13 Years Ago In TIME

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Sean Gregory, Janice Horowitz and Rebecca Winters

Think the Rolling Stones, who kicked off their 2002 Licks tour last week, may be past their prime? TIME pondered that question--in a 1989 cover story on AGING ROCK STARS.

Just look at these guys. Giants. Golems. Geezers with a quarter-century of history together, a "long shadow," as Keith Richards says, "that we drag around"... The Stones still have the stamina, but there's always at least a hint of a strain in the music too, a self-consciousness about the energy, as if they were the oldest guys at the gym and trying to look good on the Nautilus. Rock 'n' roll may be their life--and their business. It may come naturally to them still, but it sure doesn't come easy. That's what's different. That old winning smugness--their magisterial self-assurance--is gone. There's a lot of sweat in these songs. The band must know it too, because finally, on the last song [of the album Steel Wheels], they face it. Slipping Away is a song about--indeed almost consumed by--a sense of impermanence, of loss, of lives eliding into compromise. It's about ending. --TIME, Sept. 4, 1989