Excellent question. Yes - i do think it is the 80's. Many people are wearing ties and the question they were asked about R&R being around for that long could only happen in the 80's - the 4th decade of R&R. In the late 70's people were not looking back, that occured in the early-mid 70's, the were looking ahead

thanks for getting the ball rolling andy!

you make an excellent observation about the vantage point and mentality of the year 1980 that I hadn't thought of.

I see an admixture of decades that could've only occurred in the buckle year of 1980. I'm especially fond of Keef's very colorful embodiment of a bewildered 70s mindset....man.

And I love his bodily gesture after he makes what must've been one of the more insightful comments one could make about rock and roll at the time, as if to say, "ahhh...i'm just takin' the piss...or am i? i'm so smacked out i'm not even sure...man."

Like Woody I always find it helpful to wear something that expresses my thoughts at least as well as I could inarticulately verbalize them.

Love it when Mick puts on the working class accent. Tres authentique.

I dunno, but Mick's shades are BOSS.

Compare and contrast with this display:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNKckhYqNBk&feature=user

I think it's funny that the interviewer is asking the band how can they keep going for so long. That was twenty eight years ago!

Steve, that's true, but we were still in the wake of the then-ubiquitous "Some Girls" album. The question contained 1) the implied parenthetical "as a relevant and more-than-moribund rock band" and 2) the stated parenthetical "keeping up with changing audiences", neither of which applied to the Stones after the album in question. It was as interesting as anything to see Mick actually thinking about the answer to the question a moment.

Your comment begs the comparison of the past twenty-eight years with the 17 preceding, in terms of their viability. The concept of "keep going" has less to do with staying artistically relevant and is more akin to: "if an 81 year-old can qualify for the Boston marathon, then I guess Mick can keep running those catwalks across the stadia while semaphoring 40 year-old songs for the jumbotron."

And as for Keef's notion that the Who, Zep, and whoever are decent, but aren't "bands" per se, since you can "see the joins" or whatever - it made me wonder whether Townsend's relationship with Daltrey, for example, is less amicable than that of Mick/Keef's with Charlie Watts, who bears the scars of the sixty-three additional assholes they chewed him in their glory days.

True, but it was already an old question by this time this guy asked it. And it's been asked of them countless times since 1980. I'm just glad I don't have a guy sticking a mic in my face asking me how I can still keep going to work after all these years, wanting to know whether I'm still relevant. I'd rather not think about that.

Whether the rest of the band had made the transition to the 80s or not at this point, Mick’s glasses and Buckaroo Banzai suit had definitely turned the corner.

I like some of the interaction here…Mick gleefully tossing the question to Wood to dump the reporter on the rest of them, Keith immediately bored with the question so he pops out the lighter close enough to set Wood on fire, Wyman just barely bringing more to things than Charlie, who isn’t even in the clip.

alex, you're seeing this clip as i do.

other details: mick's gross little tongue wag, now kept in the mouth instead of slobbering all over his lips as in the Stones logo, has been curtailed for the 80s, just like his shorter hair.

his comment about the audiences getting younger: a very calculated statement, given his garb, to suggest that the Stones are in step with the latest trends. But he still hasn't worked out the details. He can't come up with anything when the reporter asks him to elaborate. In a very "caught-off-guard" manner, Mick shakes his head quickly, describes the whole thing as "bee-yeeouu-tee-faw" and then, ...alex, as you say, he dumps the reporter on Woody. It's a very self-conscious moment that reveals as much as anything else in this clip of their anxiety about being perceived as "old".

Again, Keef's bewilderment strikes me as very timely for a guy who had all but invented the 70s rock sound (in around 1968 - 69), and then woke up one day to find that it was 1980. He can't even believe his good fortune at still being able to rock.

He must've looked at Mick's suit, tie, and shades and wondered what the hell was going on..."have i joined Blondie then?" I think Keef hits the home run.

Woody has absolutely nothing to say, despite doing almost as much talking as Mick.

Wyman is undoubtedly checking out the young...what was it we were calling it?...poo-wha? ... lurching ever closer towards jerry lee lewis, deeeerty old man status: yet another era in the making.

this is to say nothing of the other more general contextual elements. Slocum has already pointed out that we're in the post-"some girls" era, but right on the hells of it. And "Emotional Rescue" has been described, somewhat anachronistically, I think, as their "disco" album. If it was, they must've known how belated it was to make a disco album for release in 1980: they staged this party at the Danceteria, where the staff were all NY punks (as we see at the beginning of this clip, a very 70s punk looking gal pout for the camera. what a great punk rock squeeze she would be for some safety-pinned, leather clad NYCHC enthusiast, eh? And in this way, the setting for the party looks even further forward into the 80s: they staged this at the Danceteria, where only a few short years later, yours truly would go to see bands like the cromags and reagan youth.

World Collide indeed.

Only in the late 70s / early 80s could we get such a Clash of easily identified, contrastinc aesthetics.

good god. that was like a bad high school essay. but you get the picture, i'm sure.

And if you're looking for more contrasting aesthetics, look at Mick in Montreal for the Olympics!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jFq0tDwWFo

In 1980 would Danceteria habitues have thought the Stones were lame? I don't remember and I can't go by my feelings, because I never felt that liking punk rock and post-punk meant I had to ditch my previous musical tastes.

I don't know, Steve. I mean, we always hear that punk was a rebellion against the earlier stuff and all that. But I think your question is valid.

And either way, choosing the Danceteria, whether it's hostile territory or not, is a significant choice for appearances. I mean, they're the Stones. They could've had this press party anywhere (Studio 54? an old Blues club?). But they chose a punk venue instead.

Good stuff, Sat and company. Mick was ready to move into Blondie/Robert Palmer (circa his pretty good "New Wave" album of the early '80s) territory, but the other Stones had no interest in following him. Musically they could pull of the "We were punk before you were puking up your baby food" aesthetic, but Keef and Woody had no chance of escaping the '70s Look and aesthetic. To this day Wood is stuck in the '70s, with what's likely a shag rug stuck on his head. Keef's shipwrecked pirate Look is his equivalent of going out in public in a sweatsuit. Was it a Seinfeld when Jerry, I believe, accused George, if memory serves, of "giving up" by going out in public regularly in a sweatsuit? Keef's pretty much done with the junkie glamour of the '70s. Now he's content to look like George Clinton or an old reggae guy. Meanwhile, Charlie never made it into the '60s and Bill never made it out of the crypt.