'In previous generations, people lived in dread of losing their jobs, and if they wanted sex, they had to get married. In the ’60s, all that changed. You could get vrot, get laid, indulge yourself.
None of this was the Stones’s fault, but they provided the soundtrack for a movie whose final scenes are now playing out on your TV screen – the decline of Western civilization, as evidenced by the bankruptcy of Europe and the US. Historians in the next millennium will cite a thousand reasons for this decline, but the cleverest of them will use a song to dramatise the critical watershed: ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. If Elvis had recorded such a song in the 1950s, it would have led to ruin and damnation. In 1968, it got girls to throw their panties and earned the Stones tens of millions.
It takes a helluva song to leave a mark that deep. What more can I say? The Stones were the band of their century.'
rian malan's beitrag in der suedafrikanischen sunday times ist das beste, was ich bisher zum 50-jaehrigen jubilaeum der rolling stones gelesen habe. der von mir sehr geschaetzte journalist und schriftsteller aus johannesburg beweist darin eine profunde kenntnis des stones-oeuvre, weiss eine launige anekdote ueber mick jagger zu erzaehlen und liefert ganz nebenbei noch eine absolut schluessige einordnung der band in die juengere kulturgeschichte:
