Robert Christgau – “The Rolling Stones: They Need Us; We Need Them” (1972)
Another July 1972 Newsday article on The Rolling Stones by esteemed critic Robert Christgau…
The difference between the Rolling Stones who played this country in 1969 and the Rolling Stones who climaxed their 1972 American tour with four sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden is the difference between a group and a band. The distinction is subtle, and sometimes unnecessary, but crucial. The Stones of the sixties were not only coherent as a unit; despite a great deal of surface evolution, they were also deliberately static. Instead of dealing with the paradoxes of real life in their time, they chose to defy them — nothing less, nothing more. In a way, Brian Jones epitomized this choice by his knack for melding esoteric musical modes into the old context. Read the rest of this entry »
The Beat Patrol 