Stones wow the world’s oldest rock and roll crowd
Get this. A pair of octogenarians and their 77-year-old buddy decided they would rent out a football stadium and play some music together. People thought it was such a great idea that roughly 50,000 of them were willing to pony up anywhere from the price of a tank of gas to a full month’s salary to watch the whole thing unfold.
My own wife’s desire to get as close to the old boys as possible cost us enough to call the two-hour show in Cleveland our summer vacation. Kristin tried to smooth things over with me by claiming that, despite the expense, I might still be able to retire before I’m as old as the performers.
The Rolling Stones were around long before “John and Kristin” became a thing. As a matter of fact, the band played its first Ohio show nearly six decades ago. I couldn’t make it to that one because I was busy draining bottles and filling diapers. My future wife, in turn, was preoccupied with growing her own arms and legs. Fortunately for both of us, The Stones would stop by again and again over the years and Kristin has staked out a place in the crowd each of those times since 1978.
One of those shows, at the long since demolished Richfield Coliseum, marks the first moment that Kristin and I were verifiably in the same place at the same time. We didn’t actually meet, however, on that night in 1981, which was probably for the best, since I looked nothing like the band’s front man, Mick Jagger, with whom 16-year-old Kristin had been singularly obsessed for nearly half of her life.
It would be a full five years until Kristin and I would literally bump into each other at a college bar and begin our own story — enough time, perhaps, for her to have come to the realization that Mick, 22 years her senior, might not feel the same way about her. (In my humble opinion, I feel I turned out to be a pretty good back-up plan.)
Married to Mick or not, Kristin has remained no less devoted, and I have no qualms about introducing her as the world’s biggest Rolling Stones fan in certain company. No such introduction was necessary as we lined up at the gates of Cleveland Browns Stadium, with Kristin garbed in a shirt she hand-painted with a portrait of Mick Jagger on the front and a giant red tongue, the band’s logo, on back set above the message “I’m a monkey woman too” — a reference to her favorite Stones song.
Far from alone in her obsession with “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band”, thousands of others in the assmbly wore their enthusiasm just as well. In a crowd as vintage as the band itself some fans sported t-shirts that they’d picked up at Stones concerts all the way back in the early 1970s! Call it the “World’s Oldest Rock and Roll crowd.” Walkers, canes and hearing aids notwithstanding it couldn’t have been a better time if we were all half our age!
Kristin and John would love to hear from you. Write: Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627 or email John
at jlorson@alonovus.com.