wearing snakeskin trainers.

At other Stones shows I’ve seen, back when the band members were mere lads of 50 and 60, they rarely paused between songs. Here, they paused between almost every tune. During some of these pauses, Mick tried out a few Arabic phrases, carefully enunciating “shock-ran” and reeling off the names of various emirates, including someplace that sounded like “ross all GHamAH”.

Even 20 years ago, the Stones resembled nothing so much as parodies of themselves: Keith’s goofy grin and skullhead rings; the placid (some might say tranquillised) Charlie, drumming brilliantly; Mick’s prancing and posturing. I mean really, can men whose fortunes exceed the GNP of several small countries combined be seen as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash?” And yet, even though I arrive at their shows chuckling at the incongruity of these geezers cranking out lyrics about honky-tonk women, I always leave thinking “that was a great show”. Every night, Mick and the boys crank up an entity called “The Rolling Stones”, and then the razzle-dazzle machine takes over.

It makes sense: a band couldn’t stick around this long without being really good at what they do. At the centre of it all is the longest-running marriage in show biz: Mick-and-Keith. Like most long-term relationships, this one has had its (much-publicised) ups and downs, but at a certain point they must have shrugged and thought “OK, so you’re always going to put your socks on the coffee table, aren’t you” (or whatever the rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of that thought might be) and just decided to get along.

As long as I’ve been alive, there has been a band called The Rolling Stones. Maybe because I’ve just hit 50 (or 50 just hit me), I had a rather morbid thought as I danced there at my seat: it’s going to be strange when one of the Stones dies. That’s the thing about 50, I think: you can no longer deny the inevitability of an endgame. I have a similar thought every time I see my mother, whom I adore. She’s as fit as the proverbial fiddle, but she’s three years older than Mick, and frankly I’m not ready for either of them to leave the stage.

Maybe that’s a new facet of the Rolling Stones’ appeal for those of us who have grown up with their music. They embody Dylan Thomas’s command to “not go gentle into that good night”. Far from gently, Mick and Keith, Ronnie and Charlie, stand raucously on the edge of the mortal coil, banging and twanging, wiggling and clapping, as if to keep darkness at bay.

Deborah Lindsay Williams (mannahattamamma.com) is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi