Mick, Keith and Me.

My Life with the Rolling Stones.

I have always been averse to the Beatles. I assumed that was probably because there was some deep, dark repressed event in my childhood that the Beatles were the soundtrack to. I definitely remember working on a jigsaw puzzle when I was four and chewing Fruit Stripe gum, and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” was playing on the wireless.

That’s a pretty positive memory, so that’s probably not it.

No, the clearest memory I have was when I was probably nine, and my second stepfather had recently joined the household. One day, for some forgotten reason, he informed me, “There are families that like The Beatles, and there are families that like the Rolling Stones. We like the Rolling Stones. What do you like?”

I guessed that was a rhetorical question.

One day in 8^th grade, I went to EJ Korvettes in downtown Brooklyn and purchased a Deutsche Grammophon phone recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. After paying and with nothing else to do but homework, I wandered back into the record section and continued browsing.

I put the bag on the adjoining record bin and flipped through until I came to More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies) by The Rolling Stones. Seized by some outlaw impulse, I slid the album into the bag alongside Kindertotenlieder. I was aided by a strip of mirrors that ran along the top of the record bins, allowing me to confirm that nobody else in the store was watching the crime take place. Then, whistling nonchalantly, I strolled toward the Fulton Street exit.

A hand came down on my shoulder, and I looked up to see a black man with yellow sclera and a purple plaid jacket. Wordlessly, he frog-marched me into a back room and pushed me into a seat at a Formica table. A pair of handcuffs was attached to its leg. Through the one-way mirrors on the wall, I could see the bins of records I had just been browsing.

“Were you planning to pay for that record?” he asked.

I whimpered that I had paid for it and pulled out the receipt for the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

He said, “No, son, I’m talking about that copy of More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies) by The Rolling Stones, the one you slid into your bag.”

My face flushed, my eyes filled with tears, and I immediately felt horribly guilty.

After lighting a Newport, and glaring at me with his amber eyes, the man said, “I’m going to have to call your parents about this.” I begged him not to, that it would kill them and they would kill me. He snorted and finally said, “I’ll let you go, but you are never, ever to come into EJ Korvettes again. If I see you again, I’ll make sure you get serious, hard jail time, y’hear?”. Nodding vigorously, I slunk out of the store.

As soon as I got home, I immediately told my mother and stepfather about my criminal exploit, bracing for the worst. They just laughed. My second stepfather said, “At least you’re showing good taste in music.”

Casual shoplifting was always a thing in our family; my mother called it “liberating” and a way of fighting back against the Man. Capitalists were the enemy and filching candy or pens from the bank was our fight against the system.

The summer of senior year, I worked at the new McDonald’s on Court Street and the record store on Montague. There were about a dozen records on constant rotation in the record store, and one I liked was Some Girls, with its wig catalog cover. I was a good record salesman and had a string of regulars who showed up every payday to ask for my recommendations. I went beyond suggesting Aja and Saturday Night Fever, a taste of honey, and rumors. I reached deep into the bins to pull out my true favorites like Hubert Laws and Herbie Hancock, Howlin’ Wolf, and 12 X 5 by the Rolling Stones.

That same summer, The Stones were on tour. But none of us had any hope of going to the Meadowlands to see the show — until Jeremy Epstein told us his big plan.

Jeremy was an obsessive Stones fan. He could tell you who wrote the liner notes for each album, who the assistant sound engineer was, and which guitars Keith used on each track. So when Jeremy announced that he had a plan, we listened.

He explained that whenever the Stones did a stadium concert, they also played at a small club, but they didn’t announce it publicly. They just dropped hints that true fans would understand.

He showed us a rumpled flyer for a band called ‘The Dice’ that would be playing at Trude Heller’s on Friday night. It bore a slashed-up photograph of a man’s fist with a skull ring and two dice between the knuckles.

Jeremy explained he was certain this was a photograph of Keith Richards’ left hand.

He urged us to get to the club as early as possible — he would be there at 11 a.m. When we wandered in sometime in the late afternoon, the only ones there were Jeremy and the bartender, who said he didn’t know anything about the Rolling Stones. Jeremy explained that this was further confirmation — as was typical, it was all being done under deep cover, so even the bartender wouldn’t know about it.

At around 7, a group of guys with stringy hair and muttonchops showed up with a vanload of instruments. We asked them who they were, and they said they were The Dice. As they began to set up, we asked Jeremy if he was finally ready to admit he’d been wrong. On the contrary. He explained that this was more subterfuge and distraction, and that the band was undoubtedly there to set up and tune the instruments so that the Stones could just walk right out on stage and play.

After the Dice wrapped up their full set of mediocre country rock, we agreed it was time to leave. Jeremy stayed until closing time, ever hopeful. By then, reports filtered in that the Rolling Stones had just finished playing at a club in Jersey City. It was a great show.

The Dice, 1978

My friend Binnoo refused to listen to the Rolling Stones. He said he knew what a jerk Mick Jagger truly was, and he couldn’t stand hearing their music at all. He explained that his cousin Nabila stayed with Mick at the Waldorf and that he was notoriously cheap.

The hotel staff was very attentive and would pile his cubes of hash into neat pyramids on the bedside table, but Jagger would stiff them when it came time for tea. He traveled with his own teapot and cup, and would call down to room service and just order hot water. But he would refuse to tip the room service waiter, saying water was free.

I asked Binnoo if he really thought that this was a legitimate reason to ban one of the greatest bands of all time, and he shrugged and said, “I know what the man is capable of.” Binnoo had standards and stuck to them.

The last time I saw Mick and Keith, they were both older than I am now. They were strutting, mincing, and cavorting across the stage of Giants Stadium in front of 80,000 adoring fans. Who knows, they may have been dealing with sciatica, sore knees, and constipation, but they were out there anyway. God knows, Keith, in particular, has put an awful lot of miles on his tires and should be running on empty by now, rumors of hemodialysis and blood transfusions notwithstanding.

Are they too old to still be touring? To be putting out new albums (most recently, Hackney Diamonds, 2023)? Maybe, if you think of them as “rock stars.”

But what I love about the Stones and always have is that they, at heart, are blues men, and like BB King, Buddy Guy, and John Lee Hooker, they can still open a battered guitar case, pull out a harp, light a smoke, and wail — well into their 80s.

I see Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still out there on tour, too. I find that mildly distasteful. Maybe even ludicrous. But I may be biased. After all, in my family, we like the Rolling Stones.

What do you like?

Your pal,

Danny