Born in a Crossfire Hurricane (English)

“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.