Amazing Performance: Mick & Keith

Photo by Steve Wood

I love the Rolling Stones…not much of a confession, but there it is. For a period, as a teenager it was something that I wouldn’t admit. I credit an older student at the University of Texas for making being a fan of the Stones legit again, when he explained that you knew you were listening to rock ‘n roll if it still sounded good coming out of a torn speaker in the cab of a Ford pick-up truck with no A/C in the middle of a Texas summer. The Stones have more songs that meet this criteria than any other band.

2012 will be their 50th anniversary and that’s cool. People don’t want it to be cool, but it is. Mick, the clever conniving Odysseus and Keith the rebellious Achilles, were meant to be dead or gone home at least by now. Keith making it too old age is the greatest rebellion he’s pulled off (the Keith death watch began in 1973). Mick as a knight…Charlie Watts said it best – Anyone else would be lynched: eighteen wives and twenty children and he’s knighted fantastic!

Makes it hard to choose who’d you rather be Mick or Keith.

Fuck me – I love the Rolling Stones. God, I hope there is a 50th anniversary tour.

What’s any of this got to do with personal growth and physical training? Not much really.  Just keep in mind that Mick is the son of a Physical Education teacher and by all accounts takes good care of himself. Keith is Keith.  Immortalized by his battles with drug addiction, booze, and unhealthy excess.  Mick is 68 and Keith will be 68 later this month. They are undisputed heavy weight champions in a line of work that kills people at any age.  So, if anyone tells you they’ve got this shit figured out – That there is a right way to eat, drink, exercise, laugh, love, and live your life – You ought to know that they’re lying.

3 responses to “Amazing Performance: Mick & Keith

  1. I once heard someone say Keith makes a cigarette look like a granola bar. In high school I was far away from Austin. So, I didn’t know they weren’t cool. I wore out a couple of Hot Rocks cassettes 🙂

    • Yeah – We were searching for music (and found some) that was going to shake up the establishment. At the time, the Stones had become the establishment. But, they came from that same perspective, so the connection was never really broken…it was just posturing on my part.

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