Track #39 - “Start Me Up” by The Rolling Stones (1981)
From the album Tattoo You
Music and lyrics by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Performed by:
Mick Jagger – lead vocals
Keith Richards – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Ronnie Wood – lead guitar, backing vocals
Bill Wyman – bass
Charlie Watts – drums
US Billboard Hot 100 - #2; US Billboard Mainstream Rock - #1
If you start me up
If you start me up I’ll never stop
You can start me up
You can start me up I’ll never stop
I’ve been running hot
You got me ticking going to blow my top
If you start me up
If you start me up I’ll never stop
Never stop, never stop, never stop
The very first time I grasped the concept of age was in the early spring of 1977. I was walking with my grandmother, my mother’s mom, on a sidewalk in Brooklyn; I don’t remember exactly where we were going. My grandmother Ethel was one of my favorite people in the world, right up until she died in 2004. She was about 5 feet tall, with a big puff of white hair and veiny hands with perfectly manicured fingernails, and she smiled a lot; think Betty White if you need a visual. So, we’re walking, and in between me scanning the sidewalk for bottle caps and trying to balance on the curb I asked her a question you’re never supposed to ask any woman: “Nanny, how old are you?” She looked at me and without breaking stride or taking her hands from the pockets of her coat, said, “Next month I’ll be 53.” When she answered me, she had this smile on her face, this knowing smile that said, “I’m going to allow this question once because you’re my grandson, but we’re not talking about this again.” Eventually I learned that it’s never OK to ask a woman her age…unless you work at the DMV. Or you’re bouncer. Anyway…I remember looking up at her (in less than 10 years I’d be looking down at her; man, she was little), and just thinking “Wow, 53…that’s old.” To a 6-year-old, yes, 53 is old, and that made sense at the time…she was my grandmother after all. But she wasn’t even the oldest in our family. That distinction belonged to my grandfather Ray, Ethel’s husband, who was 65 (my grandmother remarried after my mom’s father died when she was very young; Ray, was a bachelor till he was 50, you go Ray.) And my grandfather was “retired” now, which I learned meant he didn’t have to work anymore; cool!! My own parents at the time were 27; even that sounded old when I was 6. If I had 27 of something when I was 6, say, Matchbox cars, that would be a lot, right? If I had 53 Matchbox cars, I’d need a case or another toy box to hold them all. And if I had 65 Matchbox cars?! You see my point. So, when you’re really little, all the adults are old, period. Now, fast forward to now; I just turned 54 this year. I have friends I went to high school with who are grandparents now, and that’s awesome. I’d like to be a grandfather one day.
But not now.
While my 54-year-old body may not agree, I never think of myself as old or even middle-aged most of the time; I firmly believe in being young at heart. So, if one of my boys comes to me before I turn 60 and says they’re having a kid, there’s a good chance I will have a meltdown after I congratulate them and tell them how happy I am. I’m no grandpa, at least not now. Grandpas wear their pants up to their chests and wear big white New Balance sneakers and windbreakers. Grandpas say things like, “Turn that music down!”, “Get off the lawn!”, and “It’s gonna rain today, my back hurts." Ridiculous, I know I’m being facetious. Don’t get me wrong; I will be happy for my boys if they ever decide to have their own kids. Grandkids are a wonderful thing. And obviously, it’s not up to me, so when it happens, it happens. What I, and all of us need to remember is, to quote the old cliché, “Age is just a number.” Remember before social media you’d run into someone you hadn’t seen in awhile and there would be that moment of recognition, that person you used to work with or see at school every day, and now it’s been five or even ten years, and then that recognition may turn to surprise, and you both tell each other how great the other one looks, and maybe you walk away thinking, “Wow, has it been 10 years since I’ve seen so-and-so, I feel so old.” Now, that surprise of seeing someone after so many years is gone, as we watch each other’s lives unfold on Facebook or Instagram; aging has become more gradual to the eye, and more importantly, more forgiving. And those Hollywood icons, star athletes, and rock stars we idolize also get old right before our eyes, but their careers go on, and or go in different directions. Actors don’t get the roles they used to, although Tom Cruise might be jumping off buildings when he’s 80. Athletes get released from the teams they won championships for, but I bet Tom Brady or Troy Aikman could still take a few snaps and throw touchdowns. And the rock stars? Well, they still don the leather, and the locks they had have gone grey (if they have hair), but if they can still play, we usually think, “Who cares what they look like.” I’ll admit most, if not all, of the bands I would still pay to see live are older than me, but the fact is that they still tour and make music, so why not? In 2022, Def Leppard toured with fellow 80s glam rockers Motley Crue and Poison and raked in $175 million in ticket sales. Paul McCartney is 82 years old, and he still plays three-hour sets. Bruce Springsteen will tour this fall; Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters are on the road as I write this. The point is that as long as they can still play, the fans will come out; I would argue that a lot of these artists are getting better, even if they can’t quite hit those high notes anymore. And the most ageless rock legends of the old guard, the Rolling Stones, toured this year, with more dates planned. If you go on their website, their current tour is being sponsored by AARP; I am not making that up, check for yourself www.rollingstones.com/tour. At this point the core of singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards have been writing songs and playing together for over six decades. They’ve lost members to death and retirement, almost broken up for good several times, survived disco, punk and grunge, but somehow, they still release new music and fill stadiums. In fact, if Gen Z’ers are going to the shows now, there is simply no way they can grasp the impact and the legacy the Rolling Stones have left on music. When I first saw them, on a very new MTV back in the late fall of 1981, they had been making music for almost 20 years and produced some of the most iconic albums in rock history. They had arguably written and recorded the most famous rock song and most recognizable guitar riff of all time, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, plus other songs you will recognize instantly by the melodies alone: “Brown Sugar”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Paint It, Black”, “Sympathy for the Devil”; it’s a long list. Most of all, by 1981, they were survivors. The Beatles and Led Zeppelin had broken up, their key members dead for a year. Aside from the Who, they had few peers from that era. Those songs above were part of a ubiquitous soundtrack that I heard everywhere I went; on the radio, in the car, at the store on the overhead speakers. But I didn’t know who the Rolling Stones were until I saw them prancing around in the video for “Start Me Up”. They were all around 40, and to these 11-year-old eyes, man did they look old.
I should probably make it clear that I don’t feel the way about the Rolling Stones as I do about other artists, say Pearl Jam, Soundgarden or Elton John, artists whose music I know very well and whose albums and CDs I own or have owned. I know the Stones’ music, I admire it, and I know its place in rock history, but I’m not an obsessive fan who has to be first to buy new music or defends them as the greatest rock and roll band ever. Having said that, there are Rolling Stones songs I do love, and when I think about it, how could I not love some of those songs. The Rolling Stones’ music has been so ubiquitous and is so ingrained in me throughout the course of my life just from being on the radio and MTV and other places that I never needed to buy all their albums nor really seek it out; it just always seemed to be there. And the whole Rolling Stones vs the Beatles thing, you either like one or the other, etc; I always thought that just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Different bands yes; but can you like or even love both? Of course. However, as I said, the Stones just seemed to be there more than the Beatles; I had to buy Beatles cassettes and CDs to hear a lot of their music, but the Stones were on the radio way more, at least that’s how I heard it. I’ll put it this way: if you were in a bar and there were Beatles and Rolling Stones songs on a jukebox, would you choose “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, “Day in the Life” and “Blackbird”, or “Tumbling Dice”, “Satisfaction” and “Beast of Burden”? Of course, those Beatles songs are brilliant, but the Rolling Stones songs just have more swagger and groove, simply by way of the heavy R&B and blues influences the Stones infused into their songwriting. When I picture the Beatles writing songs, I see four very serious guys making the smallest changes to arrangements and lyrics to achieve perfection; when I picture the Rolling Stones making music, I just see more improvisation and more of an edge. Maybe that’s why their music just seemed more accessible than the Beatles when I was growing up; I just heard it more. Hmm…. seems I may have just created my own Beatles vs. the Rolling Stones scenario. Anyway, moving on. I don’t have the space nor the resources to properly convey the story of the Rolling Stones, so let’s go with the abridged version. The Rolling Stones’ classic lineup of Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones on guitars, and the rhythm section of bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts first played together in London in early 1963. Jagger and Richards had known each other in grade school and reconnected in 1961 on a train platform in Dartford. Jagger and Richards met Jones while playing in Blues Inc., a band that also featured Watts on drums. Jones was already an established musician, and by this time wanted to form his own band, so Jagger, Richards and guitarist Dick Taylor left Blues Inc. left to join him and keyboardist Ian Stewart. In December, bassist Bill Wyman was hired to replace Taylor, and drummer Charlie Watts became the band’s permanent drummer in early 1963. Keyboardist Stewart would be forced out by new manager Andrew Oldham because he didn’t fit the image of the band Oldham was trying to promote at the time; a rebellious, edgier alternative to the clean-cut Beatles. Throughout the 1960s, the Rolling Stones would establish themselves as bad boys of rock and roll, and Jagger and Richards would come into their own as songwriters. In 1965, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” became their first international #1 hit and eventually become one of the most, if not the most recognizable guitar riff ever recorded. By 1969, Brian Jones’ contributions to the band had begun to decline and his drug use was spiraling out of control, and he voluntarily stepped away from the band he helped to create, just after the release of Beggar’s Banquet. Less than one month later, in July of 1969, Jones was found dead in his swimming pool at his home in East Sussex. The band would hire Mick Taylor to replace him, until he left in 1974; Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood replaced him, and has been with the Rolling Stones ever since. The 1970s brought a rift between Jagger and Richards; Richards’ use of heroin began to interfere with his work in the band, and Jagger seemed more concerned with making appearances at Studio 54 than making rock and roll. In 1977, Richards was arrested in his Toronto hotel room by the Royal Mounted Police with enough heroin and cocaine to be charged with intent to distribute. Facing a minimum sentence of seven years, he and Jagger considered that this might be the end of the Rolling Stones. But through the grace of a lenient judge and story from a blind, devoted Stones fan who said Richards always helped her find a ride home after their shows in Canada, Richards received a suspended sentence and was ordered to play two shows to benefit a blind charity in Canada. Their next album, Some Girls, released in 1978, put the band back in the spotlight after some suggested they were done and outdated. Some Girls featured the raucous “Shattered”, live standard “Beast of Burden”, and the Stones’ response to disco, the pulsing “Miss You”. Both the album and “Miss You” reached #1, and it seemed as though the band may have shaken off the “outdated” moniker hung on them by critics. I have vivid memories of “Miss You”, hearing it drifting out of my parents’ stereo in our apartment, or out of the record stores while we walked on Liberty Avenue in Brooklyn; it really was everywhere in 1978. However, the release of Emotional Rescue in June of 1980 would erase some of the forward progress achieved with Some Girls. The album received lukewarm reviews, and was compared unfavorably to Some Girls, which was their most successful and ambitious album at the time. But that summer, our family’s first on Long Island, I remember the single “Emotional Rescue” on the radio an awful lot, so much in fact that I’d find myself humming the melody and singing my favorite line out loud, “I will be your knight in shining armor, coming to your emotional rescue”. Maybe the critics didn’t like it, but I loved the bumping kick drum and Charlie Watts’ snare hits on the eighth beat during the verse, and the funky saxophone throughout. The song was a huge hit for the Rolling Stones, despite what critics thought; and for me, it was the first time I really listened to them, instead of hearing them blend into the background. But it wasn’t until the following year, when I finally got a long look at the Rolling Stones on MTV that I asked myself, “Wow how long have these guys been around?”
The Rolling Stones would release their next studio album, Tattoo You, in August of 1981. Some of Jagger and Richards’ feuding was spilling over into the new decade, and while a tour was planned, there was not a lot of new material to put together a completed album to tour behind. As a result, the songs that would make up Tattoo You were comprised of outtakes, seeds of songs that were incomplete, and other ideas, with new vocals and overdubs. As Jagger said in 1995, “…Some of it was old songs…I had to write lyrics and melodies. They were just bits, or they were from early takes.” The first single, “Start Me Up”, was released just before the album, and almost coincided with the launch of MTV. Jagger knew videos and MTV were the future of the music industry and key to the promotion and success of the new album, so the subsequent music video for “Start Me Up” would become one of the most played videos in the early days of MTV. Fun fact: Jagger was one of the first celebrities to appear in MTV’s “I want my MTV!!” promos and is credited with helping the new channel explode in the early 80s. The video for “Start Me Up” is nothing spectacular, just a performance video of the band, lip-synching the song (quite badly, actually). But MTV had a video of new music by elder statesmen of rock and roll, and probably saw it as an opportunity to gain credibility with their new audience, and the video immediately went into heavy rotation. When I first saw the video, sometime in the fall in 1981, it was the first time I heard the song. I had just discovered MTV and would slyly turn it on almost every day when I got home from school. “Start Me Up” hooked me right away; so, this was the band I had been hearing everywhere, pretty much my whole life? How old were these guys anyway? But I also thought, So, this is what a rock and roll band looks like. Up to that point, I had never seen a real rock band playing on TV so that video for “Start Me Up” had a real impact on me; the way they looked and what they were wearing, and how they moved around, and how it looked like they were having a great time up there totally had me wanting to be in my own band. So, I had seen the video at least a dozen times as we headed into the end of 1981. At some point, my parents caught on that I was watching a lot of this new all day cable music network, and started to ask me questions about it: Was it live music? What kind of bands do they play? Are the videos OK for kids? In fact, they asked me so much about my new obsession that much to my horror, they started to like a band I totally discovered on MTV and would take my copy of the band’s album and play it on their stereo. Stay tuned for that story. But one day, I was watching and “Start Me Up” came on as it usually did; it was in heavy rotation after all and was the #2 single in the country in November. And as usual, I was tapping my foot in time with Charlie Watts’ thumping kick drum and not looking away for a second when I heard my parents behind me:
Mom: Oh my god Johnny, is that Mick Jagger?? He’s disgusting, turn this off.
Dad: Wow look at Keith Richards…you know Johnny, Keith Richards is actually dead, but people just feel bad and don’t want to tell him.
Mom: I can’t believe you’re watching the Rolling Stones; these guys are so old.
And there it was. This would be my moment, my first act of rebellion against my parents; my first in a series of actions over the years involving listening to loud music, staying out past curfew, and drinking beers in the woods that started with me telling my mom and dad that I in fact, liked the Rolling Stones, and their song “Start Me Up”, and I liked watching MTV during my free time. The fact that my parents were giving me a hard time about the very band that defined rebellion when they were growing up was making them look old...and extremely unhip at that moment. So, I went for it.
Me: They’re not that old! Keith Richards is obviously not dead, Dad! And this song is cool; in fact, I want this record for Christmas! I like the Rolling Stones!
And despite my mom reiterating the fact that Mick Jagger was gross, the matter was dropped. In fact, in an extremely rare case of either miscommunication or my mom not paying attention, both the 45 single for “Start Me Up” and a copy of the Tattoo You cassette ended up under the Christmas tree that year. In the Stones’ defense, their ages ranged from 38 to 45 years of age in 1981. From where I’m sitting at this moment, that’s not that old to be making music, but to an 11-year-old, yes, they looked old. But honestly, I didn’t care, and I still don’t. When it comes to the bands I grew up with, and that I truly love, or even the ones I don’t, let ‘em keep playing and making music until they collapse onstage. It’s what they were born to do, so who cares how old they look. Do I sometimes say, “Wow I can’t believe they are still at it!” when I hear the Stones or other bands that have been around for decades are touring again? Of course! But give it to them for surviving this long and having fans across generations. I am not the only 11-year-old from the MTV generation who first discovered the Rolling Stones when they saw “Start Me Up”. If we all dismissed them as “old” back then, maybe their story would have ended, and that just doesn’t seem right in the scheme of the history of rock and roll; and the AARP would need another band to sponsor on tour this year. 😊
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Here’s the video that had my parents in an uproar; it looks like Mick Jagger barely knows the lyrics to his own song, and it’s extremely dated in terms of music videos, but it’s a classic. Enjoy 😊
Next time…finally, I get to talk about my favorite band, and the loss of one of my idols.
P.S.
Tattoo You would end up selling 4 million copies in the US and reach #1 on the Billboard Album Chart in 1981. It’s the last Rolling Stones album to reach #1 in the US to date. Tattoo You is still the only Rolling Stones album I have ever owned, besides their 2002 compilation CD, Forty Licks. I have streamed other albums, but only owned Tattoo You. MTV introduced the band to a whole new generation of fans and inadvertently made them pioneers of the early music video genre. They would make five videos from Tattoo You, including my favorite song from that album, “Waiting on a Friend”. I remember those videos in heavy rotation on early MTV, but to be fair, the fledgling network didn’t have many videos, so of course they were going to play what the Rolling Stones sent them. Still, the Stones seemed to open a new chapter in their career from the Tattoo You era and those videos. “Start Me Up” became the Stones’ concert opener on subsequent tours, and Richards’ intro riff from the song has become iconic. Oddly enough, “Start Me Up” is the third most streamed Rolling Stones song, behind “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, and almost 500,000 streams behind “Paint It, Black”, which has been streamed over 1.2 billion times. I can only attribute that to “Paint It, Black” being featured prominently in films, TV shows and video games over the years; it’s a great song, but how it gets played that many more times than arguably the most popular song in rock and roll history is something I can’t explain. But while we’re on the subject of the Rolling Stones licensing their music, if you’ve watched a movie or TV show in the past 30 years, there is an excellent chance you’ve heard one of their songs. For whatever reason, directors love using Rolling Stones songs in their shows and movies. I think Martin Scorsese has Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on speed dial at this point, he’s used so many Stones songs in his films. Microsoft also famously licensed “Start Me Up” to promote its new Windows 95 operating system; Bill Gates claimed he got the idea to use the song from the “Start” button on the launch screen. And you wonder why I say the Rolling Stones always seem to be around? Never fault Mick Jagger for being as good a businessman as he is a musician.
The Rolling Stones would release two more albums before the end of the 80s, Undercover in 1983, and Dirty Work in 1986. Jagger and Richards would also release their own solo albums before they reunited in 1989 for Steel Wheels. The album was received with positive reviews but was overshadowed by the massive tour that followed. Longtime bassist Bill Wyman would leave the band in 1991, as the Stones released several more studio and live albums throughout the 90s and 2000s. Keith Richards published his memoir, Life, in 2010 to critical acclaim. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. It’s one of the best autobiographies in any genre that I’ve ever read, simply because it’s so brutally honest. In August 2021, it was announced that drummer Charlie Watts would leave the rest of the Rolling Stones’ tour to undergo heart surgery, and later that month, he died in a London hospital. Drummers from all over the world paid tribute including Peter Criss, Questlove, Chad Smith, Roger Taylor and Max Weinberg, all citing Watts as an influence. Young drummers need only listen to Charlie Watts when first learning to play; no one kept time like him, and “Start Me Up” is one of many perfect examples of a drummer keeping metronome time in a rock song. As I mentioned, the Rolling Stones are currently on tour, and don’t show any signs of slowing down. There’s a great scene in the film Almost Famous, of Jimmy Fallon portraying a potential new manager to fictional band Stillwater, and he’s preaching that they need to tour as much as possible, and make the money now, and plan for the future. As he says the line, “If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there, trying to be a rock star at age 50, you’re sadly, sadly mistaken…”, he apes Jagger perfectly, as the band stares at him, trying to decide whether to believe him. Turns out Fallon’s character was wrong about Jagger. 50?!? Jagger is 80, and he’s still trying to be a rock star.
See you next time…
JS
10/1/2024