THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408150024
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: LANE DEGREGORY
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
I've seen Bob Dylan at Wolf Trap. I've seen Pink Floyd in Raleigh. I've heard the Moody Blues in Hampton.
And the Grateful Dead in Chapel Hill, Indiana, D.C., Maryland. . . .
I've been going to concerts for 15 years.
But I'd never seen the one band I'd always really wanted to watch: the Stones.
This month, my rock 'n' roll dream came true.
Three college friends and I experienced Mick and the boys at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.
I've never seen anything like it.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richard have passed the half-century mark. Hoary-headed Charlie Watts - the sole drummer and percussionist for the five-piece group - is older than my dad. The gyrating, jiving British band has been on the road since before I was born.
But those middle-aged men can still rip the joint better than anybody I've ever seen. They let it loose on their Voodoo Lounge tour. And showed they may be the soul survivors of bluesy, high-energy, foot-stomping rock 'n' roll.
Time is truly on their side.
I was born in the spring of 1967 - a few month before the famed ``summer of love'' - to two straight-laced graduate students who shunned hippies and only read about Woodstock. As an adolescent, neighbor boys smuggled me eight-tracks and vinyl of Exile on Main Street, Beggar's Banquet and Sticky Fingers (good thing my mom didn't see the innovative album cover on that one: the top part of blue jeans complete with real zipper - and it actually unzipped!)
My uncle, five years my elder, saw the Stones in Florida when I was too young to drive. He mailed me a Tattoo You tour T-shirt. I treasured it for almost a decade. Then, in 1988, a sorority sister at the University of Virginia borrowed it for a '70s party. She never returned that funky black cotton shirt with the iron-on tri-colored tongue.
When I actually asked permission to see my favorite band once, Mom winced and made her incredulous I-can't-even-believe-you're-asking-me-that-question look.
Three weeks ago, when I told her I was finally going to see the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, the famous facial expression reappeared.
``You mean you're leaving your husband and new home to spend three days of vacation seeing that filthy heavy metal band!'' she exclaimed. ``Won't you ever grow past that stuff?''
The Stones' performance proved at least 50,000 people in the Washington area alone - including many much older than my mother - haven't outgrown the group. Next month, 50,000 Carolina folk will get to see the Stones in Raleigh. Despite the over-$50 ticket price, new and faithful fans across the nation are still flocking to see what British music magazines have fallaciously dubbed the ``I can't get no circulation'' tour.
Those writers must not have seen Mick move.
To our left in the first-level bleacher seats at Redskins stadium, a gray-haired couple swayed to ``Tumbling Dice'' and watched Mick hip-shake across the stage through their tinted bifocals. On our right, teenage girls tried to bribe us with baby-sitting money to buy them beers between their boogieing.
My almost-30-year-old friends and I couldn't sit still all night.
Lean, lithe and oh-so-athletic, Jagger jumped from three levels of scaffolding to center stage - then climbed the catwalks and ran along railings. He traversed every inch of the wide apron in long, skipping struts - and played to each section of the audience without missing a note. He jammed on guitar, improvised on keyboards and never slowed to a ballad beat. Even ``Beast of Burden,'' which he cautioned would ``take us all down a bit,'' was a rollicking ride that seemed to get everyone unbridled.
The entire evening was energy - from 9:15 until almost midnight.
And those old entertainers didn't even take a break.
Mick only sat down to let Keith sing three songs.
The rest of the band kept on rocking through those.
On the way back to our hotel, we rode the sweaty subway with the rest of the concert-goers. A sleepy 10-year-old boy almost tripped over his new black T-shirt with the spiky tongue while clinging to his dad's hand in the train's center path. ``I've been listening to their CDs since I was a little kid,'' he said, smiling, when I asked if he'd liked the show. ``I've always wanted to see the Stones.''
``Me too,'' I replied, my own new souvenir shirt firmly in tow. ``And it sure was worth the wait.'' by CNB