Saturday Night Gross Out

Beast of Burden is the perfect Rolling Stones song and, perhaps, the best rock n' roll song of all time. In the thirty years since its U.S. debut in 1978 as a track on the Stones' seminal Some Girls album, Beast of Burden has remained an ageless awesome masterpiece. Maybe that's just because my life has had so many sad experiences being taken advantage of by girlfriends, but I'd like to think it is more than that. And the live version released by the Stones on their 2005 Rarities: 1971-2003 is an excellent example of the song's continuing vitality.

Indeed, it is impossible to forget the first time I heard the tune. It was October 7, 1978, the fall semester of my junior year. Being poor college students, none of my friends even owned a TV, so we had to trudge across campus to one of the larger dorms if we wanted to watch anything important. And that day in October was an important TV event. To open the fourth season of Saturday Night Live, the show would be hosted by The Rolling Stones. Not Mick by himself, not just Keith, but the entire band.

My friends and I decided to invade the large freshman dorm TV lounge. The place had a nice 27" color TV, lots of seating room, and no lowly frosh would be brazen (or foolish) enough to resist three upperclassmen. We arrived as the late news ended and the "Live from New York!" opener was just beginning. The lounge was already crowded, and we claimed a couch in the third row back, adding to the thirty or so students already there. We all laughed at Gilda Radner and Bill Murray as they played nerdy kids giggling at the sight of Dan Aykroyd's refrigerator repairman character baring the top of his butt crack. We laughed through Weekend Update. It was all a good warm up for the Stones' performance.

Finally, the room hushed as the Stones were introduced. They played a medley of tunes from their latest Some Girls LP. There was Beast of Burden, Respectable, and Shattered. It was a high energy performance, but what left an indelible image in my mind's eye was "the lick." It was soooo incredibly gross. While playing, Jagger leaned over sideways. Ron Wood did the same from the opposite side of the screen. Mick opened his huge mouth and stuck out his tongue, flicking it demonically. Wood did the same. In a flash their tongues met and wickedly lathered each other for only a moment.

The spectacle silenced the room as everyone sat in shock. The quiet was followed by a wave of verbal revulsion at what we had all just witnessed. Mick had just tongued Ronnie. It was so sick, so naughty. A chorus of "Eeewwww!" and a murmur of disbelief swept the room. The audible disgust momentarily drowned out the TV set's sound. This was a full 25 years before Brittany kissed Madonna, and this was no kiss, this was like trading spit off the end of the tongue. The decadent image of the Stones burned brightly that night among these college kids, as Mick and the band took a permanent place in the Parthenon of rock n' roll bad boys.

And that was my first taste of Beast of Burden. The song has stayed with me ever since, as has that creepy image of Jagger and Wood on SNL. Being several broken relationships down life's road, the song's simple take on the need for respect in a relationship is even more meaningful to me now. The uplifting tune and theme of relationship resignation are just as fresh as they were thirty years ago in 1978. If you doubt that, try a listen to the terrific live rendition from the Rarities compilation. It's a pretty, pretty, pretty, such a pretty tune.