It seems Mick Jagger skims the papers

The Rolling Stones had their latest concert in Chicago – Friday at Soldier Field. And it seems they did a touch of homework, in terms of localling up his stage patter.

The modern-day tour

For none other than Mick Jagger, whose freakishly huge lips are the band’s logo, not only welcomed new Mayor Lori Lightfoot, he also said he was “sorry” that Ed Burke couldn’t be amongst those in attendance at the first of two Stones’ concerts to be held in Chicago as part of their U.S. tour of 2019.

NOW IN SAYING, “I’m sorry Ed Burke couldn’t make it tonight,” was Jagger truly expressing some sort of desire that he would have wanted the city’s veteran alderman on hand?

Was he praising, or dissing, the alderman?

Just what was his point in even mentioning Burke? Personally, I’m inclined to think that anybody who shelled out the kind of cash charged for Rolling Stones concert tickets probably didn’t do so to hear anything of a political nature being said.

Jagger could have waved his hand at the crowd and shouted “Hello, Chicago!!!!!!” and been just as locally relevant in his commentary as he was in mentioning Burke’s persona.

SO FOR THOSE people who are claiming that Mick Jagger is taking a jab at our Chicago politics? I don’t see it!

As they once were

More likely, he checked out the Internet briefly for local happenings, and saw the Burke name prominently mentioned. Nothing more.

Personally, I’m inclined to think that Jagger’s more substantial Chicago commentary was when he happened to mention Friday that he’s never actually had an Italian beef sandwich – even though he’s been to Chicago dozens of times during the 55 years that the Rolling Stones have been a culturally-significant rock ‘n’ roll band.

BURKE: A lame Jagger joke?

Mick Jagger apparently has never got no Satisfaction from a beef sandwich – either “wet” or “dry.” Although the real question of significance to put to him would be to ask what kind of pizza he’d most enjoy.

DEEP-DISH OR thin, and also thin slices or the party-cut into squares? Then again, giving the “wrong” answer to that question would probably ensure many life-long Rolling Stones fans suddenly coming to the realization that the Beatles were better all along.

WALKER: Blew bad Blagojevich joke

Although maybe he has some sense of Chicago tucked away Under his Thumb – I still get my kicks out of that time many years ago that the Stones made an appearance at Chicago’s now-defunct Double Door club, and that then-Gov. George Ryan made a point of stopping by to see them.

Of course, Ryan was not yet amongst the roster of indicted gubernatoriales. So perhaps he would have been welcomed into the Rolling Stones’ realm of existence.

But if Jagger did give our politicos much thought, it likely was fleeting. Not likely to be repeated when they have their second Chicago concert of this tour come Tuesday (the one where Lightfoot says she WILL try to attend).

ALTHOUGH AT LEAST Jagger didn’t make the same gaffe that aging comedian Jimmie Walker once made about a decade ago while performing at the clubs that used to exist in Merrillville.

LIGHTFOOT: Will she take wife to concert Tuesday?

For Walker thought he’d be able to localize his comic patter with jokes about then-recently indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Only he butchered the pronunciation so badly, he elicited mere groans. Perhaps he should have checked out the Blah-GOYA-vich pronouncer that Rod himself used to offer up,

While Blagojevich himself (a.k.a., 40892-424) was always the big Elvis fanatic who probably doesn’t view the hit “Jailhouse Rock” quite the same way he used to.

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Rolling Stones; older than I am, yet still rockin’ away after all these years

Perhaps this is a tacky joke, but I have to wonder what the fine print says for anybody buying tickets to the Rolling Stones’ upcoming U.S. tour – the one that has them traveling the country come spring and summer, with a Soldier Field stop on June 21.

In fact, Chicago will actually be the final stop on the tour – which creates the potential of a band operating on pure adrenaline. They’re going to have to be outright exhausted by that point in time.

CONSIDERING THAT THE key members of the band that has operated for more than a half-century are aged – rock stars Mick Jagger and Keith Richards both are now 75 years old.

Yet carrying on as though they think they’re still in their early 20s, playing music for the masses and carrying on the image of the late, great bluesman Muddy Waters – whose hit song “Rolling Stone” gave the band their very name.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that at age 53, I’m not capable of the kind of stamina one would need to do such a tour. It kind of astounds me that Richards, of all people, would be capable.

But then again, if someone were willing to pay me the kind of money the Rolling Stones will be getting for these shows, I’d figure a way to get myself up and running so as to do it.

A favorite, particularly the cover

BUT THEN AGAIN, the Rolling Stones seem to be a unique institution, performing those concerts that still draw the kinds of crowds to pack stadiums such as Soldier Field.

Whereas most other rock ‘n’ roll bands of the 1960s who still insist on performing live are reduced to events such as the Ribfest held every summer in suburban Naperville.

Or, like the Buckinghams – the one-time Chicago native band named for the fountain – playing venues such as the Paramount Theater of Asbury Park, N.J. (they really played there back on June 21 of this year).

Although the same purpose was served – allowing aging fans to be able to close their eyes and pretend they’re still youthful. And that with the opening guitar riff of “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction),” they can pretend it’s still 1964 and that by listening to “the Stones,” they’re making a statement about how much “the Beatles suck!”

TO BE HONEST, though, watching those old video snippets of when the Beatles came to White Sox Park for a pair of concerts back in August of 1965 (just a few days before I was born) makes me think that event was far more significant than any of the Stones’ concerts – since my own quickie research finds they have played here so many times throughout the decades.

The only way the 2019 concert becomes memorable is if, by chance, there is a fatality in the band and the event becomes an informal memorial tribute. A morbid thought that I'm sure no one is rooting for.

But I’m sure the kind of people paying hundreds of dollars to sit in the outer reaches of the Soldier Field seating bowl aren’t going to let anyone deprive them of a musical experience.

And they’re not about to let some snot-nosed 19-year-old punk make rude comments about the Rolling Stones being a batch of geezers. They’re going to enjoy their money.

NOT THAT I have any intention of showing up – mostly because I think it’s impossible to truly capture the essence of what made the Rolling Stones so incredibly unique in musical annals. Time passes us all by, and what we have left are lasting memories.

So that may be the real essence – listening to those Rolling Stones records I have amongst my collection (yes, I did buy the “Blue & Lonesome” compact disc of a couple of years ago). My memories get triggered every time I play a record or disc.

And as far as I’m concerned, I have a personal favorite recording – although not one that would come to many fans’ minds. It’s “2120 S. Michigan Ave.,” the instrumental number on one of their first records meant to be a tribute to the old Chess Records label (which was located at that address).

Which is meant to remind us of the great blues music that once came from that address. Now if Muddy Waters, or any of the great old bluesmen, were to be capable of giving us a concert, THAT might be the concert event worthy of much of the hype the Rolling Stones will try to arouse in coming months.

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How much do celebrity stances, endorsements influence political issues?

I always wonder how much the so-called famous amongst us think we really care about what they think of our “local” issues.

Would the youthful Mick have cared about ERA?

Are they so self-absorbed that they believe we’re going to be swayed by their official pronouncements? Or are there those of us who really will consider taking a stance just because of what an entertainer thinks?

TAKE MICK JAGGER, the aging rocker whose band ripped its name off an old Muddy Waters tune and whose early records included a riff on Chuck Berry with “Around and Around.”

Mick, that aging rocker who still has the big ol’ lips that became the Rolling Stones’ logo, of sorts, wrote a brief letter that his daughter, Elizabeth, distributed through Instagram.

His issue of concern is the Equal Rights Amendment, where there are some political people of Illinois behaving in ways as though the issue is a still-pending one, rather than one whose time expired some 36 years ago.

Mick isn't the first Jagger to try to sway Ill.

For the record, the man whose band gave us the drug-tinged song “Mother’s Little Helper” is for the ERA. In his brief letter, Mick wrote that three of his daughters, including Elizabeth, are U.S. citizens.

“THEY SHOULD ALL deserve equal rights under the Constitution of the United States,” Jagger wrote.

Which struck me as an interesting line of logic in that many of the conservative ideologues who often rant against the ERA acknowledge that same basic concept.

They argue that it is so obvious that women already have equal protection under U.S. law that they don’t want to have to add a constitutional amendment. They go so far as to say it is insulting to women to have to specify they’re equal.

 

Bianca fought for Garcia, who's still alive in '18

 Of course, those ideologues often behave in ways that show their actions are not the same as their thoughts, which is why others believe the ERA – with its simple, declarative statement that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”

JAGGER’S LETTER HAS been brought to the attention of the Illinois House of Representatives, whose members are contemplating the ERA – the same legislative body who back in 1982 failed to approve the measure, and that failure is oft regarded as the death blow for the amendment’s ability to be ratified by three-quarters of the nation’s legislators.

Will Mick Jagger really be able to sway the way our political people think?

Or will his involvement (as minor as it truly is) become the matter that offends ERA critics to the point where their opposition is stepped up to a new intensity.

Will the man who gave us “Paint it Black” or “Sympathy for the Devil” have any impact on the Illinois ERA battle, where state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, said he hopes to have a vote take place before month’s end – which also would be the end of the ’18 spring legislative session?

IT AMUSES ME in part because I remember a moment from a couple of decades ago when one of Jagger’s ex-wives, Bianca, had her own little activist moment in Illinois.

How many Stones fans also wore these pins?

She actually made the journey to the Statehouse in Springfield to try to sway state officials about capital punishment. Specifically, as to the pending execution of Guinevere Garcia – a woman who killed her husband after being released from prison for another crime she was convicted of.

That 1996 execution ultimately was commuted by then-Gov. Jim Edgar, although I remember some people were bothered by the presence of Amnesty International and Bianca Jagger. As though that would have been reason enough to let Garcia die.

Will Mick’s involvement get the anti-ERA types equally riled up? Or are there others star-gazed enough to wish that the soon-to-be 75 Jagger, himself, could make the sojourn to Springfield.

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A half-century of Beatles memories, Obama, & what would Lennon be now?

I don’t really have a first-hand story about the Beatles in Chicago.

I wasn’t yet conceived when they did their first concert in 1964 at the International Ampitheater – although my late aunt Charlene was at that concert, and she always insisted that Paul McCartney himself was looking at her throughout the entire event.

I WAS JUST a couple of weeks away from being born on the day in ’65 when the Beatles took to a stage erected in the building that is now the parking lot just north of U.S. Cellular Field. Does that mean John Lennon’s spirit lingers alongside that of Nellie Fox?

By the time I was old enough to comprehend much of pop music, the Beatles had moved on (I grew up with people in junior high school who thought Kiss was an immortal rock band – instead of just a more obnoxious-looking variation on the camp of the Village People).

So as all the hype has been spewed in recent weeks about how it has been 50 years since the Beatles “conquered” the United States, a part of me has to admit it comes across more like a history lesson.

Not that I object to a history lesson. It is intriguing to see what catches the popular mindset at any time. And that there are times when it is something more substantial than a Justin Bieber.

ALTHOUGH TO BE honest, to read the initial coverage of the Beatles’ arrival at JFK Airport in New York so they could appear on the Ed Sullivan Show (50 years ago Sunday), it would seem that some thought of the “Mop Tops from Liverpool” as being equally inconsequential.



Next time you go to a ball game, keep in mind you may be parking your car atop the Beatles' one-time stage.

There would be people from a half-century ago who would be completely amazed at the concept that anyone today even remembers the Beatles any more than they do Gerry and the Pacemakers.



OBAMA: Beatle-esque?!?

Perhaps it’s because songs by the Beatles evolved onto a different level of pop music – perhaps elevating it to standards beyond schlock. If the Beatles had never gone beyond wanting to hold your hand, they likely would just be the story of the summer of ’64 like that “Ferry ‘cross the Mersey” that the aforementioned Pacemakers performed?

My own preference when the Beatles come up is to remember the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums, which are at a level that no one in 1964 would have conceived of. Others usually come up with memories even later – although Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is just too much of a period piece album to listen to casually.

NOW, OF COURSE, the Beatles are more nostalgia than anything else. How many times can PBS re-run their broadcasts of McCartney appearing at the White House (and singing Michelle to the first lady herself)? That, and the time Mick Jagger got Obama to sing a couple of lines from Sweet Home, Chicago (but that’s another commentary).

Although that is more of a tribute to the Beatles’ lasting qualities. I don’t see anyone asking the Dave Clark Five to show up at the White House!

Insofar as Obama is concerned, a part of me thinks of his persona and the Beatles in similar ways. Obama had been on the Chicago scene since the mid-1980s, but didn’t really become known to the public at-large until that 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Just as many people in this country had no clue what a Beatle (that has to be a typo, they must have thought) was, until they saw that Sullivan broadcast. Those who knew the Beatles in Britain in '63 are like those people who read "Dreams from My Father" when it first came out in the mid-1990s.

ALTHOUGH BEATLE SPECULATION these days plays out in my mind (at least) as wondering what it would be like now if Lennon had lived a full life.

I am old enough (I was in high school) to remember his death, which seems even more nightmare-like because I happened to be taking a nap that day and awoke to see a television news report about his being shot in New York.

Remnants of their last Chicago visit

My first reaction was to think I was having a bad dream.

Unfortunately for all, it was merely more confirmation that reality is capable of coming up with things more unique, unusual and sordid than I ever could dream up in my own mind.

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