An unsentimental tribute to the silent era...It is very easy to become consumed by a cosy nostalgia for the silent era. We all know Gloria Swanson’s anguished protest as the ageing silent queen from Sunset Boulevard: “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!” We’ve seen Chaplin’s bow-legged walk, Keaton’s stony-faced escape-artistry and Harold Lloyd dangling from the clock face.
Fired up by disco and punk, Jagger’s swagger returns, with a disc of unreleased songs...Wrongly or rightly, the allegations against the Stones came thick and fast in 1977. They’d lost their edge. They’d become gluttonised, lazy, too rich and bored to care. Some of them had the temerity to be in their mid-thirties (NME called them “The Strolling Bones”). The urgent sound of punk had made their jet-set rock seem passé.
