The Rolling Stones: Roll Them Bones

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Nostalgia was the only dirty word in the rock vocabulary. This music had never looked back before. But history could walk away from rock once it had been put snugly into that Woodstock pasture. Rock reacted by turning inward, to the softer personal speculations of the '70s singer-songwriters, then reacted again, first by exploding (punk), then by chilling out into the cerebrations of the New Wave bands like the Talking Heads and the slick, slightly spooky amusement-park soul of Michael Jackson.

But is it nostalgia that is keeping the sound of the '60s alive in 1989? It has to be something more. Something like . . . that sound on the radio now. Some kind of homing signal. Coming in strong now, and now you know the sound. It's only rock 'n' roll, but no mistake: it's their rock 'n' roll. It was even once the title of a Stones song, a hit . . . forget the exact date. Not so long ago, after all.

Mick Jagger, the Stones' co-leader, co-writer, singer, front man and flakmaster, is supposed to have said he didn't want to be a full-time rocker past 40. He denies saying it now, maybe because here he is, 46 and still doing it fine. That makes him older than the fan by a few years. The fan feels better already. Smiles, settles back, listens close.

The boat starts to move. That's encouraging. After all the band's public bickering and rheumatic concertizing, after all this time and all these damn years, the Rolling Stones can still rock the boat. They are back all right.

The Stones know their audience, though. It's pretty much the same as it's always been, and it will be happy to see them. It will also be happy to know that the material on Steel Wheels is a lot like them -- up to date but fundamentally unchanged. The record kicks off with Sad Sad Sad, a creditable attempt to capture again the dynamics of the group's early sound, when the rhythm came in solid sheets and the lyrics sounded as if they were being spit out of a semiautomatic weapon. After that, it bustles through a very commercial, danceable tune or two, a couple of extravagant experiments (including Terrifying, with some heavy jazz underpinnings) and a few desultory rockers, performed with practiced agility.

The fan heard it right away. The Stones still have the stamina, but there's always at least a hint of 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, 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. It's about dying, and it's a great Stones song. Jagger and Richards have some supernal ballads to their credit (As Tears Go By, Wild Horses, Moonlight Mile), but busy being naughty, they did not cultivate their more sensitive side. Slipping Away is an autobiography that could be anyone's life story.