I can’t quite put my finger on the why of it, but I think we just saw the end of Boomer dominance of pop culture. Well, I didn’t see it, actually, because I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, but that’s where it happened, at halftime.
It’s not that the Rolling Stones -- the ur prophets of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll -- were performing at the supreme symbol of American aggression and consumerism and aggressive consumerism -- you know, about as far from the counterculture as you can be. The Stones sold out years ago; the Rolling Stones-branded credit card was, I’d have thought, about as selling-out as they could go, but even if this appearance proved me wrong, it was just a matter of degree.
I don’t think it happened, either, when the halftime producers banned people older than the band -- not older than the band members, older than the band -- from watching the concert stageside (though they later loosened that restriction somewhat). And it wasn’t, either, that those same stageside fans had to pass a criminal background check that none of the band members themselves would have passed.
I think it happened when the producers killed Jagger’s mike for the last word of the line “You make a dead man come” in the song “Start Me Up.” The spirit of defiant rock music died right then. “No sex, please: we’re Americans,” is what that moment said. So much for free love.
Sex? Not so much. Drugs? Not unless it’s Viagra. Rock ‘n’ roll? RIP.
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