What can I say? Sometimes you want to say one thing only to have another far more important thing intercede. Take this review. I was going to review “Start Me Up” from the 1981 The Rolling Stones’ LP Tattoo You when I received some truly mind-boggling news, news that will no doubt come as a shock both to the scientific community and the general public.
It seems that English physicians examining Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards have determined that he is—despite long-standing rumors to the contrary—still breathing. “I’m astounded,” said band mate Mick Jagger. “I’ve been proceeding on the assumption that Keith was dead since, well, 1975 at latest.” Dr. Richard Arschloch, of the Twatney Institute in West London, broke the news, saying, “I’ll be buggered, the sublimely pickled corpse has a pulse.”
Other physicians have corroborated his discovery, which will force the rewriting of rock history books and drastic revisions to scientific estimates of how much tequila and cocaine a human being can consume on a daily basis and remain above ground.
As for Richards, he was as imperturbable as usual, issuing a statement to the press saying, “I’m quite thirsty, and intend to get totally legless as soon as bloody possible.” But even his wife was shocked, saying, “Keith moves about much like other people, and speaks occasionally in complete sentences, but I always thought he was simply too hard-headed to accept he was deceased.” Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood also weighed in, saying, “To be honest, I thought he was dead when I first met him. No living human could survive the barbarous onslaught of chemicals he crammed into his orifices. But I figured as long as he kept playing, I wasn’t going to point out to him that he was a blooming vampire.”
Jagger said that the revelation that Richards is still alive would not change the band’s plans to tour. “I mean, it’s a good thing, right? Although we’ll have to purchase health insurance for Keith, which we didn’t need when he was a stiff, and health insurance doesn’t come cheap. So we’ll have to raise bleacher seat ticket prices to $1,000. Besides, and don’t let this get out, Charlie Watts has been dead since 1982. And he’s still functioning. Hell, perhaps I should get my pulse taken. I feel alive, but these days you just never know.”
As for “Start Me Up,” the song is pretty good for late vintage Stones, and was written in tribute to the band’s regular pre-show ritual, in which electrodes were attached to the alcoholically comatose Richards and he was shot full of electricity, causing him to immediately leap to his feet and shout, “Gimme a snort!” “It never failed,” said Jagger, who says the band has no intention of discontinuing the practice.
