NEW YORK – The Rolling Stones have never backed away from following a trend, nor have they been afraid to boldly go where others have gone before.
In 1967 they strode mightily in the footsteps of the Beatles vastly overrated “Sergeant Pepper” and released the vastly underrated “Their Satanic Majesties Request.” In the mid-1970s, when the Bee Gees began singing like castrati, the Stones bravely took their “Some Girls” album to the disco ball.
What’s more, the Stones have not shrunk from the challenge of copping reggae and country licks when the situation demanded. Indeed, one of their recent CDs was called “Forty Licks,” a sly reference to the gutsy borrowing that is the Stones’ trademark—borrowing that includes, by Keith Richards’ estimation, “every lick Chuck Berry ever played.”
Lately, however, critics have begun to suggest the Stones are too old to pull off another musical heist. That charge appeared to be corroborated last year when Mick Jagger co-wrote the soundtrack for the Jude Law snoozer Alfie, a musical score so original it put people to sleep.
“Jagger more interested in cricket than camp following,” charged a provocative Q magazine headline. “The godfather of rock is now the grandfather of rock.”
Stung by the criticism, Jagger tore himself away from attending cricket matches long enough to listen to Green Day’s American Idiot album, a vitriolic broadside that’s been camped on the charts like an angry mother at the end of the president’s Texas driveway.
“Yeah, one of my kids gave it to me,” Jagger told The Wall Street Journal. “I forget which of the blighters it was. The one who just got out of rehab? The one who makes the porn flicks? The one by that colored girl? The anorexic one who wants to be a model? Doesn’t matter. At the end of the day I listened to Green Way [sic]. A bit loud for my taste, but I thought I heard something there. It gave me an idea.”
That idea turned into “Sweet Neo Con,” a song cut in Jagger’s private recording studio in the Bahamas. “Sweet Neo Con” excoriates the wingnuts and greedoids who have turned the once legitimately conservative Republican party into a haven for aging, frightened cranks who huddle in their suburban ghettos worshiping FOX News and sending electronic screeds to the editors of liberal magazines and websites.
In “Sweet Neo Con” Jagger sings, “You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite. You call yourself a patriot, I think you’re full of shit.”
Although most people hearing those lines will think immediately of George W. Bush, Jagger insists the song “is not aimed personally at President Bush. It wouldn’t be called ‘Sweet Neo Con’ if it were.”
A source close to the Stones, speaking on condition of anonymity, contradicted Jagger.
“The song is about the president,” said the source. “Its original title was ‘Bushwhackers,’ but Mick changed it because he knows a lot of older Stones fans have been voting Republican since their daughters were born. Hell, Mick’s been voting conservative since his first daughter was born.”
In addition to criticizing the president, “Sweet Neo Con” flays people with do-nothing military jobs sucking merrily at the government teat: “My sweet neo-con, where’s the money gone, in the Pentagon.”
In another salvo, Jagger sneers, “It’s liberty for all, democracy’s our style, unless you are against us, then it’s prison without trial.”
Jagger claims he isn’t worried about a backlash similar to the one that greeted the Beatles after John Lennon had said they were more popular than Jesus.
“Keith’s a bit concerned in that regard, because he lives in the United States,” said Jagger, none of whose four homes is on U.S. soil.
Some members of the Stones entourage argue, however, that Richards is too inebriated to worry about anything. They report that Jagger is “trying to paint Keith the wimp” because Jagger is still smarting from Richards’ public criticism of Jagger for “kissing the queen’s arse to get himself knighted.”
In related news, Mick Jagger denied that the title of the Stones’ new album, “A Bigger Bang,” refers to sex. The album, which will be released September 6, “is really an endorsement of scientific theories about the origin of the universe vis-a-vis intelligent design.”
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