The Last Time

Let’s Spend The Night Together

In a couple of hours’ time, I’ll meet my mates Davie and Jeff at Sticky Fingers restaurant in Kensington, London – all three of us our way to see The Rolling Stones play tonight at Twickenham.

This will be the 20th time I’ve seen them live. I’ve spent terrifying amounts of money on tickets, travel and accommodation to do that, and unforgivable chunks of time that could have been spent on more useful things.

Every time I see them, I know it might be their last. Even now, there’s always the hope that they do more shows: they certainly look fit and up for it and their recent gigs have been great. But time’s marching on, and the idea that all four of these men in their mid to late 70s will do these kind of shows again diminishes almost by the day.

Tonight might actually be the last time.

Mannish Boy

I’ve been obsessed with The Stones for roughly 28 years.

In June 1990, when I was 14, my mate Paddy gave me his Hot Rocks cassette. While there had been Stones records in the house growing up (my dad had a spectacularly scuffed copy of the Let It Bleed LP), that greatest hits compilation was a revelation.  Starting with Time Is On My Side in 1964 through to 1971’s Wild Horses, it’s still the best distillation of peak period Rolling Stones. For months afterwards, it didn’t come out of my Walkman, and when it did, that was only because I’d gotten hold of other compilations – More Hot Rocks, Rewind and Made In The Shade. Who really knows why certain types of music resonate personally but since those days, their punchy, spiky, funky, sloppy songs about menace and dread and fun have been a daily part of my life.

For Christmas 1990 I was given (on VHS cassette) the 25×5 video. This was a made for US television documentary on the history of the Stones, and a puff piece for their then Steel Wheels tour. To this day my pal Scott and I can quote the whole film verbatim. I’ve a special fondness for the bit where Mick and Keith are writing the otherwise dreadful Mixed Emotions together. Seeing Keith – B&H dangling from his lips, chopping out huge major and minor chords from his telecaster, searching for a melody, and still trying to impress his buddy – is one of the loveliest sights in music…

Anyway, the point of all this Hot Rocks and 25×5 business is that these were retrospectives. We thought that was the end then, that these were the last few notes of their career, and a quarter century of performing was a decent stint. It was very likely that I wouldn’t get a chance to see them live.

Got Live If You Want It
So if you’d told me as a teenager that they’d still be going in 2018 – 55 years after they started out in Dartford – and that I’d get to see them live so many times, I’d have been chuffed to bits. And those gigs have given me some of the best days, nights and weekends of my life.

• The very first one in 1995, via a coach trip with Scott from Glasgow to Sheffield: due to exhaustion, excitement or too much cheap lager, I passed out half way through Midnight Rambler and had to be looked after by the Red Cross for 20 mins.
• The same year, I queued up outside Brixton Academy on my own for 13 hours and spent three weeks wages on a ticket from a tout.
• In 1999, several good friends (my missus, big Derek, Gill, Kirsten and Alex) and I made an overnight trip to Wembley in a minibus from Aberdeen – a mere 550 miles. When we arrived – tired, shaken by Derek driving into a hard shoulder, and irritated by Alex’s vegetarian curry for breakfast at 5am – we wandered over to the ticket office. “Have you come far?” said the girl at the counter. “Yes, all the way from Aberdeen actually”, we replied. “Well done, but apparently some people have come from as far away as Derby…” said our geographically illiterate vendor.
• Living in London in the noughties made things slightly easier for gigs, but it did mean that my flat was regularly invaded by mates from Scotland and beyond – by Scott, both Norrie brothers, big Colin, Alex and Waj. I remember having to walk back from Twickenham Stadium to Ealing with my friend Mark – nominally a two-hour trek – albeit this time we punctuated it by a three hour open air kip in Kew Gardens.
• That said, even when I lived in London I still went to concerts in Scotland, cajoling my good friends David and Clare to see them in the pissing rain at Hampden. Not convinced I ever won them over – or my best man Alasdair who is still the only person I know who left a Stones gig before the end because he had work the next day.
• Seeing the Stones play Hyde Park in 2013 with Scott and big Davie was a real thrill. Being part of that huge crowd on the hottest day that London had had for years was special enough but the whole weekend was just incredible. I met my pal Jeff properly for the first time the night before; his first act was to – literally – give me the Mick Jagger/Linda Ronstadt shirt off his back. We also met Stevie and his missus Patsy that weekend; they still keep in touch to this day. And the day after, our train journey home coincided almost exactly with Andy Murray’s Wimbledon final win. Trying to watch that on 3G phones, after 2 hours sleep and with punishing hangovers, was brutal.

• Martin and I did a day trip to Sweden in 2014 – an early flight to Stockholm, a trip to the Abba Museum, an afternoon in the pub and then headed to the gig. At that late stage, we just couldn’t afford hotel rooms so we simply stayed up all night until our flight. Home in time for breakfast…
• My brother in law Ross and I interrupted a family holiday in Florida to go a gig in Buffalo, upstate New York. We did that one in 26 hours, but only via cheap Southwest Airline flights that went through Maryland and South Carolina…
• A more leisurely itinerary in Amsterdam last year with Alan and Deborah; an AirBnB flat, a few drinks and some grub on the river Amstel and then a train to the Arena. Relative sobriety didn’t stop all three of us gulping back the tears when Keith did Slipping Away…
• And then last weekend at Murrayfield, in the company of most of the people named above as well as Jimmy and Kieran Hudson, big Val and Stevie A. All of us knowing, really, that they won’t be back in Edinburgh…

It’s All Over Now

And so to tonight. 

There will be few surprises.

I’ll predict with absolute certainty they will play 19 songs this evening, 16 of those are nailed-on and I could tell you the running order of the set from number six onwards. Jagger will have some lame banter about last night’s England match vs Tunisia, about West London and some anecdotes about playing in jazz and blues clubs nearby in the early 60s. Keith will do his ‘It’s great to be home London…but it’s great to be anywhere’ schtick. Charlie will be introduced reluctantly as a local hero (he’s from up the road in Wembley). Ronnie will be scampering about like a newborn puppy. There will definitely be bum notes, ropey chords and a few off-key solos.

They will finish with an eight or nine-minute version of Satisfaction, followed by all the on-stage bows and a huge fireworks display.

And, on screen, it will say ‘See You Again’.

But this time, although I’ll hang on to that hope, I probably won’t…