Mick Jagger, as much as he enjoys dressing up like a teenage girl and prancing around all night, is an old man. An old man with a wrinkly face and a throat so sore that people in Hawaii won't get to see The Rolling Stones play this month.
And it's not just fans in Hawaii either; Mick Jagger's gammy throat is causing all sorts of of Rolling Stones-based consternation. As well as cancelling the November 22 show in Honolulu's Aloha Stadium, Jagger's bad throat has also meant that The Rolling Stones also had to postpone an Atlantic City concert four hours before it began last Friday, leading to one fan suing the band for $51 million. To most bands, a $51 million lawsuit would finish them off, but luckily The Rolling Stones will be able to recoup that money back by selling roughly three concert tickets and a tour T-shirt.
If you ever needed proof as to who the coolest member of The Rolling Stones is, then look no further. Keith Richards held the Rolling Stones Bigger Bang tour up by getting drunk on rum and falling out of a coconut tree so hard that he needed to get his brain drilled. That's cool. Mick Jagger, meanwhile, has held the Rolling Stones Bigger Bang tour up by having a bit of a tickly throat. That's slightly less cool.
It's not the first time that Mick Jagger's throat has let the Rolling Stones world tour down in recent months, though. Over the course of the Bigger Bang tour, The Rolling Stones have played the Super Bowl, performed their very first concert in communist China held one of the world's biggest-ever concerts in Brazil, had fights with Presidents about hotel rooms and then decided to go and do it all over again. Such is the endless public demand to go and see five men who look a bit like your granny sing a load of 40-year-old songs, the toll has been taken on Mick Jagger's throat. In August Mick Jagger's bad throat meant that two Rolling Stones concerts in Spain had to be cancelled, and now it's struck again. The Rolling Stones have been forced to cancel a concert in Hawaii so that Mick Jagger can rest his voice.
That would be news in itself, were it not for the fact that one fan reacted to news that The Rolling Stones were postponing a date in Atlantic City on Friday the same way anyone would react to the news that a member of a band that you have loved for decades had become too unwell to perform – they're suing The Rolling Stones for $51 million, as Reuters reports:
Rosalie Druyan filed a class-action lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday accusing Jagger and the Stones of fraud and in acting in bad faith because of the cancellation, which she said cost her and thousands of fans money on non-refundable hotel bookings. The suit charges that Jagger sought medical attention before the concert and knew he would not perform but did not disclose that in time for ticket-holders to cancel travel reservations. Druyan bought a pair of tickets on the Internet for $575 and said she was not notified about the cancellation until it was too late to cancel her $300 hotel reservations at the Trump Taj Mahal. A spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment on the suit.
Our advice to Mick Jagger would be to simply rest his throat up and not worry about the lawsuit until his has to. Any anxiety might further damage his throat, and that might mean the end of The Rolling Stones' traditional 'mediocre, under-selling album/ lengthy money-making tour/ mediocre, under-selling album' production cycle. And when that ends, Noel Gallagher stops getting annoyed. And where's the fun in that?
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