Black and Blue No More

ASKED RECENTLY about practical concerns like mortality and the future of rock and roll, Mick Jagger curled his famous lips into a smile and ducked the question. The Rolling Stones, he said, "will probably be making albums until we enter some sort of future senior citizens' facility." This month the Stones begin a 38-city tour of the States to back Tattoo You, their 27th release in 19 years. No one is laughing at Jagger's prediction.

The concert dates are, of course, selling out almost as fast as tickets become available. The album hit the top of the charts, or thereabouts, after a few days in the stores, and suddenly people who have never been quite sure who that Brian Jones character was are proud to be Rolling Stones fans again. All of this is fine; better to have Jagger and Richards on the radio than Journey and REO Speedwagon. But Tattoo You and the Stones' apparent determination to play until they succumb to shuffleboard and bingo has some dedicated followers worried.

Since Black and Blue came out in 1976, Stones purists have been on the defensive. Sure, the old stuff is great, the skeptics argued, but the group was now well over the hill. Even when Jagger and Richards led their troupe back to more familiar ground on subsequent albums, they had to face the scorn of the critical new wave: "Cliches! Cliches! And furthermore, who can get pumped up over a 46-year-old bassist and a drummer who would rather by breeding sheepdogs?" There is no quick answer.

To get one simple thing out of the way: Tattoo you is a fine album, stuffed with rambunctious guitar licks and some of Jagger's best vocal work in recent memory. One cut, "Worried About You," is a legitimate hit, even by Rolling Stones standards, and along with several other songs, it provides a powerful reminder of how pure and how sweet the simplicity of real rock and roll can be. Yet there is certainly little innovation on this record, and over that the skeptics will gloat. Once again the faithful will search desperately, as they have for much of the past decade, for an explanation: why do I get excited about the Stones today, this minute, when I know the days of real creativity and passion are over?

The problem can really be traced as far back as Exile on Main St., which accompanied the historic 1972 American tour. Combined with Sticky Fingers (1971), this effort marked what may have been the peak of the band's career. Defying those who would have buried them under the memories of Altamont, the Stones reached new levels of vengeful, stripped down musical power. The sex described on Sticky Fingers was somehow more pungent than before, the cynicism even more bitter. Exile had more of the same dripping decadence--the talk was of getting laid, getting wasted, and getting by, as it always has been, but a new theme of incongruity crept into the Jagger-Richards songs. Men born before the end of World War Two juggling groupies and shooting smack and throwing away millions on cars they wrecked and mansions they destroyed. Did all of that hold together? The Stones themselves had begun to wonder.

As critics have observed many times, the group then stopped trying very hard. Goat's Head Soup (1973), an album not nearly as bad as its reputation, nevertheless contained some very trite songs. It's Only Rock and Roll (1974) picked up that pace but fed more ammunition to those who claimed the Stones had outstayed their welcome. The whole business really hit bottom with Black and Blue, a musical change of course that simply flopped.

To the joy of diehards and the secret distress of detractors, Some Girls resurrected the band in 1978 after a fairly successful double album of live cuts had been released the year before. Some Girls had musical variety: borderline disco, r and b, rock and roll, tongue-in-cheek country. It was clever and spontaneous and well-received. But when Emotional Rescue followed a couple of years later, the disturbing message first heard on Exile was still there: maybe there really wasn't anything left for the Stones except frustration and guitarist's elbow.

That brings us to Tattoo You, which is at once an admission by the Stones that, no, they don't have any new ideas and a reaffirmation that they do their old ones better than anyone else. They're still singing about what it's like to look back on the frantic nights when they cruised London and New York with willing and nameless young women; it all seems to be getting more and more distant. Jagger has always thrived on irony, and he is in top form on the latest album, using his own retreat from hard living to keep the Stones driving forward with a thumping blues number like "Black Limousine." As Richards and fellow guitarist Wood churn out a roughly meshed combination of thick rhythm and screaming leads, the mannish boy mourns:

We used to ride baby, ride around in limousines,

We looked so fine baby--you in white, me in green,

Drinking and dancing all inside our crazy dream.

Well now look at your face now baby,

Look at you and look at me.

In "Tops," Jagger, who turned 37 this year, digs even further into the hypocrisy he and his mates have lived on, intoning over and over to no one in particular, "I'll take you to the top, bay-ay-by/I'll take you to the top."

But there is straightforward celebration here too, perhaps some of the best rocking and rolling the Stones have done since the early Seventies. "Start Me Up" and "Hang Fire," for instance, open the first side of Tattoo You with a solid one-two kick in the pants. "Let's get it on and let's raise some hell for no good reason," Jagger saysin so many words, with suitable moaning, yelping and clapping from Richards and Co. The album is heavy on falsetto, and Jagger puts to rest rumors that his voice has deteriorated with a piercing performance on "Worried About You." The song illustrates the Stones' ability to put a song together with casual confidence, as each piece of the band slowly warms to Jagger's vocals and eventually comes crashing in at full force while he switches from singing to verbal self-torture. The women, they tear Mick apart, but he don't have nowhere to turn: "I'm worried 'bout you/I'm worried, and I just can't seem to find my way."

Assuming, then, that anyone who ever liked "Satisfaction" will find this album entertaining (with the exception of a Latin-influenced dud on side two called "Heaven"), we return to the question of how the immoderate Stones fan justifies his excitement over Tattoo You. The answer is that even if the Stones usually turn to 12-bar blues in the clinch and even if some of their better riffs make multiple appearances from record to record, they have managed to hold onto the strange fusion of ironic distance and electrifying enthusiasm that first fascinated listeners in the Sixties.

The Stones can, for example, throw themselves ecstatically into a song like "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (or "Neighbors" on the new album), rattling the ceiling and shaking the floor. Mick Jagger lets the mood and the rhythms and the words overrun his body as he raves on. But Jagger also has scorn for the power he wields. He slurs his meanest lines with utter disregard, perhaps to illustrate how idiotic it is to hang on every syllable he and Richards decide to cram into a verse. By the same token, take a look at any picture of minimalist drummer Charlie Watts in action, and you will probably find that famous wry smile and sweatless brow. He knows what he's doing by keeping you waiting for his occasional flourishes. Though he may look a little bored, Watts understands the unique funkiness his bosses need, and he is wise in the ways of making studio productions sound like spontaneous jam sessions.

As a group, the Stones never put out more than you can use. On Tattoo You, the music is raw, the message is clear and simple. The result may not be as consistently good as it once was, but it's the best you can get: the slicing sound of a slightly out-of-tune Stratocaster dissecting a simple bass line, the snare drum snapping on 2 and 4, and Mick Jagger offering, "I'll take you places you've never, never seen before, yaaaaaah." To love the Rolling Stones is to love rock and roll, because both are just right at just the right time and nothing more.