We can't all be the Rolling Stones, but we don't have to gather moss

Copyright Polydor/Geffen

As much as I may have wished I did, I’ve never had much in common with the Rolling Stones.

Which is why they’re the Stones, I guess. If we mortals were like them, we’d have to find another active band that has been iconic for over 60 years. Blimey, that’s a big ask. Just staying alive that long has been too challenging for many inductees of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Mick Jagger turns 83 Sunday. Keith Richards is 82. Ronnie Wood is 79. They have a combined 19 children.

Maybe I don’t want to share every commonality with them.

My first memory of the Stones was in the mid-1960s. My dad was reading a Saturday afternoon edition of the local newspaper and started laughing. A story on the front page about one Stone or another heading off to jail or facing that prospect had the headline “Rolling Stones are breaking rocks.” Pops, who probably thought the long-haired wild boys of that period were best left in England, thought the headline was funny. Little kid me did, too, when he read it to me.

That kind of got me interested in the Stones, though. When I was 10 and heard “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” on the radio over and over, my interest really grew.

Like so many Stones hits, it had an opening that hooked you and would stay part of your musical consciousness forever. Think of the openings of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Honky Tonk Women,” or “Sympathy for the Devil,” for instance.

“Start Me Up” is 45 years old and still is frequently used in arenas before sporting events get started. It gets fans started up.

Anyway, the Stones released their 27th studio album this month, “Foreign Tongues.” It’s getting good reviews. All I’ve heard from it so far is the single that was released ahead of it, “In the Stars.” It’s infectious.

It probably doesn’t rank among the band’s best 100 songs, but it’s rock ‘n roll and I like it.

What I like about it the most is these rascals are old and they’re still making records. They’re older than rock and roll. They’re older than Frank Sinatra’s first hit record.

When you’re young, you might agree with something like the Who’s famous “I hope I die before I get old” from “My Generation.” That song was punk rock long before punk rock was a thing. When you’re the age of readers of this Substack — I’ve seen the metrics and thus can’t pretend you’re young — continuing to live seems like a pretty good deal.

I used to sneer in my working life like the Who’s Roger Daltrey did when he sang “My Generation.” I would look at the older sports writing and broadcasting cats around me and wonder why they don’t all f-f-fade away.

Now, as someone who actually leafs through the AARP magazine that comes to my house every month, I get why the Stones have ignored Pete Townshend’s lyrics and kept recording and touring. If you’re doing what you still love and do it well, why stop if you aren’t leaving puddles of drool behind while doing it?

So I do this, hope to maintain a base of subscribers and even miraculously add more, and apologize to no one about it.

Should some blogging bloviator of a younger age dismiss me as yesterday’s news, well, that would be right. Still, if they looked objectively at musical acts of 20-somethings trying to get their music out into the world, they might surmise those people aren’t as good as the Rolling Stones are at 82.

Being blissfully unaware or uncaring of those who came before you is an unalienable right, one many of us including myself have observed in our lives. However, the Stones didn’t have that character flaw. They were in their 20s once upon a time and were very influenced by blues artists who came before them, like Chuck Berry and John Lee Hooker.

I also want it said that I’m not among the large group of 60-somethings who think the best music in history came exclusively from their youth. My favorite SiriusXM satellite radio channel, the Spectrum, has introduced me to the Black Keys, Brandi Carlisle, Sam Fender, Maggie Rogers, Lord Huron, Zach Bryan.

If you don’t know any or all of them, check them out. Fender and Olivia Dean did a duet called “Rein Me In” that became the all-time second-longest running No. 1 song on the UK’s Official Singles Chart Top 100 at 17 weeks.

The Spectrum mixes in good older stuff, too. Like, you know, a certain band that formed in London in 1962.

However, one question remains unanswered and perhaps unanswerable. How has Keith Richards survived so long? There’s a reason the pseudonym the Stones have used for nearly five decades is the Cockroaches.

They live forever, and not doing so while gumming tapioca and watching the Andy Griffith version of “Matlock.”

To paraphrase Olivia Dean (27 years old) and Sam Fender (32), please don’t rein in us oldies.

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