The tide of the long weekend has receeded, leaving behind the detritus of four days spent in and and out of every pub in South West London. Among the empty bottles, broken records and cigarette ends however floats an eternal question. Raised in the early hours of some god forsaken morning, it caused the same flared tempers, frayed nerves and impassioned speeches it has been illiciting for decades... That's right kids, it's the big one:
The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?
The inner torment this question poses to the undecided is indescribable. Angie or Elenor Rigby? Ruby Tuesday or Penny Lane? Paint it Black or Yellow Submarine? My mother singing sweetly to her namesake (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), my aunt in throes of excitement over the cheek of Jagger in a lace dress in Hyde Park circa 1969. Kurt's greatest influence being The Beatles, ensuring that Nirvana had a melodious quality without which their music would have descended into cacophonic chaos, and while Punks like to believe they had distanced themself from produced Rock, The Clash and The Sex Pistols both site The Stones as heavy influences. Where would we be without London Calling? How could I live without Nevermind?
The Beatles changed everything - they took the mundane and made it special, their music made all the little things, the every day, into art, so that not only their lives took on a fabled new meaning but so do ours. Penny Lane was a junction in Liverpool where Lennon and Mc Cartney met to catch a bus into town, while Strawberry Fields was the name of a Salvation Army Children's home around the corner from where Lennon grew up. Yet they are both in Our Ears and in Our Eyes, There Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies. Starting a revolution so in keeping with their generation, they believed that All We Needed was Love - the little hippy corner of my heart still believes they were right. Later they took the world on guided psychedelic tours of their souls, through Tangerine Trees and Marmalade Skies. They urged us to Come Together, they asked us to Let It Be. When I want to escape, when I want to understand, when I want to ask questions and hear answers and find myself in another time they are who I choose.
The Rolling Stones are a rolling sexual revolution. Nothing is more convincing of the raw sexual magnatism of Rock and Roll than the fact that men and woman have drooled over that motley crew of misfits for generations. Granted, the first thing that springs to mind when looking at Mick Jagger's lips is fellacio, but still - the music turned them all into the most unlikely of sex gods. The plaintive notes of Jaggers voice make me want to Try and Cry for Angie, and make me Miss Ruby Tuesday. With his urging I would go out and Paint It, Black, and even if I Can't Always Get What I Want, If I Try Some Times, I Just Might Find, I Get What I Need. The Stones take you where you want to go, but probably couldn't go by yourself. Jagger's highly sexed mewling teamed with the hedonism that is Richards unite to make every base instinct, every buried desire okay, in fact commendable. And so I choose them when I want to get lost, when I want to drown, when I want to be free.
And there you have my argument - perhaps less lucid when slurred out at 5 in the morning while being chased around the kitchen by a mad man with a metaphorical gun urging me to CHOOSE, but no less fraught and heart felt. Why should I have to choose?
They are both so eternal for me, both so necessary. So I shan't...SO there!
I must say, hon, I do like your writing style! I think you captured the second or third generations-removed relationship with the Beatles (those who discovered them first time around think very differently about them, I'm afraid). But what I want to most commend you on is that you are keeping them in the mind's eye. We live in an age so prolific with ear fungus, we just hear about EVERYTHING, we know what a dead hotel mogul's heiresses are wearing for underewear today, isn't that, when you look at it, the strangest thing that has happened to our planet. Well, I LIKED "hearing" about the Beatles and the Stones one more time again, it's vital to center our culture in the things of value any way we can. But you forgot something, just one thing, ESPECIALLY about the Stones, they made us, and should EVER make us DANCE! Take care hon.
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