Have the Rolling Stones ever broken?

It's hard to imagine a band with the success and longevity of the Rolling Stones. Start with their 38 top-10 albums (including nine that hit # 1) on the Billboard charts. Most groups split up before recording a fraction of that output. Finding success every time is fundamentally unthinkable.

Meanwhile, the Stones have never been happy to just record the album and return to the comfort of their luxurious homes. The band has almost never stopped touring since they first met and began performing at concerts in the early 1960s.

This road program put Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the rest of the group in check every decade. In one way or another, even with the excessive familiarity and quarrels of the Glimmer Twins, they continued to show up at the recording studio and on stage (usually) to do the work.

But it was not always pretty. This is probably the closest moment the band started breaking – other than a cruel inconvenience earlier in the decade – was a moment in the 80s when Mick was on tour alone and did not seem to worry about whether Stones' dream ended here and there.

In 1987, Mick thought that the separation of Stones would be a good thing, maybe a good thing.

The only glitch in the endless history of Rolling Stones tours was between 1982 and 1989. During those years, Charlie Watts was fighting a heroin addiction, Mick embarking on a global scale with "Dancing in the Streets "and Keith sulking because the group was not working together.

In 1987, when Mick went solo on tour to support his solo album, the Stones were about to collapse once and for all – and Mick had said he was making fun of it all. In an interview with Q & A Tom Hibbert, he laughed at the idea that group separation should matter.

"It's ridiculous," he said. "Nobody should worry about breaking the Rolling Stones, should he? I mean, when the Beatles broke up, I could not do anything stupid. I thought it was a very good idea … with me, people seem to demand that I keep their youthful memories intact in a showcase specifically designed for them. "

With these comments, Mick looked a lot like John Lennon and explained how he had evolved after the Beatles broke up. Mick actually saw the end before him. But that did not happen.

"Steel Wheels" brought the group together before Bill Wyman left.

The Stones have not disappeared without changing staff at different points of the course. Brian Jones (licensed and deceased in 1969), Ian Stewart (deceased in 1984) and Bill Wyman (arrested in 1993) represent the main departures over the years. But the core of Mick-Keith-Charlie has been well maintained since '62.

In the case of Wyman, the original bbadist Stones checked at the end of the evening. Steel wheels tour that brought the group together in 1989. Everyone was able to band together to release another successful album and enjoy his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the same year.

From then on, the group seemed to agree that maintaining the activity was worth it. Whatever arguments Keith, Mick and the others had, they put them aside to record and go on tour. (They do it again in 2019.)

Obviously, no one in the group has needed money for a long time. But they have to keep the Stones alive, and they've been doing it for almost 60 years.

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