LOS ANGELES March 9, 2019: In what was widely interpreted as an admission of defeat for the legendary rock act, The Rolling Stones abandoned a forty-year effort to write a song to replace “Start Me Up” as the song that has opened every single one of their live shows since 1981.
The announcement was made after a final marathon songwriting session failed to produce results. Witnesses said they could hear raised voices inside the rehearsal room, and one voice (later identified as bassist Ronnie Wood) shouting “Jesus Christ! I guess we’re just gonna have to open with Start Me Up tonight… AGAIN!”
In a tense post-session meeting with reporters, longtime frontman Mick Jagger, looking extremely frustrated, waved a dogeared copy of a thesaurus saying, “we’ve tried every synonym in this book, every one… nothing works!” He later added “I don’t even want to think about the six years we wasted going down a rabbit hole with something called ‘Initiate this Thang!’ The fact is that it’s simply not possible to write a more perfect song to open a concert with than “Start Me Up”.” Later the singer admitted that abandoning the effort to write a new song was primarily a business decision. “You’ve got to weigh giving fans what they expect against the butt-numbing tedium of opening a concert with the same goddamned song night after friggin’ night.”
Lead Guitarist Keith Richards was more philosophical. “If I had it to do over again, would I write a song that wasn’t such an obvious opening song? Maybe. I thought we were on to something in 1992 with “The Begininging” but we could never make the bridge work.”
Drummer Charlie Watts was more forceful in his assessment, saying “That friggin’ song… if I could go back in time to the day Mick and Keith wrote it, I’d kick ‘em both in the balls once for every time we’ve had to open with it since… Glimmer Twins my ass!”
Sources say the band will continue with a top secret program to develop a new encore to replace “Satisfaction”, though privately those same sources admit that the chances of success are extremely slim.
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