Steel Wheels Archives

Album: Steel Wheels
Year: 1989

. . .

While Mick Jaggers’ first solo album, She’s The Boss, made it to #13 on the Billboard charts, his second solo album, Primitive Cool, didn’t even crack the top 40. In between, of course, was the much reviled Dirty Work, which still made it to #4.

And when Keith followed up with his critically-acclaimed solo debut, Talk is Cheap, which didn’t crack the top 20, but still did way better than Primitive Cool, Mick saw the writing on the wall and threw in the towel, deciding that maybe his solo career wasn’t ever going to happen the way he’d imagined. The question, of course, was whether or not it was too late for the boys to get it back.

Album: Steel Wheels
Year: 1989

. . .

The second (and heretofore final) time I saw The Rolling Stones in concert was on either November 4th or November 5th 1989 at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, which is called something else today, I’m sure. Sorry for the ambiguity on the dates, but I don’t have a ticket stub and that was 30-plus years ago.

In any event, the vibe was much mellower at the end of the 1980s than it was at the beginning, especially since this was the first U.S. tour the Stones had done since then, and it felt like a small miracle that it was even happening in the first place. The vibe felt reassuring, and not just because everybody was eight years old, but because everybody knew that the Stones had almost broken up and who else was going to beast the burden of their massive history?

Steel Wheels

Certain Songs #2100: The Rolling Stones – “Mixed Emotions”

Certain Songs #2099: The Rolling Stones – “Sad Sad Sad”