FUCK CHARLIE WATTS: A Rolling Stones Concert Review

Keith Richards fucks up another guitar riff

The Rolling Stones have gotten way more space on this blog than they probably deserve. On one hand, they are one of the most lauded rock 'n' roll bands in history. On the other hand, they are a bunch of septuagenarians playing dress-up, resting on their laurels so hard that the laurels have been crushed beyond recognition. I like the Rolling Stones. I'm really happy that my parents got us tickets for Christmas this past year. I also don't think I'd ever attend such a concert if the tickets weren't free.

Like, examine the crowd at the pregame tailgate in Lot F2. I might be quick to claim that I was the "youngest person there," but that might not have been true. There was a decent number of young adults there with their families. But I definitely skewed on the younger side of the spectrum. I was an outlier. I was in boomer country. Lots of old, tan, bald men in flip flops, old heads from the old neighborhood (Lawncrest), telling me over Coors Lights that this was not their first Stones gig. I'm trying to create a drinking game in which you have to come up with the perfect keywords to type into Pornhub if you want to watch a a porn based on the crowd you are currently in. If we play this game now, then I think I'd type in words like "mature" and "leathery" and "drunk groupie" and "moms" and... "public" I guess. This isn't a good drinking game. But maybe that gives a certain type of person a view into what the tailgate situation looked like.

Not that that has anything to do with the Rolling Stones concert except for the fact that the band still exists, and they are old, and I suppose they tend to attract similarly-aged people who grew up and grew old with the band. Pam and I were trying to figure out if we could ever possibly be in a similar situation when we are 50 years old. The clearest hypothetical I could imagine would be maybe seeing a Hold Steady concert in 2040. Craig Finn will be 68 then. I could see a bunch of old heads trekking to Union Transfer to see Franz Nicolay roll out in a wheelchair! I wore a Hold Steady shirt to this concert, by the way, which means I was one of the 30% of people who was not wearing a T-shirt featuring a large pair of lips with a tongue wagging out of it. The most credit to my father, however, for being the only asshole wearing a Beatles tee.

When you are tailgating with your mother, you can't just open a car door and pee right there on the asphalt like I typically would, so we decided to head toward bathrooms in the concert venue, which was Lincoln Financial Field. I hadn't been inside the Linc since the time I went to see an Eagles game in 2006 and still attended and drank moderately even though I had mono. There really isn't much to say about the stadium, except that it's big and there are a lot of stairs and there is a small section of seating branded as "Family Seating," with a explanation that read "No cursing, no drinking, etc." Only in Philadelphia would that be the exception, as opposed to the norm.

My first thought upon entering the stadium seating was that the stage was really far away. Again, another complaint that really isn't the fault of the Rolling Stones, unless you consider that this is a payday for them, and so why not charge exorbitant amounts of money to be able to actually see the performers, money which not even Santa will spend on me. The opener, Des Rocs, was performing when we entered. I think. It was a band of ants from our perspective. The lead singer said at one point, "I'm so lucky to be here," versus the traditional "We're so lucky to be here," which was an interesting thing to ponder—band dynamics in a band I've never heard or heard of... and yeah, I guess I was a few beers in at this point. But I wasn't being sloppy or anything. Unfortunately, I've gotten sloppy blotto enough times in my life in situations such as these that an alcoholic's wife gets angry even before I do anything stupid or clumsy. Like, preemptively getting mad. This makes no sense. Anyways, everything was good by the time the music kicked off, and those riffs started pouring in, and hey, let's get to the damn concert already, this is a concert review, isn't it?!

I will say this: though I could barely see the band, the camera work for the four big screens they had surrounding the stage was pretty impeccable. You can't help but have your eyes drawn to the screens. Why not watch these old guys in clear zoomed-in video instead of squinting to see a dot in the distance do a shimmy? Does this defeat the purpose of seeing a band live? Sure! But you can't always get what you want... be right back, instagramming a video of me getting slapped in penance for subjecting you to a tired Rolling Stones pun.

I will also say this: the Rolling Stones' songbook is pretty unimpeachable. We discussed prior to the concert what our favorite Stones song was (mine is "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," for the record, but they did not play it live tonight), and but so pretty much every time they would rip into a classic, I would be thinking to myself, "Shit, maybe THIS is my favorite Stones song?!" "Street Fighting Man" started the party right. "Gimme Shelter" was fucking insane. "Brown Sugar," which is fantastic musically and horrifyingly troublesome lyrically, played decently here I guess, mainly because they constantly and prominently featured on all four large screens the black saxophone player, which I guess cancels out the fact that Mick Jagger is singing about raping slaves?!?!? Speaking of the sax player, the backing band was pretty great all night. Not sure why Keith Richards got prominent screen time when he couldn't even play the "Start Me Up" riff properly anymore, and meanwhile fucking Daryl Jones is killing it on bass and they showed him maybe twice? They all got some nice moments during an extended jam of "Miss You," though, which was cool.

Even "Midnight Rambler," a song that stretches well past expiration, was ballsy live. Because, you see, it was raining for a lot of this concert (marking the second time in a week I sat in a Philly open-air stadium and endured rain), but that didn't stop the band. In fact, I'd argue that the weather heightened the drama. What other band would play fucking twelve minutes of fucking "Midnight Rambler" in the fucking rain? Seriously, y'all, when they opened "Jumpin' Jack Flash" with that line "I was born in a crossfire hurricane," it hit so fucking hard, because it felt like the band was being reborn in a hurricane again.

Okay, that last line was a little overwrought. Let's equivocate and admit that, yeah man, the Stones were fucking OLD. And TIRED. Mick Jagger moved like a senior citizen dancing in a retirement home rec hall. I.e. I now hate that Maroon 5 song even more. Ronnie Wood looked like he raided his older brother's punk rock closet and then forgot to change for 60 years. Keith Richards may be immortal, but he was so skeletal and elderly in a creepy way; I would describe Keith Richards' face as that of Jack Nicholson's in the famous Shining scene, but if you took away the splintered door, and the face still looked like that. Credit Pam for the best Stones member description, saying that Charlie Watts had, for the entire concert, the same face expression that Willow has when she is shitting in her diaper.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that signals that we have now arrived at the Charlie Watts paragraphs. Buckle your seat belts. The idea of passionately hating Charlie Watts is, at its core, a ridiculous one. It's a joke premise. But Watts showed tonight that there is always truth in humor, and the truth of the matter, as proven tonight unequivocally, is that Charlie Watts is a shit drummer and a shit person. Besides the whole aforementioned issue of his perpetual grimace throughout the show—jesus fucking CHRIST dude you've been doing this for 54 years, at least pretend like you're having fun?!—there was the whole issue of him slowing down every goddamn song. It was so disheartening to hear, like, "Honky Tonk Woman" played at 80% speed. I blame Watts. Where's J. K. Simmons to throw a chair when you need it?

There are some iconic drum parts in these Rolling Stones songs, and I can name at least two that were to be played on this night. That COULD HAVE been played, if Charlie Watts gave enough of a shit to play the goddamn part as written. First, there's the drumbeat turning into a military march at the end of "Paint It Black." Charlie Watts didn't even both doing it, and it completely castrated the song and what should have been a climatic ending. Then there's the drum beat for "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." It's a rhythm that is supposed to complement the greatest guitar riff of all time, and it's supposed to hit all the harder when the guitar falls off and it's just the drums hitting that 1-2-3-AND-4. Charlie performed his one measure drum solos in the same manner and with the same enthusiasm as a proctologist would in removing a cucumber from someone's asshole. Absolutely no energy, no enthusiasm, completely sluggish, devoid of any sense of joy. Fuck this man. I hope I don't die before Charlie Watts does, because I want to experience a world in which rock 'n' roll exists without him and his shitty drumming. It's gonna be a great time in my life, assuming I survive.

A personal aside for the only person who wrote a Steel Wheels review last week but didn't attend the concert—you were correct. They did not play more than one song off of Steel Wheels. They played exactly one song off of Steel Wheels, and that song was fucking "Slipping Away," the shitty closing track featuring Crypt-Keeper Keith on lead vocals. This meant exactly one thing—bathroom break. The dueling mile-long lines at the men's room indicated to me that I wasn't the only person who thinks that Keith Richards singing lead on a Rolling Stones track is a fucking joke.

Mick Jagger tried some friendly banter in between songs. It was hit or miss, but at least he was trying. Like, he tried to get some cheers by dropping the name Nick Foles, and he eventually got there, but he made the mistake of pausing after the lead-in in which he said that "the band had just been in Jacksonville, the home of the Jaguars"... and boos rained mercilessly down on Mick Jagger the likes of which he may have not experienced since his Hell's Angels bodyguard stabbed one of his fans to death at a Stones concert. More successful was his quip about having played in Philadelphia many times in the past, except all those stadiums were knocked down already. It got a guffaw out of me, at least. Jagger also made the obligatory mention of getting a "hoagie at Wawa," though he made an additional aside—and I swear to god this is true—that "Charlie likes Sheetz better." You can't make this shit up, folks. Stupid fucking prick!!!!!!

Like I mentioned earlier, the band kicked things off with "Street Fighting Man," which is a great, great song, but which also features the lyric, "What can a poor boy do." I can't think of a less accurate description of the Rolling Stones as they currently exist. They are rich, and they are old. So very old. A more accurate lyric might've been from the great deep cut "Jigsaw Puzzle," which goes, "There's twenty-thousand grandmas / Wave their hankies in the air." This is the Rolling Stones concert. But as old as they were, and tired, and as wet as we were, and as out of place as we may have felt, and as far away as we were from the stage... still, it's the fucking Rolling Stones. Consider it a bucket list item if you must. We had a fun night seeing these legends, even well past their prime.