Sue's Sunday Sojourn... The Rolling Stones

Sue’s Sunday Sojourn

The Vault!

 This week marks the beginning of a new Sunday feature, Sue’s Sunday Sojourn.  Each week I will showcase a particular artist or band during my entire two hour set.  Each week, prior to the set, there will be a blog post where I will write about my memories, favorite stories or share other interesting tidbits.  The idea here is not to tell the story of the band or play two hours of their greatest hits.  The idea behind Sue’s Sunday Sojourn will be to spend time with Sue, down in her music vault.  As she puts together the set, she will reminisce and share special memories.  “I remember when this came out,” or, “I recall hearing this for the first time and I thought…”  She might share little known facts, favorite memories, fun stories or maybe even some personal experiences. 

The sets will have plenty of the big hits but be ready for a few obscure tunes that may be her personal favorites.  She will probably include a few rarities or possibly unreleased material, along with other sundry curios.  So join her every Sunday night from 7-9 as she lets you into her world.

The Rolling Stones

 

The Rolling Stones in 1965

When I was a kid, there were two great giants in Rock and Roll, spun forth from the British Invasion.  These, of course, were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  Both made a splash in the United States at about the same time with the Beatles hitting it big a few months before the Stones.  I liked both but there was just one problem, I was not allowed to like both.  The kids at school, my peers, insisted that if you were a fan of one, then you couldn’t be a fan of the other.  The rivalry was that strong but I never understood it.

So I publicly declared my love of the Beatles, who were far more refined than the Stones.  The Stones had more of an edge and were seen as something of a bunch of bad boys.  Now, since I placed myself in the Beatles’ camp I had to further declare who was my favorite Beatle, something peculiar about Beatles fans.  For the record, mine was (and still is if I must choose), George.  However, I still secretly loved the Stones too and listened to their music.  My record collection (please forgive me) had both Beatles and Stones records and if I went to a party, I made sure I left any Rolling Stones’ records at home.

In 1969, the Stones held a concert at Altamont Speedway outside of San Francisco.  The concert was hoped to be another Woodstock but the Stones had hired the Hells Angels to do security at the event.  A man by the name of Meredith Hunter charged the stage and was stopped by the Angels.  He pulled a gun and was stab to death.  The event was caught on film and it appeared that the Angels were justified in their use of deadly force.  Jagger publicly blamed the Angels for Hunter’s death.  This angered the Angels who plot to have Jagger killed in 1975.  Mick was staying at a residence on the shore of Long Island.  The Angels approached by boat to carry out their plot to kill him.  However, their boat was leaky and they wound up having to swim for their lives and, of course, Jagger never came to any harm.

In 1970 the Beatles broke up and I was upset, like many young women my age.  The silver lining was that over the next several years, things changed and it eventually became acceptable to have both the Beatles’ Red (1962-1966) and Blue (1967-1970) albums in your record collection, alongside Hot Rocks 1964-1971 by the Stones.  The Beatles were now just a memory and the Stones continued to come out with amazing albums as the years progressed.

In 1978, they came out with Some Girls.  The album was not only a big hit musically, but it achieved notoriety for other reasons.  The original album cover included pictures of Farrah Fawcett, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch and Judy Garland.  After a threatened lawsuit, the album was rereleased with a redesigned cover.  I liked a lot of the tunes on the record, but I was not too fond of Miss You at the time.  Disco was big back then and it sounded to me like the Stones had sold out.  I heard a disco tune when I heard Miss You.

The title cut off of the next album, Emotional Rescue (1980), also seemed to sell out to the pop sound and I worried that the Stones music I loved would be in jeopardy.  Alas, it was only a phase and they did go back to making just plain old good Rock and Roll.  In all, they released 25 studio albums and almost as many live albums.

This past year, 46 years after the Beatles broke up, the Stones came out with their 25^th studio album, Blue & Lonesome.  They are old men now but are still going strong.  Mick Jagger is a great grandfather and Charlie Watts is 75 years old!  In 2006, Keith Richards fell from a coconut tree at the age of 62 with no sign of slowing down.  However, many believed that Richards had been dead since the 70’s but due to the extreme amount of chemicals (drugs) in his body, his body refused to decompose and continued somehow animated to the present.

The Stones Today

The 27 Club

As long as I can remember, people have talked about the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin together as if they were related events.  Let me make one thing clear from the start, these deaths were completely unrelated in circumstance, and merely happened to have occurred within ten months of each other.  Jimi Hendrix died on September 18, 1970 after choking on his own vomit after drugs and drinking.  Sixteen days later, Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose on October 4, 1970.  One needs to understand that back then, Rock music was the music of the young, performed by young people, for a young audience.  It was inconceivable that we could lose two of our legends at so young an age and, with only sixteen days separating these events, people looked for answers and closure for both at the same time.  The closeness in time forever linked the two, so when another great, Jim Morrison of the Doors, died nine months later under rather mysterious circumstances, it became natural to link his death to the other two.  What was going on here?  Many started to even explore the possibility of a conspiracy?  Could this have been a government plot to squash the counter culture movement?

Another thing bonded these three deaths together.  All three were 27 years old when they died and the group was soon dubbed the “27 Club.”  It didn’t take long to notice that another death on July 3, 1969, exactly two years to the day before Morrison’s, should be included.  On that day, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones drowned in his swimming people.  Now there were 4 members of the 27 Club.

It remained those four, whose first and last deaths were exactly two years apart to the day, until 1994.  In that year, on April 5^th, Kurt Cobain, front man for Nirvana, decided to end his own life with a shotgun. He was 27 years old.  Soon, stories started to circulate that Cobain had been known to have claimed that he would someday be a member of the 27 Club.  It raises an interesting question.  While the first four deaths were accidents, Cobain’s death was a suicide.  Did we have a case of someone joining the club intentionally?  Could his suicide have been the fulfillment of a childhood wish?

No one will argue that these greats were taken away from us too soon.  There are many that have looked at the 27 club phenomenon and said that there are an inordinately large number of musicians who died at age 27.  While I don’t know enough about statistics, life expectancy, etc. to comment on what is a reasonable number and what is disproportionately large, I will list a few others that died at age 27:

Pete Ham of Badfinger

Ron McKernan of the Grateful Dead

Alan Wilson of Canned Heat

Rudy Lewis of the Drifters

Malcolm Hale of Spanky and Our Gang

Gary Thain of Uriah Heep

Pete de Freitas of Echo & the Bunnymen

Freaky Tah of the Lost Boyz

My friend Lanie, who frequents my shows, has requested in the past songs by bluesman Robert Johnson.  Johnson died in 1938 at the age of 27, supposedly poisoned.  Is this some strange phenomenon or is it just the results of rebellious youths living hard and reckless lives?  My mini-set today will consist of the following…

• Paint it Black – Brian Jones (The Rolling Stones)
• All Along the Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix
• Me and Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin
• L.A. Woman – Jim Morrison (The Doors)
• Smells Like Teen Spirit – Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)

When you listen to Paint it Black, listen to Brian Jones’s sitar.

As I write this, a song has been going through my head, a 1974 hit by the Righteous Brothers...

“Jimi gave us rainbows…

"Janis took a piece of our hearts…

"Remember Jim that way…

“If there's a rock and roll heaven
Well you know they've got a hell of a band.”