AN OPEN LETTER TO MICK AND KEITH

Hey boys, for many years I’ve loved your music, with my discovery back in 1978 when I was working at CKLC and the “Some Girls” album was out. I recall playing "Beast of Burden" in a current rotation. There were two DJs in particular who turned me on to your music history, and then I was hooked.

In 1981 when “Start Me Up” came out, I knew I had found my personal Rolling Stones. Not the old 60's stuff that the old people liked, but a fresh, new song!  In my mind’s eye I can even now remember hearing it for the first time on the radio. I danced in my room! “Once you start me up I’ll never stop...”

I remember they said your 1981 tour would be “the last time” you’d tour because you were getting old. Well, that’s how the press hyped it. Of course every tour that followed was “the last time.”

More than your music though I love your marketing. Knowing that you (Mick) went to the London School of Economic, I know you are actually a business man only disguised as a rock star, which makes the whole Rolling Stones Empire more intriguing to me. You plan every tour and every new record with advance gimmics just to hook me.  I mean, man, you never just release a record. You bait me until I think I’m going to pop with excitement! I remember reading about how you put the band on a flatbed trailer and rolled down Broadway in New York City on a busy lunch hour, performing “Brown Sugar” over and over!  I recall when a helicopter followed your car as you drive to your media party to announce the “Bridges To Babylon Tour”.

I took this in 1981 in Buffalo, paid with a
scalped ticket and my carefully
smuggled in camera.

I’m from Toronto, so it’s very cool that you made Toronto your pre-tour home for many years, booking the Pearson airport hanger or at the private school on Mount Pleasant and rehearsing for weeks until the stage show was slick and ready for a tour.

Then, the week before your tour started you and the Stones would perform at small club show in Toronto with maybe only 200 people in the audience, not billed as the Rolling Stones but some other forgetful name, but you made sure the secret was out early enough to create pandemonium. When I heard you were playing “the surprise show” at the Phoenix, I almost camped out for tickets!

In the 90's you released the concert movie “The Stones At The Max”. I drove to Ottawa 20 times to see that movie, loving the IMAX camera angles that made me feel like I was on stage in the band.

Then, in 2008, when your concert movie “Shine A Light” came out, me and my friend drove to Colossus Theatre in Vaughan so I could see you in humongous thundering Imax brilliance! My friend Dan missed most of the movie - he watched me because I was standing and dancing for most of the concert. Oh - I mean movie.

Well, although I’ve seen you in concert many times, I’ve never met you. Meeting you remains the only thing left on my bucket list.

Now it’s 2013. I’ve watched your You Tube videos of your (supposed) surprise shows at a Paris night club. I knew that meant the start of another tour. And I know you love Toronto so I can count on at least one concert date!

That is until I heard a single ticket for your show was priced at $6,995 for a floor seat. Gulp. Are you guys out of your minds?  What are you thinking?!

Guys, I’ve supported you, loved you, followed you, scrapbooked you, wore your t-shirts and bought all your albums including the 3D cover and the bootlegs!  Me, and the rest of your millions of fans have made you rich rock stars. $6,995 - hello?!

Keith and Mick

Let me see.  One ticket - $6,995 x a 20,000 seat venue = $139,900,000 million per gig. Let’s say you do 20 shows. That’s $2,798,000,000.  And let’s say Live Nation (the tour promoter) takes 30%.  That leaves you with $19.5 billion dollars!

Wait....hold the phone!  Oh man, now I get it!  Ohhhh!  You guys are so smart!  Maybe this is another ingenious marketing plan! Yeah, that’s it! You’re going to take all those billions of dollars - the $19.5 billion I talked about - (and don’t forget the merch sales) - and you’re going to donate it to help world hunger. Man - you guys are going to be the heroes of all rock and roll eternity!  Ha! Even Bono will be jealous!

Coz, I know you don’t need the money. You have all the money. You don’t need the accomplishment. You don’t need the fame.

Wouldn’t you rather be remembered as the greatest rock and roll band in the world who gave it away, rather than squeeze your everyday working fans for all you could get?

Hmmm. But now that I think about it, I’ve not heard of you doing something incredibly generous like that before.  Coz, if anyone would know, it would be me, of course!

So, perhaps the Facebook comments are true? Mick, maybe you really are a greedy, adulteress jerk. And you’re going to be remembered as jumpin’ jack ass.