Stoned

He may be the only white rock ’n’ roll performer in the world to approach his audience hopping backward, or prostrate himself on the floor between verses. Mick Jagger, who has no voice and cannot, so to speak, sing, can and does excite an audience like no one else. Poured into his tabby-gold silks; red and white fringy prayer shawls swaying from neck and waist; silver chains first as choker, then the next and the next and the next descending down to a midsection which either is positioned like none other or else reflects a tailor with a very special idea of how to package the area ’twixt navel and thigh; shod in white bucks or pumps, Mick exudes not so much the air of the bizarre as an aura of mythic, priapic divinity.

In 1972 the Rolling Stones toured America, leaving the usual residue of riots, drug busts, police-kiddie hassles, and sour feelings among the citizenry. They arrived the first night in Boston some four hours late, fogged out here, forced to land in Rhode Island where they tussled with a photographer and wound up in jail. Boston’s Mayor Kevin White arranged their release, fearing riots in his already riot-torn city (Puerto Ricans, that go-round), then did his John Lindsay number at the Garden; when they arrived, finally, the Mayor described Mick as a “quiet, shy, gentle person,” after which they did their number and vanished into the night. I saw the show the next night, temperature nearly 100 indoors as well as outside, following a super hour of Stevie Wonder bedecked in a fez and sequined caftan and shades, a Shriner in blackface whose voice retains hints of his prepubescent beginnings.

DB

About the Author

David Brudnoy

He may be the only white rock ’n’ roll performer in the world to approach his audience hopping backward, or prostrate himself on the floor between verses. Mick Jagger, who has no voice and cannot, so to speak, sing, can and does excite an audience like no one else. Poured into his tabby-gold silks; red and white fringy prayer shawls swaying from neck and waist; silver chains first as choker, then the next and the next and the next descending down to a midsection which either is positioned like none other or else reflects a tailor with a very special idea of how to package the area ’twixt navel and thigh; shod in white bucks or pumps, Mick exudes not so much the air of the bizarre as an aura of mythic, priapic divinity.

In 1972 the Rolling Stones toured America, leaving the usual residue of riots, drug busts, police-kiddie hassles, and sour feelings among the citizenry. They arrived the first night in Boston some four hours late, fogged out here, forced to land in Rhode Island where they tussled with a photographer and wound up in jail. Boston’s Mayor Kevin White arranged their release, fearing riots in his already riot-torn city (Puerto Ricans, that go-round), then did his John Lindsay number at the Garden; when they arrived, finally, the Mayor described Mick as a “quiet, shy, gentle person,” after which they did their number and vanished into the night. I saw the show the next night, temperature nearly 100 indoors as well as outside, following a super hour of Stevie Wonder bedecked in a fez and sequined caftan and shades, a Shriner in blackface whose voice retains hints of his prepubescent beginnings.