13 Years Ago In Time

Think the Rolling Stones, who kicked off their 2002 Licks tour last week, may be past their prime? TIME pondered that question — in a 1989 cover story on aging rock stars. Just look at these guys. Giants. Golems. Geezers with a quarter-century of history together, a "long shadow," as Keith Richards says, "that we drag around"... The Stones still have the stamina, but there's always at least a hint of a strain in the music too, a self-consciousness about the energy, as if they were the oldest guys at the gym and trying to look good on the Nautilus. Rock 'n' roll may be their life — and their business. It may come naturally to them still, but it sure doesn't come easy. That's what's different. That old winning smugness — their magisterial self-assurance — is gone. There's a lot of sweat in these songs. The band must know it too, because finally, on the last song [of the album Steel Wheels], they face it. Slipping Away is a song about — indeed almost consumed by — a sense of impermanence, of loss, of lives eliding into compromise. It's about ending. --TIME, Sept. 4, 1989