Shaw, Icarus and Keith Richards

I am reminded by today's Writer's Almanac that George Bernard Shaw died on this day in 1950. He was 94, too old to be climbing trees, but that's what he was doing. Not whimsically or playfully. He died of injuries after falling out of the tree he was pruning.

Which makes me think of Keith Richards who fell out of a palm tree while vacationing in Fiji in 2006. Richards survived, and he continues to defy the actuaries' predictions about his lifespan. Based upon his smoking and drinking and carrying on they had arrived at a life expectancy of 52. He is now pushing 66. I doubt he will rival George Bernard Shaw, though, who was a teetotaler, vegetarian and a bit obsessive about physical fitness. I am sure pruning a tree seemed a sensible thing to do at the time. Mr. Richards and Mr. Shaw appear several times each in A Book of Ages.

Ladies and Gentlemen... the Rolling Stones

On the evening of July 12, 1962 a group led by guitarist Brian Jones performed its first gig at the Marquee Club in London. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts would join the band in the coming year; Bill mainly because he had a good amplifier. The lead singer on July 12 was a skinny, androgynous 17 year-old named Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones wore sport coats and ties and did not do lewd things with the mike stands or their guitars. The last song in the set was titled "Happy Home."

Mick Jagger appears five times in A Book of Ages: meeting Keith Richards, attending the London School of Economics, writing lyrics about his inability to obtain satisfaction, buying a chateau in France, becoming a grandfather, and getting a knighthood from the Queen. The sorts of things any striving working class bloke might aspire to. Keith Richards appears four times, Bill Wyman once.

Love & Marriage

In the month we all associate with weddings it's interesting to know that on June 3, 1989, 52 year-old Rolling Stone bass guitarist Bill Wyman married his 19 year-old girlfriend, Mandy Smith. The New York Daily News later reported that Wyman’s 28 year-old son was dating Smith’s 40 year-old mother. If they too had married, Wyman’s wife would have been her own stepmother-in-law and Wyman would have been his son’s stepson-in-law.

The Stones appear eleven times in A Book of Ages, the Who five times, the Beatles fourteen times, Bob Dylan seven times, Michael Jackson five times, Eric Clapton and Joni Mitchell four times apiece, Jerry Garcia six, Simon and Garfunkel six and five times respectively, Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson once each.