Crossfire hurricane: Not even foul, sweaty drunk dampens joy of seeing The Rolling Stones; What's the matter with you, man? Well, I miss you, Charlie

 If it wasn’t for the sloppy-fat drunken woman who tried to sing over Mick and who yelled incessantly and sometimes incomprehensibly, The Rolling Stones concert at Nissan Stadium a few nights ago would have been perfect. Pretty damn special, even so. Course, I missed Charlie, a lot. More on that later.

Weather was great. Our seats were good, providing a perfect angle to the stage and ramps and the amplified images and sounds from the giant screens and speakers. 

My son, Joe, had been singing “Satisfaction,” “Start Me Up” and his favorite – “Paint it Black” – for a few days. By the way, he also likes to sing Bobby Bare songs, particularly the duets with Skeeter Davis. I have no idea where he’s picked up those nasty habits.  I take tea at 3.

Joe is a 25-year-old graduate student with his future ahead of him. His dad is a relative dinosaur pushing 70 in a month, with the long, dark clouds comin’ down, or at least blowing in from I hope a distant horizon.

I took Joe with me to see my favorite performing outfit.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The Beatles remain my favorite-ever band and most of my music listening here at home comes from that band of geniuses, either in their various band eras (I prefer the late stuff to the Fab stuff) or as individual performers.

All four of them – John’s “Plastic Ono Band” 50^th (a gift from my best friend), George’s “All Things Must Pass” 50^th, Paul’s “McCartney III” (also a gift from same best friend) and even Ringo’s “Beaucoups of Blues” – have become constants in the last few months.

Well, “Plastic Ono” and “All Things” actually have been on my fairly consistent playlist for 50 years now, so I really dig the expanded versions with warts and all.

But, you see, those four guys aren’t performing together as a band anymore. Haven’t for more than a half-century. They were at their performing peak atop the Apple Building, where they bid their performing farewell. Whenever I see footage of that performance, my heart dances, then sinks. And I get a little angry, because that was their final curtain. John and George are dead – victims of assassination by bullet and cigarette – and the other two do perform, albeit usually not together.

I’ve seen them both in their shows and have to admit to butterflies. McCartney’s extravaganzas do push into Rolling Stones-style splendor, and I love his music. Problem is, he doesn’t have Keith Richards there to cheer him on or simply cheer him, as is one of the roles Keef plays for his childhood chum and Glimmer Twin, Mick.

But the thing is that the sue-me blues and deaths among Johnny and The Moonndogs do sometimes turn my soul melancholy. I’m not a man of constant sorrow, but I do think about what could have been.

I intersperse my home listening more often than not with selections from the guys up on the stage at the stadium Saturday night.

Oh, sure, I do play Tom Petty, and he’s dead.  And Traveling Wilburys, and three of them are dead. Johnny Cash, well, he’s dead.  He did like me, though. Dylan recently has displayed some of the grandeur of early Bob, who somehow disappeared about the time he rode his Triumph to near-doom by the time he got to Woodstock.

Occasionally, I’ll play Elvis. He still is releasing some good stuff, even a couple or more years after he died bloated next to his toilet at Graceland. And Grateful Dead, with a long-dead Jerry Garcia and longer-still-dead Pigpen also brighten my days.

And, of course, Waylon gets his time on my record machine. Do you know what I mean?

The Rolling Stones have always been my second-favorite band; although, there were times when they certainly challenged The Beatles for the throne. Unattainable.

The thing is that The Rolling Stones have been, faraway eyes agree, the top performing band when it comes to live shows. And that’s despite the fact that the original lineup of Brian Jones (he’s dead), Bill Wyman (a nice guy I met, but he’s retired 28 years now), Charlie Watts (dead a month ago), Mick Jagger and Keith Richards has changed dramatically.

Those five guys above created “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Paint it Black,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Jumping Jack Flash,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Well, you get it, the classic stuff that had us pulling memories from the depth of our souls during the 2 hours and 12 minutes we were granted in their audience Saturday night.

Darryl Jones now plays bass with The Stones, instead of Wyman. But he’s not a full-fledged member. He’s a freelancer with a really steady and well-paying gig. My friend, band-leader Chuck Leavell, sometimes coaxes sounds out of the backing band that helps approximate how they sounded with Brian and later Mick Taylor (who did get in on some of the great recordings after Brian died.) That Mick eventually found the spiking pressure of being a Stone too much to bear and he was replaced by Ronnie Wood in 1975.

Ron, of course, is a full-fledged Stone after almost a half-century as Keith’s guitar-mate. He and Keith also always were good to my old friend, the late and great Scotty Moore, who invented rock ‘n’ roll guitar. He was their hero, their professional inspiration.

Steve Jordan, a genius of a drummer, was selected by an ailing Charlie Watts to be his “temporary” replacement until he got better. He didn’t, so Steve is handling the drum duties. Again, like Jones, a really good hire, but not a Stone.

I’ll get the “Steve Jordan is not Charlie Watts” argument out of the way right now. He’s not.

He’s, as my friend Peter Cooper said “the best drummer not named Charlie Watts” for this band.  He played with fire and flourish. It was obvious he was having a blast in the pocket.  The band loves his contributions.

But, if you thought what you saw Saturday night was “the best Stones show of all” or some such hyperbole, you are wrong.

Charlie, Keith long-ago said “is The Rolling Stones.” I relished Steve’s playing and no one who never saw Charlie Watts would notice much difference.

Unless you pull out a live Stones album – “Ya Yas,” “Got Live if You Want it” or “Love you Live” (especially the side from The El Mocambo), for example.

That’s when you can hear what a difference Charlie made in the band. Steve is a genius. Charlie, well, he was original “Rolling Stones Drummer Charlie Watts.”

Among the greatest memories I have of my many times seeing The Stones in person occurred in 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge” tour stop at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama.  I was there with my friend, Jay Orr, a noted music writer back then, and we had good seats that we claimed while the lights were still up and Counting Crows was finishing up its whining set. Sorry, but Adam Duritz, a talented enough fellow who used to have good hair, is not a showman. It almost sounded like elevator music to be heard while we searched for our seats.

Then the lights went down. Total darkness in the heart of town.  And, in the darkness, there was the tom-tom intro of the Buddy Holly classic “Not Fade Away.”  That simple rhythm continued in the darkness for several minutes, spiking up the anticipation that only comes before a Rolling Stones concert (Sorry, Bruce, but it’s the truth), before Jagger stepped into a lonely spotlight and growled “I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do….”

The rest of the guys gathered onstage and played the night away.  And the only one who didn’t take any kind of break was Charlie Watts, whose distinctive drumming held the entire show … the whole classic recorded catalogue, for that matter … together.

He had a backbeat you can’t lose it….

Charlie, Brian, Bill, Mick and Keith were the five guys who hatched their sound while living in squalor and on pilfered food and heat in a London apartment.

And when one of them goes, the sound is not the same. I love Ronnie Wood, ever since I saw him as the main personality behind Rod Stewart in Faces, who actually put on a show almost as good as Saturday’s Stones show, but without the modern gizmos.  He perhaps is a better guitar fit with Keith than was Mick Taylor. But he’s not Brian Jones, before he fried his brain and struggled to play tambourine after proving himself a master of all forms of instruments and music.

Losing Charlie Watts at first felt like a death knell to me when it came to my consideration of my favorite performing outfit.

And, yes, I really missed him Saturday night. But there’s no reason Steve Jordan can’t sit there, as a hired hand, I’m sure a well-paid one, like Darryl Jones, and provide the rhythm section behind Mick and Keith – the dual heart of the band – and Ronnie.  

It was a splendid concert, among the best of the five times I’ve seen them. My heart was lifted by the old fellows – what a drag it is getting old, I’d agree – as they staged a concert the likes of which no one else is capable.

Like I noted before, Springsteen is close. But, as my grandfather said every time he raked in a pot when Marc, Jeff, Eric and I – kids aged 7 or 9 or 11, I can’t remember -- played poker at Walnut Lake:  “Close, but no cigar.”

As for Joe, well, it made my heart lift when I looked over at him or when he commented on the actions on the stage. He was the main reason I was there, as I wanted to hand the baton of my music over to him, so he can say to his kid: “Did I ever tell you about the first time my father took me to see The Rolling Stones?”

I say first time, because I hope there will be more. In fact, by the time we got home Saturday, Joe, joyful that such a thing happened in front of his eyes while he was with his father (that’s what he calls me: “Hello mother, hello father,” as Alan Sherman sang, etc.), that his mind was working overtime.

By the time I showered and came back into the living room to watch the highlights of the Alabama, Texas A&M game (sorry, Nick, shit happens), Joe already had a plan in the works.

He was searching the internet to see where The Stones will be next on this tour and comparing it to his grad school calendar and my own work schedule.  “I’m just looking to see where we can see them again,” Joe said. “I’ve never seen such a great show.”

It should be noted that his favorite band is not world-known. That’s Eric Brace, Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz – three of my own special friends, who, pre-pandemic, staged at least one annual local show that I’d take Joe to for the last several years.

His favorite song is “Hartford’s Bend,” by the way, in case you want to listen to those guys on Spotify or wherever you find your highly and overly compressed music.  

He once went to see Foreigner or Journey (they are the same to me) and he videotaped it for his high school. The guys in the band were good to him, so he has a warm spot for one of those bands.

And I took him to see The Who a couple years ago.  He loved it, particularly the lights and dazzling sounds of the overture from “Tommy.” And he was quite taken with Roger Daltrey’s attempts to sing in a voice that was damaged long ago, perhaps Live at Leeds. And who can’t be taken in by the gentle charm of Pete Townshend, who did his trademark windmills like the geezer he is and made fun of himself when he fell down.

It actually was a wonderful show. But bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon were absent. Moonie for many decades, John more recent. Both substance abuse victims. Life in the fast lane, as a fairly static American band sings, in their jukebox-like shows.

I need to pause here to talk about the sweaty, drunk woman mentioned at the top. I can’t say that as a young man I always observed proper decorum at concerts. I once got on the edge of the stage with Joe Cocker (he didn’t notice, probably wasn’t sure he was on the stage.) And, if it was a regional band playing in Ames, Iowa, I was always more than ready to climb on stage and play tambourine. The bands tolerated me, because they knew me. The Beach Boys one night got a kick out of my offstage behavior, but that’s a long story. Even Brian laughed that night.

But I was 19. And one thing I didn’t do was interfere with others when they were watching a show. If they weren’t up, jumping around, I wasn’t either. If they asked me to sit down, I did. They all had paid to be there as well. I usually paid, too (that’s a reference to The Beach Boys jovial applause directed toward me in a field outside the arena).

A middle-aged person, though, as most of us were the other night – I give myself a decade or two when calling myself that) – generally like to let people enjoy the show.

This woman sang so loudly off-key and danced around so wildly that it was distracting. I did say, quietly to her, that I didn’t pay to hear her sing. Others among the crowd where we sat were similarly upset, especially when she said we should eff ourselves, or whatever. Eventually Nissan’s impotent security were beckoned by different people, only to leave her alone and actually empower her to be more obnoxious.

This is a time when I should add I think alcohol sales should be limited at concerts. A punch-card, limiting a person to two $20 beers or whatever. Drunks are much worse than those who smoke jazz cigarettes, even if the smoke sometimes is bothersome (if reminiscent of misspent youth).

The woman’s friends tried to get her to calm down, but she got worse. Since Joe and I had excellent seats for our price range, we didn’t want to leave them, though we moved slightly a seat or two to get away from her.

I do not fight any more. Not with men. I’m not tough. And certainly not with way too drunk and foul-mouthed 50-year-old women, even as their sweaty, drunken bodies strain every fabric of what is intended to be loose clothing.

So much for my complaint.

As one woman told me, at show’s end: “I don’t envy how she’ll feel tomorrow.” Me, I’m hoping she still feels like shit today.

Now, that said, there were many in the stadium who were obnoxiously drunk. This was just one of them. But she was sitting by me. In front of me.

OK, that’s all on that. I had to say it. It was a Rolling Stones show, and, as pitiful as it sounds, those are sacred to me. Sympathy for this devil, I suppose.

I was texting back and forth with Peter Cooper the day after the show. He’d taken his wonderful son, Baker, 11, to the concert, and a couple of drunks sat behind them as well. Knowing Peter, I’m sure it upset him.

I doubt if Baker went to get security (Joe was one of the several who did that for our section).

Afterward, I did complain to the head of security, who promised me that next time, he’d make sure he got me down onto the floor, into the high-priced seats.

Course, it was an empty promise. If The Stones come again, those expensive seats likely will cost $10K, and I doubt I could trade my few hundred buck seats for those.

And there is a question of whether this is the last time they’ll venture this way.

Peter told me that he probably won’t look at going to another show this time around. And, realistically, unless Mick and Keith or maybe Steve Jordan, host me and Joe, fly us in and give us stagefront seats, I doubt I’ll make it again this time around.

Peter, who is not prone to hyperbole except when he is bragging to people about what a nice guy I am, tells me that we should wait.

“They’ll be back at least two more times,” he texted me. “We’ll catch them then.”

Sure, this could be the last time. I don’t know.

And sometimes an audience member is a fat and ignorant piece of shit, but that doesn’t stop me from reveling in the glory of having seen The Rolling Stones one more time.

I just said to myself, as I watched the fireworks blow up at the end of “Satisfaction,” I hope to see these guys again sometime.

Keith long ago said that he and Mick are like old bluesmen, their original inspirations, fellows who will continue playing music until they drop.

If they play as well as they did Saturday night, I hope they don’t drop until long after I’m unable to make it to concerts again.

Think I’m too optimistic? No one’s ever called me an “optimist” in my life.

 So, get offa my cloud.