Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Virtually every review of the Rolling Stones’ 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour focused on the band’s age. Yes, it’s a newsworthy point but one that’s already been made—a thousand times. Critics brought it up before the Stones turned thirty. The better question: What does the octogenarian status of the performers mean? To them, to us, to the process of aging.
For me, it delivers one of the few unbroken promises from the 1960s and 1970s. In those decades, the youth of America flirted with ecstasy. Fueled by the psychedelic zeitgeist of colorful times, creative forces inflamed intimations of immortality. As the years peeled away, however, sanguine hopes devolved into selfish personal greed. Instead of the spiritual uprising John Lennon screamed about in “Revolution,” the counterculture regressed to its materialistic mean. Even the Beatles, the flower-power emblem of love and peace, bowed to commercial pressures and infighting. Who would’ve thought one libido-driven blues band from Dartford would prove the power of music, art, and staying true to your dream?
Well, me. Maybe that’s why Stones’ concerts feel like victory laps. The group, as well as their fans, has been maligned since the mid-Seventies. They’re too commercial, the songs sound the same, the songs sound too different, their lyrics don’t cut deep like Bob Dylan’s poetry. Mick Jagger dresses and dances weirdly, can’t sing, mimics himself, has turned into a parody. Keith Richards, an even-money favorite to OD, stood atop everyone’s death pool scratch sheet. Even their jazzy drummer didn’t play standard rock beats. They hadn’t released a good album since Tattoo You in 1981. All of which is a vile batch of disprovable BS.
On July 10, 2024, when the first chords of “Start Me Up” reverberated beneath the fixed-position open-air roof at Sofi Stadium, the hassles of a gargantuan show paid off. If felt like a gold medal ceremony for surviving seven decades.
Without a doubt, a concert at a stadium is the worst fan experience. It’s not the traffic, the hundred bucks to park, or the tantalizing smell of the street vendor hot dogs you know will kill you if you dare take a bite. It’s the trek inside with a zillion zombies crowding your space. It’s the drunken fools in Pit B spilling beer on your shirt and enlisting your toes as their dance floor. Additionally, the reckless dad at the front of the stage who hoists his daughter to his shoulders without regard for the nobodies behind him—or her ears—and the tobacco smoker who doesn’t care if his cancerous cloud wallops your face. It’s like attending a championship soccer match inside a zoo while stuck in the middle of a security line at LAX.
Worse, 75 percent of the fans—probably higher—bought a royally expensive out-of-sight seat. If you’re so inclined, you could drop thousands of dollars to relax in a private suite, but you’re miles away from the action. The only decent spot is the pit, and then you’re stuck in a sea of stinky humanity. Somehow, the Stones transmit the enormous energy it takes to captivate the crowd, despite the unfriendly confines.
At $800 for floor entry, the 2024 Stones concert took on the tone of a guilty pleasure. But the joy that started on the stage soon spread to every inch of the monstrosity called Sofi. It’s like the old joke about divorces; the reason they’re so expensive is, well, because they’re worth it. If I didn’t hear it with my own ears, I wouldn’t believe the band could still sound so crisp, powerful, and bright. I never expected to see Keith and Ronnie Wood so clear-eyed—dare I say sober— locked, but not loaded, into each fleeting note. What they lacked in late-life dexterity, they more than made up for in intensity, something Mick has always excelled at.
During “Wild Horses,” Keith summoned every ounce of mojo from his swollen arthritic digits. Deep lines on his face creased as the song sunk into sentimentality. Over the years, the lyrics have grown rings, like sturdy oak trees. “Let’s do some living after we die,” indeed. Again, the Rolling Stones proved to be masters of design, phrasing, and pacing. There’s all the other musical groups that have been, and ever will be, and then there’s the Rolling Stones. Only the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world can sound loose and tight, raunchy and sweet, at the same time.
New drummer Steve Jordan beat the skins with a vengeance during “Paint It Black,” Southern Rock legend Chuck Leavell put his best foot forward on “Honky Tonk Woman”—literally, on the keyboard, and authentically anchored the melodies. In the closing moments of “Tumbling Dice,” I missed the rumbling beat of the late Charlie Watts but screamed along with Mick when he sang, “Keep on rolling,” aware of its cosmic synchronicity.
“Miss You” always pleases the crowd, but its substitute, “Midnight Rambler,” gave Mick a chance to blow his mouth harp, prance, and sing in a cardiovascular feat elite athletes couldn’t surpass at this year’s Summer Olympics. Who woulda thunk it. Of all the heroes of our youth, the freakin’ Rolling Stones turned out to be the ones to materialize our visions of self-actualization, to manifest the hints of eternity we sensed as denizens of the New Age. If the Stones can perform with such ferocity at age eighty, then reality isn’t restricted to what we perceive. The magic of music presents unlimited possibilities. With universal melodies, we reach the highest vibrational states.
The show recharged my road-weary rock-and-roll battery. The band’s soulful supplications served as a bulwark against my mortality. But it wasn’t only me and my Baby Boomer cronies. More so than for other legacy acts, like Bruce Springsteen, I noticed a vast turnout from all age groups. Thousands of teens, men and women in their twenties and thirties, dwarfed those over sixty and seventy. We heard twenty songs in two hours, enough to satiate, though dozens of favorites were left unplayed.
I know these guys are worth billions and have satisfied every material world longing, but we owe them a message of appreciation: Thanks for being true to yourselves, the tunes, and us. Thank God you, like Dylan Thomas, did not go gently into that good night.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.