The one band Phil Collins needed the world to see: “To judge others by”
Phil Collins knew that there was an expiration date on most artists whenever he performed.
He didn’t want to be playing the same style of music for the rest of his life, and if he did have a slew of hits throughout his career, the idea of him still continuing on and making new music up into his 80s wasn’t really in the cards for him. He wanted the excuse to take a step back from music every now and again, but there were always those few bands that he felt needed to be there until the end of time.
But it’s the nature of any band to take a break from each other after a while. Even Collins couldn’t stay in Genesis for the rest of his life, and even before his solo career got underway, he was already being unfaithful when he formed Brand X with a bunch of his friends from the jazz scene. He didn’t want to be a progressive rock star all of his life, but he also had no problem when bands could be a bit of a one-trick pony, either.
The idea of a band having only one song isn’t all that bad if they’re really good at their one trick, and everyone from AC/DC to Bad Religion has shown the world that there’s a lot of great music that can be made with bands that stick to one genre. Now, if only someone had told The Rolling Stones that, we would have probably saved ourselves from the more embarrassing moments of their career.
Because as much as The Stones are the definitive rock and roll outfit, that didn’t stop Mick Jagger from moving in some strange directions every time he made a record. He wanted to chase the trends whenever he could, and while the thought of the band going disco sent shivers up the spines of far too many rock and roll fans, that didn’t stop them coming back to what mattered the most to them.
They always excelled in making rock and roll, blues tunes, and maybe the occasional country ditty in between their records, but their real power always came from when they performed live. Jagger has yet to slow down every single time he gets onstage, and even when he’s making some of the best dance moves that he can throughout every one of his shows, there are more than a few moves that he throws out that most people would find difficult to pull off.
And even if Collins wasn’t the most dynamic performer in the world, he felt that The Stones really needed to keep going for as long as they could, saying, “A lot of younger bands just aren’t capable of putting on an event like the Stones. There should always be someone like the Stones around, as a yardstick to judge others by. The Stones are the Stones, but The Who aren’t really The Who anymore – the edge of danger of [Keith] Moon has gone.”
That element of danger that Moon had might not be present in many Stones songs anymore, but does it really have to at this point? They have become the living embodiment of the blues singers that they had fallen in love with back in the day, and even if they aren’t reinventing the wheel when they put out a new record, it’s usually a good excuse to get the rest of the world to see them in the flesh one more time.
Not everyone needed to have the most in-depth knowledge of rock and roll to appreciate The Stones, but if The Beatles were the benchmark of where music could go, Keith Richards was giving you a lesson on how to be a rock and roll star. Most people build their legacy on the occasional great tune, but even outside of their well of classic material, The Stones are still making things work by coming off as effortlessly cool.
