A Lesson from the Rolling Stones

One of the things that interest me is longevity. I enjoy looking at classic cars, old ruins, and things that have grown in value over the years. Well, I guess you could say, the Rolling Stones could be on the Antique Roadshow – their value to me, though, is priceless. It is interesting when one of the few intact rock bands meet one of the (arguably) great filmmakers of our lifetime, Martin Scorsese. There is no question in my mind that the cinematography of his film about the Rolling Stones “Shine Your Light on Me” is beyond compare. If you watch it closely, you can see a master at work, and if you study just the band members with their gestures and the way they interact, you discover the aura that surrounds each of them. For example, I really enjoyed Keith Richards who may look like a character out of “The Night of the Living Dead” but comes across to me as a sweet, affable, and friendly old rocker. They all look as though they have been through a few winters, but they come alive when they strap their guitars on and walk into each other’s presence in a theater like the Beacon in New York, where this was filmed.

What flows out of this film for me is that the Stones still have it after all these years, but far more important than that, they love what they do. Throughout the film there are excerpts of interviews with each of them, and the same question comes up ad nauseum: “How long are you going to keep doing this?” You see pictures of them in every decade, being asked this question, over and over and over again. The answer is, they don’t know. All they know is they love it. They love to play the guitar and jam, they love to sing and perform, and they are doing it not for the money anymore but for the love of it. My guess is that they will do it until they can’t do it anymore. Richards put it this way: “Honestly, I’d do this job even if I were in a wheelchair.”

The more I thought about it as I watched the DVD for the second time, the reason it is so inviting or enjoyable is that you can see they just love what they do. And when you can see that, it is inspiring. How many of us could say that we love what we do? I don’t mean just the job you have, but the other things we do in life. I would like to think I could.