Mohammed Alshoaiby Saudi Gazette “Honky Tonk Women” was the first Rolling Stones song I ever heard, back when I was 12. The Internet was still very, very young, and I had illegally downloaded a bunch of their songs off the now-infamous Napster website. I never thought I would see The Rolling Stones live, and when I finally did in Abu Dhabi on February 21, I wish I didn't. People crowded into the Du Arena at Yas Island to watch The Rolling Stones, and the lyrics of their last hit single “Doom and Gloom” echoed out of the gaping, vacant eyes of all the investors, businessmen, and yuppies that flailed in sullen and cautious. Once I got past the Dunhill Cigarette advertising booth, the Harley Davidson mini-showroom, the various lounges and high-class seating areas that stuck out at a rock concert like a Versace suit, I found a decent spot with some friends at the front of the “general audience” section, which made up the bulk of the venue, while steel fences separated the people who paid AED450 (approximately SR450), and the people who paid well over AED1,000 – leaving the “fire pit” front-row area costing about AED4,000. This was a far-cry from The Stones' legendary 1969 Altamont Free Concert. In Abu Dhabi, as a good friend of mine put it, “the bigger the bank account, the bigger the fan.” Of course, by the time Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie came up on stage, I was squealing with excitement. After all, I was at a Rolling Stones concert, a band I never thought I'd have the chance to see life. Then, halfway through their fifth number, “Emotional Rescue,” I realized the band was just going through the motions, and the facade fell right down to the thud of Charlie Watts' bass drum. It wasn't like they had much energy to feed off of anyway — the crowd were all there to hear “Paint It Black” and “Can't Get No (Satisfaction),” The Stones' two most overplayed and glaringly commercialized tunes. The show was saved by a stellar performance of “Gimme Shelter” featuring long-time Rolling Stones back-up singer Lisa Fischer, whose pipes commanded everyone's attention with a vocal talent incapable of hitting a sour note, soaring over lead singer Mick Jagger's often charming slurs. Fischer could levitate thousands of people with a voice so powerful, I had to make sure my feet were still on the ground. A plump, gray-haired man strolled out onto the stage during “Midnight Rambler” with a sunburst Gibson Les Paul guitar slung across his shoulder, dueling with Mick Jagger's harmonica, and for 20 seconds, I wondered why the cameramen feeding the stage screens had favored this newcomer over Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood. When I realized who that man was, I screamed “Mick Taylor!” looking around at the crowd beside me to see if anyone would recognize the legendary Stones guitar player who predated Wood and helped revive the Rolling Stones after their original guitar player, Brian Jones' drowned in a swimming pool in 1969 at the age of 27. The blank, gaping eyes that surrounded me at the entrance looked on obliviously, as “Midnight Rambler” came to a close and Mick Jagger introduced Taylor, who strolled off stage without lingering on. It was sad to see the man, who is perhaps the most talented person to ever don a Rolling Stones membership, pass his guitar to the crew and take tiny, little steps on his way backstage, hunched over and vastly underappreciated. I wonder how he must have felt, because I did not even hear a single person scream out his name. Moments later, with a cruel sense of irony, I hummed along to the next number: “Miss You.” Though he officially left in 1974, Mick Taylor was more of a Rolling Stone that night than the four men who stand under that banner today. I took a look around at the crowd, a sea of 40 and 50 somethings in polo shirts and expensive shoes, and I realized the hippies had all grown up broke, while the squares all got rich and moved to Dubai, where on February 21, they brought all their “Doom and Gloom” along with them. “I have never seen such a static crowd,” read a text message from a friend who was all the way across the venue, alleviating any suspicions that I might have just picked a bad spot among the tens of thousands of people who showed up that night. It didn't seem like anyone was happy to be seeing The Rolling Stones, save for a group of kids in front of my friends and I who, in their youthfulness, lost all their composure and screamed out to their heart's content. They were about 14 years old — they didn't have to keep up appearances. They didn't have to play it cool. To them, being at a Rolling Stones concert and dancing and singing was cool, while everyone else nodded their heads in extreme self-consciousness. My review has been harsh thus far. While Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr (of Beatles fame) sit around in their mansions watching Arrested Development, The Stones never called it quits – not for heartbreak, not for the fall of merit in the music industry, not even for death. They have managed to continue recording and performing for decades, making them the longest running band in history. For that, they have my undying loyalty as a fan and my admiration as a musician. There is, no doubt, something charming about a band that has been performing for more than five decades. Perhaps it wasn't the crowd or The Stones themselves who ruined the show. Maybe it was the uber-corporate culture of the United Arab Emirates that caused a paralyzing schism. Rock ‘n' roll is anything but corporate; it is, in its purest form, a reaction to corporate exploitation. This sad dichotomy made me wonder what if The Rolling Stones had played “Salt of the Earth,” their tribute to the working class, in a country where the term “working class” barely even exists, at an event that no one from the working class could ever afford. (Not forgetting, of course, that the Rolling Stones were working class themselves once upon a time.) The romantic notion of a band that made it out of dreary London pubs in the 60s and into sold out arenas without deviating too far from their roots seemed to die as Mick Jagger plugged company names in his thank-you monologue. The reality of rags to riches is far less noble than these sound and stage heroes would have you believe. Bill Wyman, founding bass player, left the Rolling Stones in 1990, perhaps because he didn't believe The Rolling Stones should go on as a band because it would jeopardize everything they worked so hard for. The 60-something-year-old men who call themselves Rolling Stones today are only shadows of what they used to be, and their fall from grace happened right in the public eye, while their countrymen and peers in bands like Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac called it quits decades ago, immortalizing their music in record and footage from their glory days. I don't want to believe that rock ‘n' roll is a place in time; I want to believe that it is an eternal, sonic cry for sanity in a world that keeps on disappointing. During Vietnam, rock ‘n' roll was the voice that said “this is wrong;” after the Kent State Massacre, CSNY wrote “Ohio,” immortalizing the four students who were killed by the US military for protesting the war; in the early 70s, when money was hard to come by, John Lennon wrote “Working Class Hero;” In 1965, the Rolling Stones exploded across the world with “I Can't Get No (Satisfaction),” because the populace wasn't satisfied with the banal world they were brought into, and rock ‘n' roll youth movement reassured the masses, in as simple a way as to just utter: “I understand.” But maybe rock ‘n' roll is a place in time, and while I write this, I can hear David Crosby's voice weeping the lyrics to “Almost Cut My Hair.” If anything, The Rolling Stones should be the band to reaffirm people's love for rock ‘n' roll, not cause them to doubt it. They had a hand in creating rock ‘n' roll, and, sadly, after February 21, it seems they are the prime suspects in its murder. I've always wanted to see The Rolling Stones, and I still want to see them, because I really don't feel like I have. Neil Young once said: “It's better to burn out than to fade away,” and perhaps the Rolling Stones should've burned out decades ago. Everything I've romanticized about them for the last 14 years of my life, since the first time I heard “Honky Tonk Women,” seemed to fade like smoke in a sea of vacant, gaping eyes, like glass mirrors reflecting the drudgery and mundanity of the times we live in.
