“What I’m
asking myself is this: How would Mick Jagger feel after such a concert”
Juan
Antonio, the taxi driver who is transporting me to the bus terminal, looked at
me with old, weather worn eyes through the rear-view mirror.
I nodded. The
special thing was that this was the exact same question that went through me,
when I walked home yesterday after the concert of the Rolling Stones: how does
Mick Jagger feel after giving a concert for 60.000 people in Lima. I said to
Juan Antonio that this was the exact same question that I had, yesterday, wading
through the nightly mass of people, trying to reach a cab to get back home, by
which “home” meant a temporary bed in a (stuffed with 4 boisterous Ecuadorean
drinking lads, all with porky faces, but this just by the way) shared dorm in a
hostel in Miraflores.
Miraflores
is a neighbourhood in Lima where, besides foreign passer-bys, also the most moneyed
people live. Well-dressed-up fiftiers parade in brand clothing next to the
seashore and show off with what they tend to own. Little dogs are wearing
dresses and there are courts where fathers in white polo shirts play tennis
with their sons and their I-phones on Sunday mornings. There are green parks
that look like they have been picked out of Alice in Wonderland.
A
beautiful, safe, gold-plated world.
In a mostly
crazy metropolis, consisting mainly of sandy brackish hoods, thrown out over
skimpy desert-like grounds full of slumps, where dust-swallowing inhabitants paint
the names of the presidential candidates on the walls of their sheds, in
exchange for a few cents and in the best case, a temporary illusion.
One of the favourites
for the upcoming presidency is Keiko Fuyimori. Her father is a former president
of Peru during the nineties and currently sitting out a 14-year prison sentence
thanks to some crazy terrors he implemented during his legacy.
Like the forced
sterilization of around 200 000 indigenous people.
Juan
Antonio had picked me up at the street in front of the hostel, when I waved at
him. “Don’t pay more than 15 soles for a taxi”, the friendly receptionist of
the hostel warned me. I had flopped down my backpack at the backseat and we had
started driving.
“Went to
the concert, right?”, he asked me after a while. I nodded. A few weeks ago a
noticed that the Rolling Stones were going to concert in Lima for their America
Latina Olé Tour. A small decade ago, I experienced them in Belgium with my
father. It had been a memorable evening and the overwhelming presence of Mick
Jagger’s kicking ass was still somewhere in my retinas, though not burned.
Since in
times like these, it is not profitable anymore to have your savings on a bank
account, I decided to play it smart and invest my New Years money in the Stones
in Lima. A, though I
mention it here myself, very wise decision.
The concert,
in the monumental stadium Estadio Monumental, had been a Strike, a Direct Hit,
straight in the rose. Unfortunately, this could not be said about the access
towards the spectacle, with crazy overturned traffic jams and, desperate
honking and kilometre long improvised queues, of which the organisation assumed
that these would organize themselves in calm and order, without instructions
whatsoever, that the Invisible Hand of the Mass would regulate itself. Well,
bummer.
The most
expensive tickets (sold out in 50 minutes) were shamefully expensive (4 Peruvian
minimum wages), the cheapest still very expensive.
Mick
Jagger, with his 71 springs of age, jumped around like a young foal in a
too-short T-shirt and crowing like a rooster used to be the number one.
Keith
Richards, like always chuckling from out of (one or) another universe, dressed
up in something I can express the best as a “blinking coat with tail”, kicked
out the guitar licks in the loony enthusiastic crowd like serpentines. Ron Wood
presented himself in the cloths and the red sneakers of his hipster- grandson
and was His Bonkers Self. And Charlie Watts (neutral shirt, neutral pants) at
last, with his stiff smile, expressed the “well hell yeah” emotion, like he
already wanted to disassociate in the sixties from this cracked up scum, but
that now it was way too late, and that he could afford just enough respect for
humanity and the world to take his responsibility as The Drummer of The Stones
to not unnecessarily destroy the party.
So, a tremendous
success. 60 000 Peruvians and specially flown over Ecuadorians and the occasional
foreign passer-by. Simply. Went. Nuts. Man.
“No, I don’t
know if I would like to swap places with him”, Juan said.
“It must be
a hard life. This Mick Jagger, he gets recognized simply everywhere. Can not even
cross the street or gets clamped for autographs and photos and so on. How can
you stay friendly that way? I totally do understand that such famous people now
and then get angry, annoyed and thick-headed. They also have the right on a
normal life, right? No, I don’t know if I would like to swap places with him”,
Juan said. “For 2 weeks maybe. Yeah, for 2 weeks. Not any longer”
We had been
chatting for around a quarter about the Rolling Stones in his cab. Juan knew loads
of stuff about the group. He told me that Mick and Keith at the end of the
sixties had been kicked out twice of
an exclusive, super expensive hotel in Lima, thanks to loony behaviour and shenanigans,
like heavy drug use and strolling down the streets naked. “Just after their former guitarist, Brian Jones, had died”.
He kept throwing anecdotes in the air. He liked the Stones a lot. Had been
following them for almost all their career, and had a friend that had almost
all their records.
“It was the
first time they gave a concert in Peru”, he said. “And probably the last time”,
I said. Because though Mick Jagger with his swirling body from a distance still
looks like a 18-year old, they ain’t gettin no younger. Nobody does.
“Probably
they won’t have to do it for the money anymore”, Juan said. “No, indeed”, I
said. “Maybe it’s more out of passion for the music”, I said, while I looked
out of the window at the busy pavement full of people. Looked like the working
day for the offices in Lima was done. “Mja”, said Juan. “I bet they earn
a lot for an evening like this”, I said. “Mja”, said Juan. “Absurd”, I said. “Mja”, said Juan. After that, the
both of us kept quiet for a moment.
He told me
that Peruvian society is a very rough class-society, that a friend of him who
works in a restaurant in Miraflores sometimes witnesses couples paying 1000
dollar for a bottle of red wine, and that for a long time he simply could not
believe this. And that everybody wants to be as white as possible. And that
there is a lot of racism in Peru.
“Absurd”, I
said.
The first
and the last concert of the Rolling Stones in Peru. Juan Antonio, light-brown skin
and pure friendliness, fan since the beginning with an almost encyclopaedic
knowledge of the band, driving around in a taxi in Lima, from out of
Miraflores, straight through the class- society, with a Belgian passer-by.
I had
assumed that he also had attended the concert, as he was die-hard Stones fan.
But the
tickets had been too expensive.
Tips won’t
solve this problem.
Sometimes
you can only shake people’s hands.
