6 thoughts on “Rolling Stones, Dead Flowers (1971)”

  1. I always have been a Stones fan. The following bit may be of interest:

    There is a youtube clip of the Monteray Pops festival (1967 ?) with the Stones playing Sympathy For the Devil. The Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang was providing security for the event and were, infamously, doing it with brutality. There is some violence in front of the stage and the song is briefly interrupted and further security moves onto the stage. Sonny Barger (especially), a leader, and other members of the gang are without doubt the evilest looking dudes (the natural menace of these guys was palpable even on film). The musicians are appalled and shaken as some real devil’s work goes on in front of the stage.

  3. Finally let me add, in the spirit that Lex offered the video, “….who killed the Kennedy’s? after all it was you and me” (in a lame attempt to stay on topic here).

  4. Tyouth, thanks. Yes, right, Altamont. The end of the ’60s myth of love and peace, man. Dead kids and bikers high on God knows what running amok, and Mick plaintively asking everyone to get along, man. Pathetic. The Stones are the greatest rock’n’roll band of all time, far and away. No contest. And I yield to no one in my love for the Ramones, etc.

    They also were dumb about politics and other stuff. I don’t expect Richard Nixon or Jack Kemp to make a record as good as “Brown Sugar” and I don’t expect Mick and Keith, or any lesser artist, to say much of value about politics. Artists do art. Artists capture the spirit of the age without the interposition of rational analysis. They do it by artistic intuition. That is part of what makes them great. Turn the sound off when they start to sound off about stuff they are not qualified to talk about.

    Dead Flowers is perfect and beautiful forever without regard to the defects of the men who made it. The solo — Mick Taylor I presume, how gloriously perfect — Charlie Watts cued them when to stop — ching ching — because he was the only grown up in the band. So they kept it from turning into a meandering jam. Say what you have to say, musically, then stop. God bless the Stones. They were greater than they knew, greater than they had a right to be.

    Little Suzy, Little Lucy, put out some flowers, and not dead ones, either. I miss you. I’ll never come home drunk or stoned again. Forgive me, and we will sit on the porch together and watch the sun go down and it will be like it used to be. Give me a hug. Same old guy, just a little older and tireder … . Happy times ahead. Believe it. Put on that Stones record. Beautiful. We would put that on the jukebox, way back when. I know you remember.

    2009 was OK. 2010 can be great. And the music lives on, whatever happens … .

  5. “They do it by artistic intuition.”

    Yeah, I might express it as “emotion is the stock and trade of artists” and their work is only related to reason (or reality for that matter) tangentially, if at all. The Stones are/were good at *creating emotion* (as well as being technically proficient) in there music and performances. I have to agree that, all things being equal, successful artists (working in any form) have the ability to create emotion in their audience. This creative ability is not an indication of reason in the artist. Quite the oppisite really, since one’s work (given it’s central position in one’s life) greatly influences the general outlooks and thought processes.

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