Part of the appeal of the earlier Rolling Stones stuff was that... for better or for worse... they were the first huge-huge-huge band pulling certain older blues elements back into White People's Pop Rock. Even now, outside of the context of the times, there's that... freshness, you know?
When your primary strength was the way you were innovative (in terms of the mainstream, of course) in your early days... and then... you don't innovate again... for thirty or forty years, you're going to fall into a trap where that early innovation defines and makes your later derivative work look all the paler for it.
Touring on the strength of that early work until your grandkids can be the back-up singer only puts the punctuation on that tragic paragraph.
That's why part of why the Beatles succeeded, nostalgia-wise, and the Beach Boys and the Stones and so on failed... the Beatles had the smarts to give up the quick money of touring that would've crippled them creatively and tied them to their early work with every next concert.
Touring lots and lots and lots soon provides diminishing returns, once you have the fame to make your money off records alone. Your touring image... fundamentally built on your biggest early hits as that's the nature of big rock concerts... becomes your image.
If you have the balls to tour sparingly once you're established... or to at least tour unconventionally without just pumping out ninety minutes of your radio hits and then getting on a bus for the next town... people will start seeing you by your albums instead.
Whereas, like, the Beatles can have fans who actively dislike their earliest stuff (such as myself) but love their later material and... there's no issue, everybody's happy.
Stones screwed their image by going back to the road money five thousand too many times.
Author
Topic: Why Do the Rolling Stones Suck? (Read 2227 times)