Looking At Mick Is Like Looking Into The Future

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are the same age as my dad.

Fortunately, at 54, my father has the good sense not to wear a leopard-print coat over a zebra-print shirt over a fuscia-colored tank top (read here Keith Richards).

And, thankfully, I’ve never seen him wriggle his booty like a nasty schoolgirl only to next yank his shirt above his nipples (read here Mick Jagger).

Of course, Dad isn’t a rock star. But after trekking to Seattle for my first Rolling Stones concert Friday, I must admit to a new-found respect for the old farts in my life (Dad, Doug Clark …)

More importantly, I realized that life as I know it doesn’t have to end after 35.

Watching the Rolling Stones gave me a good bit of hope for my twilight years. If these geezers are still rocking and rolling at a combined age of well over 200, then surely I could be writing about rock ‘n’ roll with equal zeal when I’m that ancient.

Certainly, I’m reluctant to admit that getting on in years does have some advantages, especially when Clark is involved in the conversation. (He’s old enough to be my father, by the way.)

However, Friday’s show may have been the single-best example of age triumphing over beauty. The opening band, a group of four young lads from San Francisco called Third Eye Blind, flailed about on stage like baby seal pups waiting for the slaughter. Although he bounded about the stage with some vigor, lead singer Stephan Jenkins had all the charm of an overcooked noodle and none of Jagger’s magnetic energy.

Thanks for representing the younger set so well, boys. The Stones, on the other hand, spent two hours-plus defying the stranglehold of time with a concert that was part history lesson, part modern music triumph.

I wasn’t even born when their opening tune, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” climbed to the top of the charts in 1965.

But on Friday, Jagger and Co. gave their hit all the animation of a newly penned chart-buster. With the help of three back-up singers and a horn section, would-be period pieces like “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” “Gimme Shelter” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” followed suit.

Richards, his gray hair wildly akimbo, eased dirty solos from his guitar with precision as Jagger - an imp with an old-man’s face - strutted and cavorted as if he’d never heard the word “arthritis.”

“Brown Sugar” ended the show with eyebrowsearing blasts of fire and pyrotechnics. (Great song, if you ignore the fact that a man a half-century old is singing about how a young girl “tastes so good.” Yeesh.)

But let’s give youth its due here. If Friday’s production was anything, it was modern technology in action. With MTV flash, a gargantuan opal screen broadcast images of the stars in action. Midway through the show a metal bridge enormous in its phallic proportions extended over the audience to a stage in the middle of the crowd where the guys played a superb version of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”

The old boys stole that nifty little trick from their younger brothers - U2.

The Stones even brought in a few young punks to give their latest album, “Bridges to Babylon,” that youthful twist. But no matter how well they’ve played Peter Pan, time hasn’t been entirely on the Stones’ side.

Friday night’s crowd was no longer the sea of young rabble-rousers and counter-culture rebels it used to be. The median age hovered around the same as, say, a Kenny G or Barry Manilow concert, although the pungent aroma of pot smoke rivaled that of Lollapalooza. As the bright stage lights glared off the sea of balding pates and graying hair, an informal eyeball poll of the audience revealed two things.

First, the aging rock fans in the crowd no longer have any rhythm. Second, it would appear the Rolling Stones are now considered good family entertainment.

When the Stones were in their prime, their fans’ parents were aghast at these rebels and their songs about sex, sex and more sex. Now their fans are parents, a good number of whom brought their children with them to the concert.

A few rows in front of me sat two teenage girls, blushing at their folks’ jerky, flailing attempts at dusting off the dance moves. I nearly smacked the thrashing former hippie in front of me upside the head with my notebook. Please, nobody plays air guitar any more, buddy.

Certainly the Stones’ age showed. Mostly on their faces. You could lose a small animal in the deep folds on Richard’s visage. And as the giant screen froze at the end on an image of Jagger, it only highlighted his increasingly skeletal aura.

But in the end that didn’t bother 20-year-old Kitty Mills of Ontario, Ore. Dressed in a pink, see-through Genie outfit, she attended the concert with her parents.

“I think they’re all babes,” she declared after the show.

“It was far-out and solid,” she added, imitating the lingo that she must have thought fitting for such an event. “How old are they, anyway?” Uh, mid- to late 50s. “Yeah, I’m into that old groove.”

Seventeen-year-old Ryan Torrance, however, probably put it best. “Oh yeah, they’re very old,” he said, as his parents winced. “But as long as you keep putting out the good music, it doesn’t matter.”

Maybe I’ll buy my dad a guitar for Christmas. Or a leopard-print coat.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo